In business you need to push yourself beyond your limits—like U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn does (Photo by thanasim25)
While in college I was on the Boston University ski team, and one thing our coach used to say during practice has stuck with me through life, “If you don’t fall down, you’re not trying hard enough.” The point is that real growth comes when you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, beyond your limits. And on the ski slopes, this quite literally involves pushing yourself so hard you fall.
In the business arena the same is true. You need to take risks and put yourself out there. If you aren’t trying new things in your marketing, sales, and overall business planning, how do you know what works and what doesn’t? How can you improve?
Think for a minute of the last time you failed at something in your business. If nothing comes to you—you aren’t trying hard enough. It is time to set the bar higher and reach out of your comfort zone.
If you’ve been talking about writing a book for the last year and a half, move this initiative to the front burner. And don’t settle for self-publishing the book. Set the bar high. Shoot for getting a book deal with McGraw-Hill. Sure it takes extra effort and work to pitch your book to a large publishing house, and there are no guarantees your book will be accepted. But if it is, the pay off will be extraordinary and you won’t be looking back wondering, “What if.”
When you set the bar high, even if you don’t reach it, you will likely land higher than where you started and where you would have landed had you settled.
In your journey for excellence you will fall down—it is in the picking yourself back up and trying again that true learning and excellence occurs.
