Modest Assumptions
How often people rather give up or not even try instead of making an attempt and risking defeat or failure?
I find it interesting how often people rather give up or not even try instead of making an attempt and risking defeat or failure. On an emotional level, I can understand that we want to avoid negative emotions. However, on a rational level this strategy strikes me as unconvincing. After all, even if you fail at something, and even if it happens over and over, it will be more than compensated once you succeed.
Great examples come from the area of dating. Let’s say you want to ask out the most beautiful girl in class. She’s attractive, everyone fawns over her, and from occasionally talking to her, you got the impression that she’s not only friendly, but that she seems to even like you. Nonetheless, despite all those positive signals, you still don’t dare to make a move. I’m sure this situation is familiar to most.
The issue is of course that she might turn you down, and tell you that she actually has a boyfriend. Possibly, she’s going to make an excuse that is so awkward that you can’t help but feel that she is making it up and simply doesn’t want to say that she doesn’t want to go on a date with you. Obviously, you want to spare yourself this humiliation. Also, you know that your friends, who would have wanted to ask her out but didn’t dare to, would mock you afterwards as well.
All those thoughts aren’t overly pleasant. However, they are all short-sighted. Because what if she really likes you and would want to go out with you? Maybe she has desperately been waiting for you to make a move and turned down some other guys who pursued her. The problem is of course that as long as you don’t ask her out, you won’t know it. However, shouldn’t this be motivation enough to go for what you want in life, instead of making excuses, and not just when it comes to girls?
Very often the potential negative consequences seem very large, but are completely insignificant. In the long run, they most definitely are. But because we are more concerned with the short-term effect and not the long-term benefit, we don’t even look further and quickly settle for what is way below our potential.
No matter what you want to achieve, normally nobody else will do the work for you, and you often have to risk failure. The safe path is of course the easier one, but if you make too many safe choices, you can easily end up in a place in life where you really don’t want to be. Be careful, because before you know it, you may have a wife you settled for because you thought you couldn’t do better or an unfulfilling job you got merely because it seemed convenient. But you could have it so much better had you only tried.
