Just try it. Even if you think you’ll fail. Try anyway.
That’s this week’s sermon, my friends. Now you can head over to the coffee and doughnuts.
Oh really? You want more? Well, OK, fine then. The reason I’m telling you this is because too many of us just give up without trying, and it makes our lives harder. Or at least less pleasant.
Some of you Star Wars geeks are now thinking to yourselves, “Wait. Jedi Master Yoda said “There is no try. Only do.” And I heartily agree with this sentiment, because you often hear people respond to good advice by saying, “OK, I’ll try,” when of course they have no intention of doing anything.
Your doctor tells you that you need to lose weight to avoid imminent implosion of all your bodily organs. You nod your head sagely, with an obsequious smile, and say, “Yes, doctor. I’ll try.”
Then, the moment you walk out of the office, you head for Dunkin Donuts, the fried fat store where they don’t know how to spell doughnuts. And, no, you’re not just getting a coffee. (Gee, this scenario is totally unfamiliar to me.)
I feel certain you’ve grasped the concept here. But let me tell you this: You never know what might happen if you actually try to achieve something you think is impossible, ridiculous or just a pipe dream. Because it might actually come true.
If you shut yourself down by presuming that something can’t happen, guess what? It won’t. As Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player called the Great One supposedly said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
I recently heard someone echo my own philosophy, which is “Why not try? What’s the worst that could happen?”
Now, if the worst that could happen is that you invest in your pastor’s Ponzi scheme and lose your entire life’s savings, then that requires more research. But if the worst is simply that you look like an idiot, well, that’s not so bad, is it?
I always look at every decision by analyzing the costs versus benefits ratio. If it’s going to cost me nothing but embarrassment, then why not try it? I’m used to looking like a fool. I told my mom this years ago when she was balking at a harsh experimental cancer treatment.
“Mom, let’s look at this objectively. The down side is that you get very sick for a few weeks. The upside is that you don’t die.” My brother and I talked her into it, and guess what? She didn’t die. In fact, she went into permanent remission. (Well, OK, she died later, but from perpetual grumpiness, not cancer.)
I am obviously preaching this from personal experience. There’s nothing like being a hard news reporter to make you lose any sense of shame, because your editor is always forcing you to do ridiculous, mortifying and possibly pointless stuff.
- Editor: “Get over to Rodney King’s mother’s house and get a quote about the court decision coming down any minute.”
- Me: “I’d rather eat ground glass.” No, I didn’t actually say that, because I wanted to keep my job. But I did sit in my car outside her house until the family got home from church, and then ran up and asked for a comment. No, I didn’t get one. But I didn’t die either.
One of the reporting chores I really hated was being sent to the jail to attempt to interview people who’d been arrested the night before. Firstly, the jail is depressing and the people who work there are not always nice, particularly to reporters. But you have to try, because you never know. The arrested person might be totally innocent. The police say he’s guilty, but you always need to at least try to get his side of the story.
One early Saturday morning, I got the dreaded call at home and headed out to the jail in Santa Ana, to try to talk to a guy who’d been arrested the night before and charged with killing the manager of a home store during an attempted robbery.
I was griping and moaning to myself all the way there, because I knew the guy wasn’t going to talk to me, and even if he did, he wouldn’t say anything. Well, I was wrong. Not only did the guy talk to me, but he confessed the entire crime, and complained that the manager should have followed company protocol and opened the safe without arguing, so it was his own fault he was shot and killed.
As you might guess, this was a great story, and I hustled back to the newsroom to write it. Later, the guy recanted and claimed he didn’t say any of those things, but he was convicted anyway. I got a great story out of it. And why? Because I tried, even though I thought I would fail.
I really can’t count the times in my life this has happened to me, and it’s taught me to just keep moving forward. Like the slogan, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” Everyone’s afraid of failure and if they’re not, they’re stupid.
There’s a quote roaming around out there that says, “If someone tells you that you can’t do something, do it twice and take pictures.”
Now, if the something involves shooting a bottle rocket out of certain bodycavities, don’t do that twice. Don’t even do it once. But this is otherwise good advice.
If you have an experience in your life where you tried, expecting failure, and succeeded, tell me about it. I might put it in a future column. Hit me up at mfisher@scng.com
And remember. Just do it.