Time to explore another one of my rules. This post is going to be a bit different than the others because, unlike many of my other rules, this is one that I’ve been practicing for as long as I can remember, and it’s made a huge difference in my life. That rule is a simple one with major implications: Take chances.
Although many people (including myself) tend to think of taking chances as shooting for the moon, it doesn’t always have to be that way. It could be something small like complimenting a stranger on their shirt, smile, pet, etc. I do this almost every time I go out. Usually the other person smiles and thanks me, but sometimes they say nothing or seem confused. I usually don’t have any inkling as to how they’ll react, but if I feel the urge to be nice, I’ll do it anyway and see what happens. I’m sure this is good practice for some of the big chances that I plan to take in my life, and, if nothing else, it makes me feel good in the present and usually makes the other person feel good as well.
If I don’t pursue something, I’m almost surely not going to get it. Sure, sometimes another person will give me what I want, but only if they already know I’m interested in it. And there are many things that I can’t get from anyone else. For example, I got a unicycle for Christmas last year, but the person who gave it to me can’t give me the skill I need to ride it. I have to take the time to develop that skill myself. As I’ve gone on in life, increasingly more of the things I want have been things that involve a great deal of work on my part; I’ve become more interested in skills and experiences than mere possessions.
Part of taking chances is knowing that I may not get what I want. Even when that happens, though, I usually end up getting something close to it, and sometimes I do get exactly what I want. In other cases, I end up getting something better than what I initially wanted and I’d have missed out on that if things had originally gone my way. Either way, I’ve had so many amazing experiences from simply saying “yes” even when I was scared or didn’t know what I was getting into. My experiences have taught me a lot of valuable lessons, and, although I didn’t enjoy some of them or even hated them at the time, I’m still grateful for the lessons I learned. I don’t always get what I want but at least I have the satisfaction of knowing I did my best to get it. If I always play it safe, I’ll never get to where I want to be in life and I’ll feel like I’ve wasted my time. The way I see it, it’s better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.