A Good Question

If you could do something where you were guaranteed not to fail, what would you do?

I recently found out my corporate library has a whole shelf of motivational books and tapes, so I checked out a tape series for my short drives about town. My guess is that this material is mainly for our sales force since sales people are into this sort of thing.

I have read these sort of books before, and, in fact, had one of the grandfathers of this genre, Napoleon Hill, as required reading in business school. These books have a lot of "ra-ra" combined with large doses of psycho-babble, but every one of these books bring up a couple of questions, phrases, or suggestions that hit you between the eyes and really make you think.

I am five tapes into this six tape series by Tony Roberts (no smirking out there) and found a few good nuggets like the question above. The question struck me since I do think we all make compromises and decisions based on what we think we can't do rather than on what we want to do. I'm still thinking on this question since I haven't answered it yet. But the answer isn't what I'm doing now.

Overall, I find that the benefits of these sort of books outweigh the psycho-babble you have to wade through, but others have different experiences, ranging from cult-like devotion to outright rejection. My reaction is the middle ground, taking material from those sections that I find beneficial, but without taking it too seriously.