Question: “What’s scarier than all the witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, vampires and spiders rolled into one?”
Answer: “Doing a Google search and finding jokes about realtors ranking higher than jokes about attorneys.”
I told that little “joke” at a realtor meeting I attended yesterday and let’s just say the room didn’t explode into laughter. I mostly got a few smiles and a lot of groans, but here’s the real point of me telling you this: it was the first joke I had ever written and obviously the first time I had ever told it in public, and speaking it out loud in that venue was a real risk for me. Not a life-or-death risk, nothing that serious, not a risk on the scale of choosing a new career, but a risk nonetheless. In this case, it was the risk of embarrassment, the risk of falling flat on my face and appearing silly or foolish. But guess what? I survived! No one kicked me out of the meeting, no one came up and told me to keep the day job (my wife had already told me that prior to leaving the house after I had shared the joke with her), and no one told me they’d never speak to me again. But the point of why I’m sharing this with you is to challenge you to examine your own life and see where you are, or aren’t, taking risks.
Are you holding back sharing information with someone (spouse, loved one, business partner or client) because you’re afraid of what they might do or say, yet keeping it inside is just tearing you up? Take a look, find a situation where you’ve been hesitant to take a risk, and ask yourself “What’s the worst possible thing that could happen if I take this risk and can I live with the consequences?” If the answer’s yes, I can live with it, then go ahead and take the risk. I know you’ll be glad you did, just as I was when I shared that joke. And let me know what risk you took and how it turned out, I always like to hear real world examples. And have a safe Halloween today, too!