“Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” Anonymous
In my job, I run into many executives who are committed to their careers but they are not happy. Some have enjoyed an impressive trajectory, climbing the ladder of success. Others have not been so lucky. They bounce from job to job, refusing to consider that they are not cut out for the career path they have chosen.
Sound familiar?
There is a popular refrigerator magnet that I look at every morning:
“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” It reminds me that to find the great career rewards, there are risks.
In a widely popular video, TV gameshow host Steve Harvey told an audience in a post-show talk that every successful person in this world has jumped. “You will eventually have to jump unless you want to just exist in life. If you wake up believing there is more to life than what you are doing, believe it. If you want to get to the life you want, you will have to jump.”
Jump?
Each of us is endowed with a special gift by our creator, Harvey said. “When you are standing on the cliff of life and you see people soaring by, going to exotic places, doing wonderful things, or maybe you look up the street and your neighbor has a new car every year or two and you wonder how he is doing that?
“Have you ever thought that the people who are soaring have identified that gift and they are living in that gift?” Getting a degree is not a gift. An education will only take you so far.
“The only way for you to soar is to jump. Take that gift that is strapped to your back and jump off that cliff. Pull the cord and you will soar.
“If you don’t ever use it, you are just getting up and going to work, a job you hate, that ain’t living man,” Harvey said. “You are just existing.”
At some point you may want to find out what it is like to soar in life but the only way you will find out is that you will have to jump.
Harvey added this cautionary note: When you do jump, the parachute will not open up right away. There is a strong likelihood that you will get battered and bruised but eventually the parachute will open, Harvey said.
You can play it safe if you want to avoid the pain by staying on the cliff, “But if you don’t jump, you’ll never know what your life could be like.”
