I thought it would be beneficial to take a few moments to describe what it means to me to take risks. A defining moment in my life was when I first started learning about attraction and social dynamics. As a sub category in the self development movement, one of the first things I learned was that to meet women you have be willing to ACT without thinking. You have to be willing to approach a women without thinking of how it could go wrong.

You have to be willing to jump into the fire and find a way to not to get burned.

As a result of recognizing how easy it was to take little baby steps (Insert What About Bob quote here) with meeting women, I started see how applicable it was to every other facet of my life. As a giant pussy when it came to heights, I made a point to jump off every cliff I could find. As a person who had never left the country, I made a decision to see the world. As a person who has always dealt with anxiety and panic attacks, I made a life decision to embrace my fears and not allow them to control my life. And in every fear I’ve faced, I’ve always found that it was never once as BAD or SCARY as I had previously predicted. Isn’t it strange how our mind can warp a future event and assume it’s going to be terrible yet when we’re in the moment, we never feel fear, we never feel the pain we anticipate. We are in it, experiencing it and dealing with it. You could argue fear is nothing more than anticipating some form of pain. Yet 99% of the time that pain never comes and time and time again when we encounter situations that we have been dreading, we realize how rediciulous our fretting was. In the moment, we can only act and deal with what is happening. We always find a way to not get burned. This is why fear and worry are so unproductive. They consume our vital energy and direct it towards a ‘painful’ future that never seems to come.

Besides fear, there is another reason people neglect to take risks; comfort.

People are comfortable where they are at. They can get stuck in mediocrity simply because of how easy it is. They are working at a cushy job in which they don’t take risks or make big decisions. They don’t leave their city or town and venture out into the rest of the world. They settle down with the first person that shows interest.

I heard this great analogy of a plant. A plant can survive wherever it grows, at least for a while. And maybe it is not the most nourishing and optimal environment, but for that plant, it is easier to survive in a barren, desolate environment than to uproot and venture into the unknown where there could be more rainfall and nourishing soil.

And just like a plant that lives where there is little rainfall, you can still survive in a mediocre reality. But as a person who is always trying to bring more enrichment into his life, I have a hard time NOT TRYING to better my life and the lives of others in some way. I feel there is always room to grow, improve, and bring to life a dream that starts in the mind and is manifested into a reality. This is part of purpose and part of moving towards an optimal reality-a heaven on earth.

So right now take one small step towards doing something you’ve always wanted to do. Do one thing everyday that scares you and challenges you. Make each and every day as if it were your last day to do something excellent!