Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained

Though this is the motto of all successful entrepreneurs it is also the motto of anyone who ever succeeds in anything in life. Because, "If you are too afraid to try and to fail, likely you will never succeed anyway. Because success is only just getting up one more time than you get knocked down by life. That's all it really is. You just have to find a way to keep going and looking for that one opportunity to succeed, to live.

I was talking today with my present wife about how people make decisions when they are young. And often, when we are young we don't tend to make the best decisions because we just don't have enough experience yet.

Here is a story I like to tell so if you have read my blog a lot you can skip over it if you have heard it before, "There was a couple who went to the Himalayas to meet a master to find the secret of life. They had climbed high into the Himalayas and found the cave of the legendary master who was a cave yogi. As they asked to speak with him they were in awe because all he wore in his mountain fastness in his cave was a loincloth. Her hair was long and matted from long years of meditation along in the cave. When they spoke to him they asked, "Oh Great Master, what is the secret of life?"
He said two words, "Good Decisions!"
Then they said, "But Great Master, how do we know how to make those good decisions?"
He looked at them carefully and said, "Bad decisions."

Here we have the secret of life Zen Style, like a Haiku. The secret of life is just so very simple and yet so completely complicated. But how do you never have a life? By being afraid to make bad decisions in order to learn how to make good decisions. If you never try it is true you never fail. But if you never try you also never succeed at anything unless maybe you are in a cave in the Himalayas meditating on the secret of life! So, if you ever want to succeed at anything you have to be willing to embarrass yourself and to fail more than once. And don't give up that college spirit that just keeps on trying no matter what. (You might have to change your plans and become more of an opportunist) but if you never stop trying you are sure to succeed at something, even if it wasn't what you expected to succeed at in the first place.