Most of us have wild passionate dreams inside. Maybe you want to start you own business, or maybe you want to become a movie star, or maybe you want to be better at dating. Most of these goals require one common ingredient: taking risks.
Of course, this it not something new. But sometimes we need some inspiration (or a loving kick in the butt) to jump off the cliff. Let me tell you about my close friend Jonas. Jonas is a diligent law student at the university of Aarhus (Denmark). A couple of month ago he called me and told me in a vigorous voice, that he'd signed up for an open mic comedy contest. At first I couldn't believe him, as he's not the type of guy you'd expect would dare doing a solo show in front of a lot of people.
He did great that night I was told. A guy from the comedy business invited him to do some other gigs. Now, a couple months later, Jonas has already done around 15 comedy gigs and he keeps getting invites to perform in comedy clubs. He's done warm-up support shows for some of Denmarks best comedians (Mick Øgendahl and Lars Hjortshøj). Today Jonas let me know, that he'd might take a year off from his law school to focus on this opportunity given to him. He was energized as if a dream of his was about to or had come true.
Long story short, Jonas took a relatively small risk, and was rewarded greatly!
But most people don't do like Jonas. Why? They wouldn't have dared going on that stage the first time because they'd be focusing on the relatively small penalty of failure, instead of focusing on the enormous potential reward!
So the next time you considering taking a risk, remember to compare the penalty of failing to the potential reward of succeeding. The girl might turn you down when asking for a date, so what? No big deal. However, she also might say yes which would be no less than fantastic!