Working on a web startup teaches you how to live deliberately.
It’s about making decisions quickly and taking action as a default, rather than the other way around.
It’s uncomfortable at first, in that it’s a deliberate way of being and until you live deliberately, you just don’t know what it’s like to do so.
You see the world differently in that you see it as one possibility after another, and you begin to challenge your own assumptions because you’re spending so much of your time trying to challenge the expectations of other people.
When you don’t take anything for granted and you decide to decide, you stop letting fear be an excuse to put the world off.
It doesn’t mean you’re not afraid to be wrong but it does mean you stop being afraid to fail.
Failing is actually something you realize everyone is doing, all the time, in small and big ways…and not only are you not judging them for it but you notice that the happiest people you know fail hard and fail often. The most successful people you know fail hard and fail often.
The people deepest in love fail hard and fail often, together.
When you stop being afraid to fail, and you decide to make deciding and doing your default, you also quickly realize that a lot of people are stuck.
They’re in a relationship they won’t decide about.
They’re in a job or career they won’t decide about.
They’re internally undecided about who they are.
Which becomes who they are.
You need to realize you’ll probably be wrong, but you won’t know until you decide and do. You need to know that waiting isn’t going to change things…and the things that do change while we wait are happening to us.
Letting things happen to you is very different than making thing happen to you. Making things happen to you is…well…
…well, it’s just better.
It makes you confident, and comfortable with a world you can’t predict. It makes it easier to know who you are, and to be who you are.
It becomes easy to talk about who you are, how you’re feeling, and what you’re doing.
It’s hard, too, so I get why so many people can’t break through the skin of their comfort zone to move forward. They can’t get into the habit of making a decision and taking some action, however big or small it may be, knowing that failure and missteps aren’t just unavoidable; they should be sought out.
That those missteps will be exactly what will make them happy or successful in the end.
I’m not on a pedestal.
I get stuck. I catch myself not deciding sometimes.
When I do catch myself though…I decide to decide and to do something.
You should too.
Image mine, bracelet & note courtesy of Emma, @maurer‘s daughter.
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