PILLAR 17

Banishing Your Inner Try-Baby

Now that you are being honest with yourself, now that you are ready to take execution to the next level, I want to talk seriously about “try-babies.” People who justify their failures with excuses—“I tried! I tried my best!”—will never see the success they want. Today is the first day that the word try is now banished from your vocabulary forever. There is no value in that word. It does nothing for you. You are either doing something, or you are not doing something. “Trying” is useless. As Yoda said, “Do or do not. There is no try.” If you want to participate in your own rescue, you have to actually do so.

Going forward, replace “try” with “do my best.” You can lie to yourself when you say “try,” but you know in your heart what your best is. You also know what it isn’t. You will never adapt and change without a moral connection. You know that it is never OK morally to lie to yourself. Even if you don’t do your best, you can at least accept the fact that there was more you could have done. Apply that lesson to next time. Shrugging and saying, “Well, I tried” will never get you anywhere.

Right after I graduated from high school, I was accepted into a two-year collegiate acting program. Every day, I would wake up and drive an hour from Fort Worth to Dallas in the worst traffic imaginable. But I did it every morning because I wanted to be an actor. I applied. I auditioned. I found a way to pay for it. This school was my decision. That was something that I subscribed to, so it was my job to participate in making it happen, no matter the cost.

I was 19 years old when I was making this drive, and it wasn’t in a BMW convertible, I can tell you that. It was my old beat-up 1988 Hyundai that I had bought myself my senior year in high school. My car leaked oil nonstop, so every 20 miles or so, I had to pull over, pop the hood, and pour oil into the car to keep it going. On the morning of a particularly important showcase, my car was leaking oil as usual. Drip, drip, drip. And just as it had every other morning, my oil light indicated low oil. But this time was different. I pulled over, and as I rushed to fill up the oil, I managed to spill a little on the overheated engine. Suddenly, the engine went up in flames. As quickly as I could, I ran to the back of the car, popped the trunk back open, and pulled out a blanket. I used the blanket to put out the fire, got back into the car, and drove the rest of the way to school for the showcase.

Why did I go to such lengths—especially dangerous ones—to get to school? I did it because I was the one who said I wanted to be an actor. I was the one who said I wanted to go to this school and complete this program. I was participating in what I said I wanted to do. Why didn’t I just call and say, “My car is on fire on the side of the road. I can’t come in today”? (Because you really don’t get a better excuse than that.) Who wouldn’t have given me a free pass? Me. I wouldn’t have bought it. I knew that I could still go forward, so I did.

Take a break from reading for a minute, and pick up a pencil. Hold it up in the air. Now try to drop it. What happened? If the pencil fell, how can you say you tried to drop it? You dropped it. You did it. There was no “trying” to drop the pencil. You were either holding it, or it was on the floor or wherever it landed. There was nothing in between. You see, the word try has absolutely no meaning.

I’ve now trained myself to cringe at the word try. It doesn’t have a tangible definition. Saying you will “try” is just a preemptive excuse for potential failure. My kids even correct me when I say the word try—and they correct themselves. I urge you to take this even one step further. If you simply take the word out of your vocabulary, you aren’t necessarily ridding yourself of that mindset. You have to hold yourself accountable in the now by making sure that when you put effort into something, you can honestly say you did your best or you can own up to the fact that you didn’t. If you aren’t ready to stop being a try-baby, then you aren’t ready to be a first-generation millionaire. It’s that simple.

Most of us practice our excuses so much that we buy our own explanations, even if they aren’t honest. You will never be a millionaire if you buy your own excuse for giving up. I don’t want you to try to finish this book and all the assignments. I want you to do it. I want to hear about your massive successes, not about how you tried to make it happen and failed. Eliminate the word try from your vocabulary. You can’t have execution and excuses at the exact same time. The word try is a premeditated excuse for a future failure. Try-baby? Or do-baby? Mastering the mindset and becoming a first-generation millionaire is reserved for those who do, not for those who try.

ACTION STEP

Implement something that you said you were going to try to do. Start that book on your bedside table, call that dream mentor, create a new way of doing things in your office. Write down what you tried to do. Then execute it. Implement something that you have been trying to do. Share it with your community.

Go from being an Instigator to a Participator in the very thing you have been talking about for a long time. Don’t come back to the book until it is finished.

PILLAR 17