26th
What one thing would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
I went to this women leadership blah blah blah facilitated networking blah blah blah event yesterday. It was one of those speed networking things and we were given a list of questions ahead of time that we were supposed to be prepared to answer. One of the questions was “What one thing would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?”
I thought that was a good question and asked it of most of the people I talked to. A couple of them had a really hard time thinking of an answer, which really surprised me. One was a young women who was still trying to figure out what she wants out of life. I can certainly understand that, but I’ve always had a dream-of-the-moment, even if that changes frequently. Finally, after a lot of thought, she said, “be a journalist.”
The other was an older woman who had been in the same industry for something like 40 years. She was actually having a really hard time conceptualizing the idea of being able to do anything she wanted. She asked me if it had to relate to her job and I said, “no, it could be skydiving if that’s what you want to do.” She hemmed and hawed and then finally said, with a radiant smile, “well, I’ve always liked to travel. So I guess it would be working in a different industry where I would travel a lot.” I told her she should be a consultant.
The first person I talked to during the speed networking asked the question of me. I said “start my own business.” She immediately got super excited and said she had always wanted to do that but she waited too far into her career and now she’s too comfortable and feels like she wouldn’t be able to make the nice salary she’s making now (she was middle-aged). She basically said “do it, do it now, do it, before it’s too late.” Yeah, working on it…
Speaking of evolving dreams, up until fairly recently, my answer to that question probably would have been “write for a living.” I miss my passion for writing, and lord knows I rarely have time to read more than articles anymore. Maybe I need to do a better job of keeping up this blog.
What would you do?
