The safety bet

Will you marry the one who has the perfect manners, Ivy League education and offers financial stability or the one who is a bit on the goofy side, fires up your imagination, supports your ideals and makes you feel silly and adventurous?

When deciding on a job offer, would you choose a well-established company, a leader in the industry which promises a big paycheck and a career path that ensures your place until retirement or would you join a promising start-up with no proven track record but a bunch of highly skilled, dedicated and knowledgeable entrepreneurs?

The thing about choosing stability over other possibilities is that while it provides you, well, stability, it hasn’t got much room for excitement.  It’s a day in and day out thing.  And while it probably guarantees a monthly paycheck and perhaps a bit of cash for the little other extras, it does little to encourage one’s highest potential to soar.

It’s pretty much like what we all do.  Go to school, get a university degree, get a job in an old reliable company, get married, have kids and retire.  All well within the bounds of our comfort zone.

If we’re lucky, we get to travel and see the world a little bit, widen our circle, step a little bit out of our comfort zone safe in the knowledge that it is just temporary, therefore bearable.

Or we could decide the world is our playground, we are going to go out and play! And have fun, and meet lots of people from different backgrounds and really live! Maybe get to know a different culture, learn another religion, join a choir group that travels and sings in far away places.  Dare to do something out of the ordinary.

And we don’t even have to go far to do this.  Everyday presents an opportunity to stretch ourselves just a little bit more.

The next time you go to a barbecue networking event or a social gathering, try talking to an unfamiliar face.  Approach someone from an industry different than yours and who knows, maybe, you might walk away learning something new that will take your fancy.

Or cook a dish from a country you’ve never been to.  Something you’ve never tried before and get to know what Tunisian keftagi or tagine are.  And never mind if it doesn’t turn out well.  The important thing is you tried.

Everyday we have the chance to set the bar just a little bit higher.   To do things just a little more different from what we’re used to.

How about faith in ourselves?  How about letting go and letting be?  How about daring to discover a completely unknown territory?

If you don’t take that leap of faith, you will always look back and wonder what if.