It’s impossible to live successfully without taking risks. Leo Buscaglia wrote: ‘To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out to another is to risk involvement…To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd is to risk being called naïve. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair, and to try is to risk failure. But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing…Only the person who risks is truly free.’ Franklin Roosevelt spent much of his life battling illness and was confined to a wheelchair. Yet he became one of America’s greatest presidents. He said: ‘It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.’ In The Pursuit of Excellence, Ted W. Engstrom gives this advice about the importance of trying: ‘Starting today, you can begin to enjoy using and developing your gifts…If you’ve always wanted to write, then write something, a short article, a poem, an account of your vacation. Write it as if you were going to be published; then submit it somewhere. If you’re a photographer, gather your best pictures together and submit them as entries in a contest. If you think you’re a fair tennis player or golfer, enter some tournaments and see how you do. You may not win the top prize but think how much you’ll learn and experience just by trying. The worst failure…is failure to try!’

© 2024. Written by Bob and Debby Gass. Used by permission under licence from UCB International.