Force Yourself to Grow
Thanks in advance for reading this article. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas. I'd love to hear what you liked. Please write me a little COMMENT below. Start a conversation. Tell me what you think, and I'll reply. Promise.=========================================================
Force Yourself to grow. Regularly try something new and keep your life interesting. Break through the inertia of being too cautious and safe.
First a story. One of my favorite comedians was Henny Youngman — master of the quick one-liner. In a rapid-fire sentence or two, he’d set up a story and deliver a clever, surprising punch. Always knocked me out! Here are a few of his most popular jokes:
- The patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Then don’t do that!”
- I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.
- The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip.
- There was a girl knocking on my hotel room door all night! Finally, I let her out.
- A man pulls up to the curb and asks the policeman, “Can I park here?” “No” says the cop. “What about all these other cars?” “They didn’t ask!”
Years ago my band entertained at a benefit dinner party in San Jose. Youngman was the after-dinner speaker. I’ll always remember one of his best lines of the evening:
A bum came up to me saying, “I haven’t eaten in two days!” I said, “Force yourself!”
I think of this line often, whenever I hear someone say they can’t do “so-and-so”. I say to myself, “Just force yourself.”
Yesterday, a friend told me “For some reason, I just can’t get myself to do a video.”
I don’t want to be a pest, but wouldn’t it be good advice to tell her, “Force yourself.”? Just put yourself where you need to be, remove obvious distractions, and go for it!
What’s the worst that could happen? Possibly her first attempt might be so awful, she’ll die from embarrassment. More likely, though, she might find her first try is pretty decent and shows a few easy steps for improving the next one.
For myself, I’ve come to like this “brute force” approach. I was a timid kid, and experience taught me that I should be bold about trying a new idea. Especially if the idea looked good.
More often than not, dreading to try something new was unwarranted. In addition to delaying an eventual benefit, dreading cost me an opportunity to achieve something and build my self-confidence..
Bottom line: Ever hesitate to try something new? If it’s really a good idea, be bold. Odds are you’ll find success more often if you just force yourself.
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Categories: Living My Life