Had another session with Susan today. It was a short one. She said today she wanted to impress one thing on me — that it’s better to apologise later than to ask permission first. It takes a bit of courage, sticking your neck out, but I can see that maybe that’s what successful people do. I can see her point, of course. If you ask and get told, ‘no’, that’s pretty much the end of it, whereas if you act without asking, you may actually achieve something new and worthwhile. Or fall flat on your face. Hence the requirement for courage.
Susan says that that the thing about needing courage decreases if you’re persistent, not because you acquire courage, but because you come to believe that what you are doing is actually in your interest, the sky doesn’t fall in, people don’t like you any less, and so the courage you thought was required isn’t. You find yourself doing what you are expecting will lead to a good result, so why would that need courage? I suppose it’s more accurate to say you need courage to do something like that the first few times.
Susan finished our brief chat by emphasising that in acting according to your own decisions, it’s important to show good judgement. When I asked her how to do that, she replied that she couldn’t really help me there. She said good judgement is like grace. You either have it or you don’t. Successful people nearly always have good judgement, at least in the area in which they’re successful. OK, good to know, but of limited use to me.