"I never make little mistakes...only big ones!"
I am reading this book by Heinlein called "I will fear no evil". While this is the work of a master, the book itself is quite slow and uneventful; no chases, no persecution by authorities, no narrow escapes, nothing that makes me finish a Heinlein book at break-neck speed. This one I have been wading through for weeks.
However, I admire Heinlein not only for his stories, but his ideas, his philosophy, his revolutionary not-always-right-but-quite-challenging concepts. And this one caught my attention and I thought of course, that makes sense. If you are making big mistakes then you are taking big risks and ask any Wall Street financial analyst you have to take big risks in order to reap big rewards.
Oh, I can add another one to it, "If you are not failing sometimes, then you are not taking enough risks." Taking risks, as I might have said before, is an essential part of success, indeed a part of life itself. Think about it, anything you ever did, from learning to ride a bike to proposing to that wonderful, beautiful girl, anything worthwhile came with a risk.
Yes, it's scary; yes, it's dangerous, but as the man said, "Sure the game is rigged, but if you don't play, you can't win!"
Hehe...guess who said that, Robert Heinlein! :-)
1 comment:
I saw that you stopped by my blog - thanks for checking it out!
Then I read this post and it reminded me of this post I wrote a while back about risk-taking: http://bigideas.typepad.com/index/2007/06/go-fail-yoursel.html
Take a look and let me know what you think. I'm a big Heinlein fan by the way - definitely an innovative guy who took risks.
Also, I'd say that Wall St. financial analysts are actually very risk averse. Most of their analysis and commentary are based in the past and about things that people in the industry tell them. They're very rarely out in front of the curve advocating large risky maneuvers.
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