The Courage to be Crazy

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.” — Andre Malraux

Why is it that most people fail to succeed at their most important undertakings in life?

Maybe one big reason is that most people don’t really undertake anything important to begin with. Most people are content to go through life believing that big things are only accomplished by big people. Believing themselves to be little people prevents them from trying anything that seems too big for them.

But there have always been little people throughout History who accomplished big things. Maybe the reason is because they were too little in the first place to understand they weren’t big enough to succeed. They weren’t born with the money needed for Seed Capital. They weren’t born with Family Connections to open all the right doors for them. They didn’t have a prestigious College Education or a string of Letters behind their names.

No, they were simply little people with big ideas and dreams that were even bigger. Apparently they weren’t really smart enough to understand that they weren’t smart enough to do anything important.

So they just went out and did it.

The one thing these important little people have that the unimportant little people don’t have is the determination to work at the big things. While most people dream, the very few act.

“I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.” — Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was one of the most important and prolific inventors in history. He began with no money and less than a 6th grade education. But Edison didn’t give up on his dreams until they became physical realities. By his own account, Edison failed 10,000 times to get his electric light bulb to work. What kind of crazy person fails 10,000 times and then tries again?

They say that there is a fine line between genius and insanity. Maybe for little people to be successful in life, they must be a little bit crazy. When friends and family tell you to give up, they think you are crazy when you keep at it. Then they rub it in your face with, “I told you so,” when you fail.

“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” — Napoleon Hill

We have all heard the story about Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a failure all his life until one day he became President. Today, of course, little people don’t become President unless they have a lot of big people’s money backing them.

If you are a little person with crazy big dreams, there’s hope. With careful planning and hard work you can rise above the sheep, if you stick with it long enough.

That really is the key, isn’t it, the courage to be crazy for as long as it takes to succeed.

So next time your efforts meet with failure, all you need to do is be crazy for just one more day as you try just one more time. Doing that over and over again is how big things happen to little people.