توضیحات ای جی

BEC : Value -AJ

Hey, this is AJ. Welcome to my commentary. I want to talk more about this idea of safe is risky. It’s one of my favorite topics. I talk to my Effortless English VIP members about this subject all the time and the reason is because it’s so important. Safe is risky. That is what’s called a paradox, which means it’s a seeming contradiction. It seems like it’s saying two opposite things and that they both can’t be true, because the definition of ‘safe’ is that you’re safe. You’re secure. That it’s not risky. We’re saying safe is risky, however. So what does that mean? What it means is this, is that it’s an illusion. Safety is an illusion. That when you think of safety in the short term you’re going to make decisions that will probably cause you to blend in, that will cause you to follow the rules, not to stand out. That’s what most people do because they think it’s safe. They think that that’s the safer thing to do. Often in the short term that is the safer thing to do. It feels like you avoid criticism that way.

You avoid failures that way. You avoid making mistakes that way.

When you play it safe --you just do things the way they have always been done --then you’re not likely to get an unexpected result. The good part of that is that you’re probably not going to get a negative result that you didn’t expect. So that’s why people play it safe. That’s why most people in most situations in life and certainly in business will just do the safe thing. They’ll do the thing that everybody else is doing. They’ll follow the procedures. They’ll follow the policy manual. They’re not going to take a risk.

So in the short term yes, that can be more safe. You’ll avoid some displeasure, mistakes, criticism, etc.; however, in the long term that mindset - that attitude - is actually more risky. It’s more dangerous because in the long term when you behave in this way the problem is that you become like everyone else. You do things exactly the way everyone else does them. You appear just like everybody else. You act like everybody else. Because you don’t stand out it means that it’s very easy to replace you.

‘They’, meaning the company, can easily get rid of you. If you start making a little too much money they can just get rid of you, cut you and replace you with somebody they can pay less money to who has the same skills and who will also just play it safe and do the same thing.

You become a commodity, in other words. You’re just another worker who does your job the same as most every other worker who does your job. So when it’s time for the company to cut costs and they always do, at some point every company decides they need to cut costs, meaning cut people, if you’re just the same as everyone else it’s highly likely you will be one of the people that gets cut. If not this time then next time, eventually it can happen to you.

Then what happens? Then you’re out and you’re looking for a job and so are a lot of other people. If you’re just the same as they are and just the same as everyone else then guess what? You have a very tough time getting another job. It’s tough. It’s very tough when you’re playing it safe.

So you can see that by playing it safe you’re actually risking your long-term career.

You’re making your situation more dangerous in the long term. This is why, in general, playing it safe is such a dangerous thing to do and why it’s kind of seductive in a way.

Meaning it seems like the thing to do. Emotionally it feels like yeah, playing it safe, that’s the smart thing to do, but in fact it’s not. So let’s look at things in a more positive way.

When you take risks, when you try new things, when you do new things in your job, in your career, there are a few possible things that might happen. Number one, you might have a big success, an innovation that gets great results and you get a lot of positive attention from your boss, from coworkers, from customers, etc. That will push your career forward. That’s fantastic.

Another thing that may happen is that nothing happens much at all. So you may try to do something that you think is an interesting innovation, you take a risk and the result is just so-so. Nobody really notices. So, you know, that’s not so scary. That’s not so bad.

You learned something from that process though. You learned that okay, I tried this and the result was so-so, so let’s move forward and try something else.

Then finally, you may try something that’s a little bit risky or different and you get a result that’s not good, that’s unexpected or that is negative in some way and this might get you negative attention. Your boss might not be happy. He might get mad or she might get angry and yell at you. Your coworkers might get upset. This is the result that everybody fears and imagines and that’s why they avoid risks.

However, these kinds of mistakes are actually wonderful ways of learning. This is how you really learn, by taking a risk, trying something and then it fails. Then you analyze the failure. You’re like why did it fail? What did I get wrong? By analyzing that failure you learn new things and then instead of playing it safe you say well, what should I try next and you try another risk. You take another risk. You try another innovation.

