Today while walking through the campus, I ran into a student who I’ve befriended over the years. As I often do, I asked about her classes; she is close to finishing with us. It has been a struggle for various reasons, not the least of which is that she has paid her own way through school. As we talked, I noted that she was wearing a sweatshirt for a fairly famous northern school, well-known for their academic prowess.
When I asked about it, she said that indeed she hoped to go there. She added another school in New York that she wanted to consider as well. Then she said that both were probably out of her league in academics. Worse, she intimated that an advisor at the New York school had told her that getting in would be hard.
And, that’s probably right—it would be tough. Both schools are very exclusive and many people want to go there. So, the easy thing to do would be to not try, put her sights on something more likely to be attainable. Yep, that would be the more logical thing to do.
That’s not what I advised her though. Instead, I told her to go for it. Why not? What does she have to lose?
So often, we stop ourselves before we even roll the dice on our dreams. We think it’s too hard, too out of reach, too expensive, that “she’d never say yes if I asked for that date.” And so we quit.
In doing so, the negative outcome that we fear actually comes to pass. We bring it to pass by not trying.
Instead, we need to turn that around and see that by rolling the dice, the ONLY POSSIBLE OUTCOME that would surprise us is a good one. If we try and get a negative response, we are exactly where we are that moment. We haven’t lost anything. There’s no down side.
However, when we roll the dice, when we try, ask, strive, go for it, what can happen? We can get what we dream for. Or, we can get a different answer….not a yes, but not a no—something else that equally can propel us forward.
I left her with one more idea—-what if they do say no? She applies to both schools and gets rejected. What then? As I said to her, “how badly do you want it?” If she wants it bad enough, she tries again. She asks again. She goes to visit. She knocks on doors. She camps out on the front steps of the Admissions office till they let her in.
OK, sure…if 100 days later, or all her money runs out…at some point, you do have to redirect. Pick a new dream. It’s okay. There is a guiding hand at work as I wrote last week, and life will work out. Be an amazing person and life becomes an amazing journey of unexpected, amazing happenings. BUT, don’t decide to give up simply because you got 1 no.
Never stop trying. Roll the dice. What’s the worst that could happen? Nothing “worst” could happen…there’s only the possibility of an upside. Go for it!!