the answer was always hardwork, but im afraid
A story that recently resurfaced up in my head. Two photographers couldn't agree on who could take the best photo and decided to settle the score by taking part in a photography competition in a month's time. The first photographer woke up each day and took 1 shot, the one he deemed perfect, and repeated it for the following days. The second photographer on the other hand, took about four hundred frames per day. Most were terrible, but of the four hundred maybe one or if he was lucky two were considered passable.
By the end of the month when it was time to submit the photos, the first photographer took his thirty photographs and laid them out on his desk and chose the 10 best one, the second photographer took his twelve thousand photographs and took his time to select his best 10. Comparing both submission, the first photographer's photos looked flawless and pristine, but compared to the second photographer's photo, the first seemed to lack life.
In the end, the second photographer won most of the categories in the photography competition. When the result came, the first photographer was upset, he said:
"You won this time because you were in the right place and time, if I had the same opportunity, I would have won too!"
"That's true, but why didn't you?"
Stunned, the first photographer finally understood that it cost nothing to take another shot.
Well, to be honest, I couldn't find the actual source of this story and I'm certain that I did not dream this up. Regardless, I wanted to share this story because I recently had this conversation with a friend, he said that if he were to have no choice but to do marketing (the complete opposite of what he is doing now), he would find it difficult at first, but he has confidence he will succeed. But if he had the option of doing everything, he would stay in place.
I resonated with what he said, I often think about the "regret" of walking the path not chosen, and the idea of choosing is so foreign to me that I stop moving at all. And from the first story you could tell that it completely makes sense that if you repeatedly do something, you will get better at it. And paradoxically the longer I wait to experience this "regret", the more I will actually feel regret.
In the moment it is clear, I just have to choose a path and walk it.