Where is the career path with a heart—the path that terrifies you, the path that stirs your soul, the path you secretly fantasize about? That’s the path that honors the real you. That’s the path that keeps you aligned with truth, love, and power. If you aren’t doing something that scares you and challenges you, you’re playing the game of life too timidly, missing golden opportunities that could make a real difference. If your career path doesn’t require courage, you’re in the wrong career.
If you avoid all risk, you only weaken yourself. If you follow the heart-centered path, you can expect to take risks from time to time. Some will turn out in your favor; some won’t. If your decisions are made intelligently, however, the cumulative effect will almost certainly be positive, in many cases to an enormous degree.
When it comes to taking career risks, you must understand that in the long run, you control the odds. By taking the initiative again and again, you’ll eventually figure out what you need to know in order to succeed. When people ask me (Steve Pavlina) what their odds of success are in some endeavor such as blogging or online business, my response is: “If you train in martial arts, what are the odds of becoming a black belt?” Does it make any difference what percentage of white belts eventually become black belts? Maybe that answer matters to a statistician, but it shouldn’t make any difference to you. All that matters is whether you’re committed to becoming a black belt. You decide whether you make it or not.
If you want to build an outstanding career, you have to develop your failure tolerance. You must be brave enough to take calculated risks and accept the inevitable setbacks that occur without going into a tailspin of depression. Some of your bets will lose, including the ones that are 99 percent in your favor. It can be very disappointing when that happens, but it’s all part of the game. It takes courage to play a game when you know you’re eventually going to suffer a loss. Don’t let a few failures get you down. Just keep making the best decisions you can.
It’s okay to risk going broke when you’re convinced that the risk-reward ratio is reasonable and you’re willing to deal with the worst possible outcome. Going broke is really no big deal. I’ve done it a few times myself; and to my surprise, I discovered there was no stop sign after running out of money, so I just kept going and rebuilt from scratch. A lack of money can’t stop you if you’re determined. Are you courageous enough to risk going broke to pursue your dreams?
Don’t play the career game for cash. If you think money is the top prize, you’ll get suckered in by all kinds of get-rich-quick schemes, and you’ll make a lot of dumb bets. Even when you win the money you seek, you still lose because you miss the mark. The real prize is fulfillment. This means putting yourself in a position where you’re doing work you love, building your strengths and talents, enjoying abundant income, and making a meaningful contribution to others. Now that’s a prize worth having.
Don’t settle for cowardly career choices. Don’t wimp out on your dreams. Exercise your courage to go after the prize of true fulfillment, which is so much greater than the illusion of security. Don’t get so attached to material possessions that you’re afraid to risk them for what really matters. When you die, all your stuff will be left behind anyway; it’s really not that important. What matters is how much conscious growth you experience while you’re here since that’s the only thing you can possibly keep after you die.
* Source: Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina