Talent Search: Bravery is Being Afraid, but Doing It Anyway

Bravery is being afraid, but doing it anyway. In life there are leaders, and there are followers. Leaders posses the skills to persevere through peer pressure, through negative comments, and essentially through self ideas of failure to achieve their goals. Followers tend to do the opposite, they are afraid of stepping outside of their comfort zone, and their self esteem thrives off of the little bit of recognition they might attain by following the crowd; therefore they can not surpass the stage of normal, and become great. Bravery is being afraid, but doing it anyway. I can not recall the number of times I've been told that I can not do something, that learning from your experiences is not the best teacher, that I should just settle and save myself the heart ache, and disappointment of failure. For a weak minded person those phrases alone are enough to make them want to give up. Keep in mind that the most successful entrepreneurs of today and of the days in the past did not aquire what they have based on following the crowd, or solely on pure luck. They went out on a limb against the grain, took a chance, and succeeded.

I have also been told that if a person lives life normal and expected i.e. go to school, graduate, get a job, and work in that specific field for a specific amount of time, that a person is guaranteed a happy normal life. That works, for those who want a normal life. The biggest icons on the face of the earth including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Bill Gates, Malcolm X, Donald Trump, Sean "P Diddy" Combs, and even Jesus Christ did not have normal Life's, but look at their recognition in todays society, and the legacy of their lives. Some of them had to endure with losing friends and or being outcasts from the norm, others had to face public humiliation, and some suffered the ultimate sacrifice of death. Was it all worth it; some would say yes, and some would argue no, but that is a judgement question, which requires a judgement answer. The phrase that would best sum up this sentence would be to attain greater rewards, one must assume greater risks.

Some people got to where they are in life not because they were the best candidate, or the most intelligent, but by something as simple as the other person was scared to step forward and compete. Therefore I feel that success can be aquired by faith, belief, and the guts to listen to your instincts and act upon them. What I find amazing and also sad, is, people plan for failure more times than they plan for success, the amount of time spent on the "what if" question is infinite, but being brave is doing the complete opposite. A mind state of "Im not good enough" or "there is surely someone else that can do the job better than I can" is embedded in peoples minds. Where that mind set of thinking surfaced from I will leave up to the psychologists and sociologists. My overall opinion is failure is not final unless you quit, or do not attempt to take a chance. In conclusion there are two types of people, leaders and followers, and there are two types of talent, pure talent and applied talent. We are born with pure talent and a large amount of people have it, but only a select few apply it. Be brave enough to do it!