Earlier today, I was searching through Linkedin.com articles of my colleagues and ran across a quote which is frequently attributed to Mark Twain and which I’d read years ago– “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” In Russian, we have a more down-to-Earth saying of a similar meaning: “Лучше сделать и жалеть, чем не сделать и жалеть” (translated as: “It’s better to do something and feel sorry afterwards than to never do anything and feel sorry later.”) I noticed that during the recent years, I came to follow this principle in my own career and it’s been helping me to develop a better look on my professional life.

The one who learned to be brave and open to new experiences becomes the winner in every life situation, because even if you fail to take a new step in career, the time and effort invested in doing it, turns into valuable experience, and no one can take it away from you.

Whenever you fall, you can get up to your feet and continue going forward, but those who never moved forward, will remain where they were — sitting and watching how life flows around them and ahead.

I had the most interesting conversation with my students earlier today. We were discussing the pros and contras of starting business right after graduation, and many of them stated that they would rather start some business of their own (if they had some money to invest into it) than go to numerous job interviews and face numerous rejections before they can get their first job. Well, honestly, I did not anticipate that so many of young people would support this approach.

So, I’ve been thinking — isn’t it turning into a tendency? To blow on dice, wish good luck to yourself, and step into the unknown without even having a parachute of experience behind your back.., to take all the risk of failure simply because you would like to avoid the humiliation and disappointment of rejection? Well, it seems this approach is turning into a tendency today. When I asked my students to explain themselves, they responded with this: “We prefer to save time and learn right on the way, by building our own strategy rather than having to spend months looking for job and then having to follow management of a boss who would be just a couple of years older and possibly not a real expert, either.”

Well, that’s a statement that made me stop and think. It seems that this tendency is growing as a sequence of the world’s general tendency to think that everything can/should be done with little effort. Is this happening for good? Is this going to bring us to a dead-end? Let’s discuss this. Please, share what you think.