why not be bold?

As many of you know, my favorite quote is "Fortune Favors the Bold" (Virgil). This has been proven true in my life many times.

It is easy to become fearful living this life. Negative things happen to everyone. Every successful person has his or her share of disappointment. I'm sure you have heard the stories about the baseball players with the best home run records as having the worst strike out records as well. If you are living your life to your full potential, not every plan is going to work out as intended.

After you've experienced a setback is not the time to give up, however. If you give up, you will lose the tremendous value of the experience you gained through your efforts. If you give up, you truly are defeated!

Examine the way that you look at situations. My own definition of "failure" (and each of us have our own) is to go through an experience and not learn something. If you think about it, I have made it very difficult for myself to feel like a failure. Why set yourself up with negativity?

How you think about a situation will determine how you move forward. It can be hard to be "BOLD" when you feel a failure. Even if you have a perfectly good reason to be negative, even if your negativity is not your "fault" (e.g. you are dwelling on what someone else has said or done) it still has the power to shut down your ability to move forward effectively, boldly.

Any negativity is destructive, regardless of where it originates. I am not suggesting you simply "think pretty thoughts" and ignore the reality of life. Bad things happen, and are often beyond your control. But you don't have to let them take over your positive outlook. See them for what they are, and commit to finding the positive in them.

I can give you a personal example here: my recent computer crash. I lost a week's worth of work on my new book, my newsletter, but more importantly I lost my address book. I thought the program backed it up automatically but it didn't. When I first found out I as devastated. After giving myself a few minutes to feel sorry for myself, I made a list of good things: 1) it gave me an excuse to go through my huge stack of business cards, files, etc. and the opportunity to contact some people I haven't had time to connect with for a while. 2) Since my old hard drive is completely dead, I had to buy a new one and this more than doubled my space. 3) This could have happened at a more crucial time in my book (I normally back up Friday about 5pm and the crash happened Friday morning) and the data lost would have been more important.

It isn't an ideal situation; clearly I wish it hadn't happened. But, there are good things that can be found in any situation if we choose to put our focus on them rather than on the negative aspects. There will always be plenty of excuses for being negative. However, those excuses will add nothing to your life.

Keeping a positive attitude is one way to help you "be bold". Another is to just "go for it."

I am not suggesting that you act without thinking. What I am suggesting is that you don't let your fears and suppositions get in your path.

How many times have you not tried to accomplish something, or did not ask for something (a raise, a book deal, a job) because you were sure (in advance) the answer would be no? How many things have you not attempted because you were sure it could not be done?

If you are sure it can't be done, you will stop looking for ways to do it. There is a famous quote, which I will paraphrase, that says, "Those who say things can't be done are generally run over by those who are doing it." Being bold means that you keep working at it until you find an approach that works. It means that you don't let the fact that something hasn't been done in the past keep you from doing it now.

You control your actions. Being bold means that you may hit the proverbial "brick wall" more often than others. It also means that you will experience more success because you will try more and not let negativity sideline you (at least not for long) when you experience setbacks.

Go ahead. Give it a try!

home | articles | the workshop