38. Successful People Take Risks

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.

—W. Gretzky

What do Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Dustin Hoffman, Bill Clinton, Ray Kroc, Dolly Parton, Steve Jobs, Jim Carrey, and Pablo Picasso have in common? In addition to successful careers, they all took risks. If you’re looking for one characteristic that differentiates people who have achieved great success from those who haven’t, you would find that the successful people have taken a risk. They quit a job, they moved to a new city, they started a business, or they ran for political office. They did something that made themselves vulnerable and exposed themselves to failure. I’m not proposing that risk taking guarantees success. Clearly, it doesn’t. What ...

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