Once again, that innovation will produce a success or something that’s just so-so or another failure. Whatever happens, you’ll learn from that. You grow and then you go forward again. This is the way to learn and get better and better and better. Eventually you will have a success and while you’re having all these failures you are learning a lot.

You’re not learning from a book. You’re not learning by copying other people. You’re learning from direct experience. You’re leaning from experimenting. You’re learning from trying new things in the real world.

So you’re learning about whatever you’re trying to do. More importantly, much more importantly, you’re learning to take risks. You’re learning to not be afraid of risk taking.

You’re learning to be more bold. Each time you do this you get a little stronger and a little stronger and a little stronger and then when you have a success finally, that really gives you a big jump in confidence and makes you even more bold and more strong and more creative and more innovative. That process continues and gets stronger and stronger and stronger. That’s how you build an amazing career.

I’ll be honest with you, however, in the beginning it’s scary and in the beginning it can be a bit painful. When in the beginning you don’t know much and you’re making mistakes and you’re getting results that aren’t great and maybe other people are not happy with you because of that. They just want you to do things the normal way like everyone has always done them. Maybe you break a few rules and procedures and then your boss gets really angry. You may even lose your job, which is really scary to a lot of people, but it shouldn’t scare you because this is the process of mastery.

So you really have two choices in your career. You can be mediocre. You can be the same as everyone else. You can play it safe and be expendable, meaning easy to get rid of or you can take changes. You can have some scary moments in the beginning.

You can have some unpleasant failures. I don’t like that word ‘failure’, but you can have some unpleasant results. You can keep learning though, learning, learning, learning, growing, growing, growing and then getting more and more bold and getting more and more innovative and then you will really stand out. Then you will be something special.

You’ll be special in your knowledge because you’ve learned through experience not just from books, not just doing what everyone else says to do, but through direct experience and experimentation. That will make you very unique. The other thing that will make you unique and special is that you will develop your own personality. You’ll develop a bold, stronger, more confidence personality by taking risks. In other words, you will start to become more and more like a leader. You’ll think more and more like a leader. You’ll have the emotions of a leader because leaders have to take risks. Leaders have to make tough decisions. You’re training yourself to do this.

This is exactly the process I followed in my own career. Most people don’t think of English teachers as having much of a career. Most English teachers just do the same thing. They blend in. They do the same as everybody else. They just use the same textbooks, whatever textbooks they’re given by their school. They teach the same basic activities. You know their personalities might be a little different, but basically the same approach and they typically get paid about the same amount of money. A few, very, very few English teachers might become like the head of their department at some school and get a little bit more money, but that’s usually it. That’s usually the end of the career path for English teachers.

I took a much different path. I constantly took risks, took risks. I constantly tried to be innovative and try new approached, new methods in my classes and, especially in the beginning, lots and lots of them failed. They failed meaning my students hated then.

They failed meaning I didn’t get good results. The failed meaning that my bosses hated what I was doing and got angry because I wasn’t following the standard curriculum, the standard textbooks.

So I had a lot of difficulty and unpleasant things to deal with because I was doing this, but I kept going anyway because I knew I wanted to be different. I knew I wanted to get not just so-so results from my students, but fantastic results and so I developed my methods over time and got more and more and more innovative. I also learned to be more and more and more bold and that led me to finally start my own company and to become an entrepreneur, something that most English teachers don’t do. Then even as an entrepreneur and a businessperson I kept taking risks and trying to grow and I’m still doing it now. It’s a process that never ends, but it will give you much, much, much bigger rewards.

So again, to summarize, safe is risky. Someone else said it. Well, it’s a famous quote and I can’t remember who said it right now, but future favors the bold. It means people who are bold tend to be more lucky, right? Of course, it’s not really luck. It means that confidence and boldness pay better rewards. They give better rewards in the long term.

Good luck to you. Be strong and try to be more bold, more strong, take more risks, learn faster. Fail faster, succeed sooner. I think that was a Tom Peters quote. I like it. So fail and take risks more in the beginning, meaning you’ll learn faster, faster, faster, which means, ultimately, you will have a big success sooner.

See you again next time. Bye-bye.

The End.