I have one of those inspirational cards in my office at work with a phrase like this written on it. It is from the good folks at Quotables and I have looked at it thousands of times. It is empowering to contemplate what wild and unbelievable things you could accomplish if you knew success was guaranteed.
However, it is easy to fall into two other interpretations of this concept:
- “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail too badly?”
- “What can you do that you are confident about?”
The first is a subtly, but an important one. The quote doesn’t say “how high would you climb if you knew there was a safety net?” It says instead, “what would you do if you never needed a safety net?”
The second is more tricky. The quote does not ask you to constrain your dreams to those things that you are reasonably confident that you can accomplish on your own. It asks for a mental leap of faith. I, like most people, enjoy working on things that I am confident I can succeed. I like to play games I can win. The challenge is to think beyond that comfort zone and think about yourself as more capable and luckier than you have ever been. This is basically a requirement for entrepreneurs, because the deck is stacked against us, but yet we place our bets.
So, if I could not fail, what would I do? I would start Remarkable by Creative Outlet Labs and do good in the world. Thank you for joining me on this journey.
As an aside, although the card I have attributes the quote to “unknown,” others credit Dr. Robert Schuller with penning the concept (which makes sense considering he is a world famous optimist).
