Be careful’ is the mantra we have been taught since we were babies. Parents do their best to protect their children from harm. Which of course is necessary when they are about to jump of the roof with their Superman clothes on, but not entirely necessary when they want to jump of the bed. With the best intentions, parents teach us to be save rather than take risks, because if we dare to take a risk we might get hurt. The thing is that we are meant to get hurt. This is how we are supposed to learn! If you jump of the bed and hurt your ankle, you learn much faster than if your mom tells you not to jump off because you might get hurt.
Getting hurt is part of learning, or should I say taking chances is a normal way of gaining knowledge of things you did not know before. The child has to get hurt to learn, if he doesn’t learn from jumping of the bed, he might learn later by jumping from a 6-foot-high wall when he breaks something. Parents continuously “protect” us as we grow older. “You cannot be friends with so and so, because they do this and that and did you hear what they did last week.” I do agree that having the right friends will always benefit you, but choosing for your child might not be wise, it will almost certainly lead to him having the wrong friends. Why? Because you are telling him that despite the upbringing you have given him, you firstly do not trust him/her to make their own decisions and secondly that they are not capable of making these important decisions themselves. The reality is that sooner or later these decisions will have to be made by the child who is now grown up and the stakes are much higher when he/she is 20 rather than 12 or 13.
So, what does this have to do with being all in? What I want you to see is how you have learnt everything you know today. How did you learn to not take a big sip of your favorite hot beverage, before you have tested it with a small sip? How did you learn to walk cautiously when the floor is wet? My guess is you took a big sip, spat it out, cursed and then felt sorry for yourself, or you were walking full speed ignoring the fact it was raining and that the slippery-when-wet tiles were wet and ended up on your back facing the sky. Both these examples are hard lessons to learn and even when learnt are sometimes forgotten for brief periods of time, but the bad experiences of your lips and tongue burning or a hurt ego gives you a reference to go back to when faced with the same situation in the future.
Look, if you go all in you will find out in the least amount of time possible whether whatever you are attempting or want to attempt is worth the effort. If you are “lukewarm” and do not take “MASSIVE ACTION” you, but rather take it slowly and play it safe, it will take you forever to find out good or bad.
You want to find out if it is good or bad as soon as possible! If it is good you want more as soon as possible! If it is bad you want less of or nothing as soon as possible.
All in is the only way.
