Breakthrough. Dare to Try. Risk Assessment
Did a self-reflection yesterday night. Looking back, trying to find an answer to my successes and my failures. Realize that:
- Many of my successes were tied to my failures.
- What made failures into small wins are
- The spirit of never-give-up
- The dare-to-try spirit. Trying something I'm uncomfortable with. For example:
- Forming a partnership with someone who I barely know
- Taking seed investor's money when I wasn't sure what's the path lying ahead
- Walking to a girl I admire to ask for a date. This is big for me because I have been a very shy boy back then. If it's not because of this, I won't have a lovely wife today.
- There are also many opportunities that I missed. The moments of "what-if", I can only live now with "what if I dare-to-try" then.
- I missed the opportunities to learn more at school. Always too shy to ask. Too shy to volunteer.
- I missed the opportunities to acquire better engineering skills at Uni for not being curious enough to "Google" answers. Was to bound to "learning only in the classroom" mindset.
- I missed the opportunities to clear many of my doubts for not asking them, those people who has made it.
- I missed the opportunity for an Intel Scholarship. I applied for the Intel scholarship twice. Did badly in the first interview. On the second attempt, I nailed the interview BUT I gave the wrong date of my industrial training (I missed by one semester). I should have admitted that I wasn't sure of the date and get permission to check and revert. I got the industry training plus scholarship offer after I've completed mine at Infineon.
- I missed the opportunities to work with a re-owned VC firm for not replying to their email. I thought we weren't made for them. Only to find out they are looking at us two years later when we met at the pitching session. The moment when he said "I know you. Why you didn't reply to my email?"...
These moments of "trying something uncomfortable" happens very often, I writing this down to remind myself - "Dare to try. Just manage the risk! Don't say 'No' simply because you are not comfortable. Try it!"