Good Things come to those that go for it.

By Bob Cox

There’s a lot of truth and wisdom to the old saying, “Good things come to those that wait”. Patience is an admirable character trait that can help you go far in life. On the other hand, it can be easy to confuse patience with inertia, something I did for far too many years.

From the time I scooted out of my last diaper, I observed a valuable lesson. While attending the prestigious preschool of hard knocks, I noticed that the students who tended to earn the highest praise were the ones that sat quietly at their desks while the little brats that I loved hanging out with tended to be criticized for being loud and disruptive. Since I preferred praise over punishment and after one too many trips to the principal’s office, I decided to turn the inner fire down until it barely flickered like a pilot light.

For the next several years, I sleepwalked through life by choosing behaviors that would be acceptable to those around me instead of being true and authentic. My thin skinned intolerance for negative feedback made me a prisoner of praise and approval from others and I was too apathetic to realize just how miserable I was. Life was no longer exciting. It was something to be endured.

Everything changed a month after my 30^th birthday. I took a leap of faith by not pursuing a safe career path that offered a guaranteed salary and little potential satisfaction. Instead, I chose the higher risk, higher reward option of a straight commission career in outside advertising sales. It would be one of the best decisions of my life. For the first time in nearly two decades, I felt alive and excited!

If you’re looking for a fresh and clever analogy to get the point across, I’m sorry to disappoint you because this is the best one I could come up with: I chose to hop off the train of discontentment and ride the roller coaster of unpredictability. Sure, I’ve experienced a lot of highs and lows but when you follow your hearts desires, those lows really aren’t as bad as you might fear.

If you truly want to experience the thrill of life, you have to be willing to accept greater risks. The rewards of a fulfilling and meaningful life do not always come easily and they’re certainly not free. So take all the time you need to find what it is you’re truly passionate about and then go for it. The other option is to go through life playing it safe and then wind up on your death bed full of regrets. By the way, who would choose to buy a death bed? I’ll take my chances on the Niagra Adjustable any day!

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing - Helen Keller