Matt Damon is in an ad right now in which he argues “Fortune favors the brave.”
Easy for an Oscar-winning and tremendously wealthy actor to say. And there is no guarantee there. You don’t get rich just by trying.
But if you do as Homer Simpson argues and never try, you know how that ends.
The first year Diana and I were married we approached Christmas in a little bit of a jam. We were short about $100 to buy we wanted for gifts. So I got brave. I had a clear intention of proving my abilities as a writer could get us the money we needed.
I wrote a story, kind of like I do here. This was a true story, an inspiring moment from my childhood. It was based on a moment I remember walking out to the living room and being blown away by the vision of abundance looking at the tree, especially compared to the night before. It was a one-page story I guessed I could sell for $1 each by going door-to-door in our Salt Lake City neighborhood. I printed 100 copies and went on my way.
Before knocking on that first door my fear was almost immobilizing. To get past it I relied on something I’d heard a trainer say years before. “What I want is too important to let my fear get in the way.” So I set my oxygen-depleting fear aside, chose to ignore it.
As I knocked on doors, people were nice even when they turned me down. I worked for probably three hours and sold a dozen copies. Eventually I was stopped by a police officer. He said a neighbor had called and was suspicious. He was nice enough, but said I’d probably need a business license to do what I was doing. I kept my $12, the 88 other copies and walked home.
I set an intention of making $100 and fell short by a lot. You could say I failed.
Diana and I resolved our gift-giving by exploring the wonderful world of shopping on credit. It was a great Christmas and we even bought ourselves a new television.
Whether my three hours selling a story was a failure depends on what you’re measuring. I didn’t get the $100. Well, I did get it, by borrowing it. I paid it back so I guess I did get the money doing something else.
More important to me, though, is something scared me and I did it anyway. I admire my 1996 moxie.
This message is as much for me as it is for anyone reading it. I accomplished some of what I wanted to in 2021. But I have a list of things I wanted to do this year and more than a couple are as far from accomplishing as they were a year ago. Some of that came from serious reexamination of what I really wanted, which is fine. But I also recognize that in some cases I failed, primarily because I didn’t try. I would have loved to have failed because I did it wrong.
I plan to be wrong a lot in 2022.
Good story!
Oh, so do i! Let's all go on being gloriously wrong.