Are You Testing Your Ideas?

As leaders, we have to be willing to step out and take some risks. In fact, playing it too safe is the riskiest place to be. If you want to experience new levels of success, you have to be willing to do what you’ve never done before. Great leaders are great experimenters.

Experiments take trial after trial after trial because that’s how we learn. A child would never learn to walk if they didn’t keep falling again and again. It is through the experiences of falling that a child discovers how to maintain balance and develop the strength to walk. If you give up every single time something goes wrong, you will never open the door to new possibilities.

Most new opportunities don’t manifest after the first door you walk through…it is through the first door that leads to another…that leads to another…that leads to another…that leads to great potential. If you stop too short, you will miss something amazing. You have to first get a result in order to improve the result.

If you are going to get to the great, you have to travel through the bad, the average, then the good. There is a great statement I heard years ago that says, “You can easily become an overnight success after 20 years of hard work.”

Success is a journey lived out step by step, by step, by step. You don’t always make giant leaps; you make steady progress day by day. Even though you may have tried many possibilities, don’t stop trying more things. You never know how far away you are from the right solution. I often say, “You are only one idea away from a major breakthrough.” Thomas Edison said, “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.”