I wonder about this advice. Are there enough scary things out there? Would you not spend so much time scaring yourself that the necessary, but non-scary things, would get left behind?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be taking it literally.
Maybe, it means… push yourself – harder. Aim – higher. Dream. Aspire. Create.
Achieve more than you knew you were capable of.
Fail
Be OK with failing, because if you’re not failing, you’re sat in your comfort zone.
So perhaps better advice is – fail every day. Because, as someone said to me recently, only stupid people go home and pat themselves on the back for what they’ve achieved. If you’re smart, you’re looking at what’s still to be done / improved / created.
I linked before to this talk by Randy Pausch’s, it’s his last lecture on Achieving your Childhood Dreams. It’s wonderful – watch it. Anyway, he talks about the dreams that he had as a child, and how he achieved them. Some of them, people said were ridiculous, and some of them seemed impossible – but he went for it anyway. When there were setbacks, he overcame them. I cried, watching this talk, it was amazing, moving, inspirational…
At the end of it, he says that it’s not really about how to achieve your dreams – it’s about how to live your life.
I think he’s right. If I stop dreaming, even about stuff that’s impossible or that people think is stupid. I may as well give up on everything.