Reflection: ‘Go Big Or Go Home’ is one of the most harmful pieces of advice floating around the ether sphere.

It implies that the ONLY way to live your life is to bet it all on a roll of the dice – to bungee jump off the highest cliff – to risk and risk and risk again!

It also implies that if you don’t live with this maxim as your guide, you should hang your head, stick your tail between your legs, and cower shame-facedly in hiding at home.

Bushwa!

Yes, there may well be times to go big. Challenges stretch us and build our confidence. We start to see ourselves as the kind of person who attempts ‘that’ – whatever ‘that’ may be for us.

Still, there is every bit as much value in the world of small. Small pleasures, small triumphs, small beauties, and small moments are very big deals. These are times when you realize that who you are and what you have are just fine – thank you very much,

What’s more, there is nothing wrong with going home. Hopefully, home is a safe place where you can feel at ease, let down your guard, discard your mask, lick a wound, dream a dream, and savour life so far.

‘Go Big Or Go Home’ advice may say more about the aspirations or anxieties of the person who delivers it than it does about the intended recipient. A double dog dare challenge can signal angst about an advisor’s own sense of enoughness and may have nothing much to do with you or me at all.

Action: Decisions about scale and direction are for each of us to make for ourselves. We all are free to choose.

Many successful and satisfying shifts begin with baby steps not giant leaps. So, if that’s your preferred approach in a given situation, then go ahead and own it, don’t let someone else bemoan it!

Quotes Of The Week: Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. – Erica Jong

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. – Cicero

Here are a couple of gems on advice from good old Author Unknown:

• We hate to have some people give us advice because we know how badly they need it themselves.
• The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others.

Readers Write: In response to the most recent e-zine, Are You Ready To Take A Chance, Pause reader LL writes: “I’m in the middle of a hard process of shining my own light without being under anybody’s umbrella and this spoke to me… again! Life is sending us what we need to see when we are ready!”