Go For It!

Go For It

John Paul Derryberry

"I'm guarding him?" I asked my summer camp coach. He shook his head, yes. I said, "You do know he is 6 foot 8, and I'm 6'2."  Coach pulled me to the side,  "Our big man is in foul trouble; you're up, and how about you have the attitude of, sometimes you gotta go for it." It was similar to my dad's advice when I was too shy to talk to certain people. He would say, "Nothing to lose; if they say no, your life stays the same, but what if they say yes?"

It has been written so many times that it's most certainly a cliche. Yet it needs repeating, and it's said in so many different ways; pick one and roll with it:

If not you, who?

Someone's going to do it; might as well be you.

What if it works out?

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

YOLO (You Only Live Once).

And, so on and so on. But if it's cliche, and so many want more, why do so many of us not chase that thing we want? The doubt, the fear, the steep climb it takes to make the image in your head a reality, is a big lift. It's often so big that staring at it makes us double-check the gut punch we will take if we fail. Much like I took to the court all those years ago and looked up at that 6'8' kid and said, "this is such a stupid idea".

Yet sometimes the stupid idea lands, and here is the thing: even if the big picture only lands a little, it opens doors and spurs momentum toward something special, even if we are still determining where we are headed. My goal was to be a big-time public speaker and storyteller. I'm not big-time, but I help many people and have done amazing things in my career because I dared to try to accomplish something big. Part of the problem is that the people who do land the big idea often fail to communicate the ups, downs, turns, and suffering it took to land it. And we dismiss the people who aimed for the big thing and then pivoted, like myself.

As for what occurred in that game, it wasn't some grand moment for me. I didn't dominate the much taller player. But I did just enough to keep us in the game until our star player returned. Coach high-fived me and said, "See, sometimes you have to go for it." He winked, smiled, and said, "Now hopefully, the starters can land this win for us." I sat down, cheered on my teammates, and for a couple of minutes felt 6 feet 8 inches tall. What a feeling, and you only get that feeling when you go for it.