Just Keep Showing Up and Saying Yes

That is the advice of experts to young people. If you want to succeed you don’t get there all at once. You have to keep trying, but if you don’t start somewhere you never reach your goal.

This advice is not just for young people. You are never too old to forge a new path. I am a perfect example. I have had many careers. Most were not planned. None were studied for. Almost all of them I was not qualified for when I started… but I started and kept showing up.

My advice is if you can dream it, you can do it. If someone asks you to do something, try it. This is how I started catering. Someone needed food. I said I could do it. And I did. For ten years!

When Dan Shannon called me from Durham Magazine and asked me to come meet him, I did. I was not looking for a job. He did not know he was going to offer me a job when he met me. He never asked me for a writing sample, but somehow he gave me a job as the community and events editor. And so, with no experience, I suddenly worked at a magazine. For ten years!

For the last 28 years I have been a mah Jongg teacher. When students asked me to teach them more advanced mah Jongg, there was no such thing. I created a strategy class that eventually became Beyond Beginner, a traded marked class that teaches not just strategy but a systematic way of improving your mah Jongg skills. There was no model, but I just said Yes and figured it out.

Saying Yes first, is the key. Not being afraid to try new things and listen to your gut when someone asks you to do something you have never tried is the most important trait I can share. You are never successful until you have tried, failed, learned, improved and kept at it.

Say yes to new things and new people. You never know where that yes will take you. The journey is exciting, enjoy it’s random path and keep moving forward.