The One Shot Fallacy

Your one big shot! You’ll never get an oppurtunity like this again! Don’t mess up!

Sound familiar?

As a culture, we are obsessed with the idea that you get one big shot. We watch reality tv shows, hold lottery tickets, and create theatre out of success. We tell kids starting at a young age that failing is bad, and they need to always pass each and every test.

But having “one-shot” is bullshit. It’s a fallacy that our society created to make things seem more important than they are.

In almost every situation in life, you get more than one opportunity. One mess up, or less than perfect performance does not mean that you are a failure for life. In fact, it could mean that you will do even better next time.

Successful people know failure. You’ve heard the stories of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. Entrepreneurs that try and fail often. These are people that have seen failure that would crush most people under the weight of self-doubt. Even Thomas Jefferson lost an election for president of United States.

The difference between normal people and succesful people is that they are not afraid of failure. They embrace it. When a succesful person fails, they ask “why?” so they can improve or avoid something in the future. They make it a learning opportunity. And they internally take responsibility for what happens.

Happy people know failure. They know failure, and they don’t call it failure. They say something didn’t work out, and accept it as it is. Happy people understand that you can always try again, and that very few things in life need to be taken seriously.

In the moment, it’s easy to see something as being your one big shot. When I first was trying to date my now wife, I remember always being caught up in the day-to-day of the relationship. I’d often think that I needed to say the perfect thing, and feared messing up the way I handled a situation. It would be difficult to count number of times that I thought I had lost my opportunity to be with her. Yet, here we are nine years later.

Developing An Abundance Mindset

To live a more simple life, it’s important to develop a mindset of abundance.

This means seeing the world as a place filled with opportunity around every corner. The opposite of a scarcity mindset, which would have you believe your chances are limited. Here are some tips on developing an abundance mindset.

• Appreciate what you already have.
• Actively seek out new opportunities.
• Create opportunity for other people.
• Talk to other people with an abundance mindset.
• Get organized.
• Plan to win overtime.