The difference between courageous and crazy is often

The difference between courageous and crazy is often

The difference between
courageous and crazy is often
Bởi:
Joe Tye
“Unless you are willing to take risks, you will suffer paralyzing inhibitions, and you
will never do what you are capable of doing. Mistakes – missteps – are necessary for
actualizing your vision, and necessary steps toward success.”
Warren Bennis: On Becoming a Leader
I had my nose broken twice when I was in high school. The first time was when the
school bully – who was quite a bit bigger and stronger than me – challenged me to a
fight. When we got to the alley after school, there was already a crowd waiting for the
spectacle – including some of the prettiest girls in the school. I had psyched myself up
– it was going to be Rocky versus Apollo Creed, the Wild Hogs taking on the outlaw
motorcycle gang. Of course scenes like that usually only happen in the movies. I never
saw the hard straight right that connected with the tip of my nose, but was later told that
it made a memorable sound.
Two years later I was working out at the gym of the military base where my Dad was
stationed. I’d gotten pretty good at working the speed bag. If you’re not familiar with
how such things work, you hit them but they don’t hit back. I’d gotten sufficiently
proficient that I thought I was ready for something that would. I should have known it
was a mistake when the midshipman I entered the ring with was wearing real boxing
shorts instead of the high school issue grey gym shorts I had on. This time it was a stiff
left jab that did the trick on my nose. (A left jab! Can you imagine the humiliation of
being knocked out by a left jab? It was only later than I learned my “sparring partner”
was the base welterweight boxing champ that year.)
Before each fight I had people comment on how courageous I was, but in retrospect I
was crazy to have accepted either challenge (the word stupid also comes to mind).
After graduation from the Stanford business school in 1985, most of my classmates
when on to lucrative careers in business, consulting, and banking. With no money in

the bank and a mountain of debt, I started a nonprofit organization called STAT (Stop
Teenage Addiction to Tobacco) to take on the white collar drug pusher of Philip Morris
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The difference between courageous and crazy is often

and RJ Reynolds. It was a lost cause, and everyone thought I was crazy for doing it
(including me). But, as Jimmy Stewart memorably said in the movie Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington, lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.
Over the next ten years, STAT made important contributions to preventing the illegal
sale of tobacco to minors and outlawing cigarette vending machines, and to the demise
of the Marlboro Man and Camel Joe and to surreptitious paid cigarette advertising in
movies made for kids.
I am now proud to have been one of a small group of men and women who took on a
lost cause and brought about one of the most profound societal changes in the history of
this country – the eradication of toxic cigarette smoke from public places and outlawing
of the tobacco industry’s most egregious efforts to recruit children to be their next
generation of addicted customers.
The Difference between Crazy and Courageous
Anyone who has ever quit a day job to start their own business has heard the word
“crazy” applied to their decision. You often hear the figure that 8 of every 10 new
businesses fail within five years. Even if that figure were accurate (it’s not), it’s not true.
Businesses do not fail, owners quit. The difference between crazy and courageous is
often evident only in retrospect. Win the fight and you were courageous, lose the fight
and you were crazy. Close the doors of your new business and you were crazy to have
quit the day job.
Make one more call, work one more late night, do whatever it takes to make I through
one more day so you can try again tomorrow, endure one more sleepless night worried
about how you will survive what marketing guru Seth Godin calls “the dip” in his book

of that name, and someday they will remark on your courage. Courage isn’t stepping
through the ropes into the ring so much as it is getting back up after you’ve been
knocked down. Courage is working your way through the slump, and finding a way over
or through the brick wall if you can’t smash through it.

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