It May Be a Great Risk Indeed

Problems are opportunities, most of the time. I enjoyed hearing that Lucille Ball knows that luck is about being able to see what is or isn’t an opportunity and moving forward with whichever path way chosen. Choosing which path to take, which road to travel and even which ones to avoid are the things upon which lives and histories are built. How many of us can look back in our lives and “see” that moment when things changed? How many of us can credit a problem or great big, whopping land mine for making us who and what we are today? It is in the choosing that we begin our journey.

All too often we choose poorly, we make a mistake and have to work extra hard to get back to where we were. Or we forgo a great choice out of fear, anxiety, the unknown or even from listening to the wrong voices. However it happens, bad choices have the power to turn into very lucky days if we play our cards right. We learn more from our failures than we do our successes, even the tiny ones. Those of us who never risk failure take great risk indeed, because it is failure that helps us grow and appreciate our victories that much more.

And we’ve all had that “great opportunity” that just didn’t sit right. The one our boss, family member, or colleague guaranteed would be a real leap forward, and we just couldn’t see it. So we passed. Time passes and we realize we dodged a bullet and came out on the other side safer and wiser. Whew! Sometimes an opportunity passed is a great lesson in trusting ourselves and following that little voice telling us that something is wrong.

Either way we have to make choices and live with them, the good ones, the bad ones and even the Uber ugly ones. Some people call that luck, I can it learned wisdom. Opportunities come and go, it is how we choose to react to them that sets our path. So if you are in the midst of making a decision about an opportunity, move forward without fear. If this choice is wrong, you’ll learn. If this choice leads you down a great path, you’ll also learn. Either way you have to be able to live with your choice, so choose wisely.