Are You Failing By Default?

February 16th, 2011

If I only told my patients about the possible risks associated with cataract surgery many would decide against the surgery. Possible complications like endopthalmitis, cystoid macular edema or retinal detachment sound scary.

Even with these rare complications 99.99% of my patients go ahead with their surgeries because the benefits far outweigh the risks. They realize it’s better to be proactive with their vision rather than to slowly go blind.

Cataract surgery is an obvious choice yet how many of us avoid doing something because of a small chance of adverse risk? We constant ask ourselves “what if something goes wrong?” What if we asked ourselves, “What if this goes right?”

And because I’m not advocating blindly rushing into things perhaps the best question should be “what if my planning, research and expertise makes this a success?”

In life the risks are often greater than those associated with surgery. In those situations ask yourself could you deal with the worst possible situation.

If your new company went bankrupt what would you do? You could still start over and in fact many of the most famous entrepreneurs have a failure or two under their belt. It’s all part of the learning process.

It’s easy in life to take the safe conventional choices and never have the option to fail. But as JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, pointed out in a recent speech, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”

Stop living your life by focusing on what could go wrong. Consider if you could live with the worst potential outcome and then pursue your dreams.

Have you been failing by default? What’s holding you back from pursuing your dreams?