I am a person of action – 3rd of 7 decisions

Ok, we have taken responsibility and gathered wisdom. The 3rd thing we have to do is act.

I used to work with a guy named Bill. He was not someone I admired very much. He was somewhat manipulative and had a strained relationship with the truth. There was one thing that he used to say to me that would rile me up.

He said frequently ‘do something, even if it’s wrong!’.

I was working as a young engineer back then and it just seemed like a bad idea to do something wrong. I wanted to stop and observe, think and then act. He was more about ‘ready, fire, aim’.

As I look back on it I can see his point if the part I wanted to do took too long. The ‘stop’ phase could be a long time on occasion while I observed. If the result of a wrong action would not have been damaging to the project it might have been ok to keep moving.

Here is the next clip of Andy Andrews telling about Joshua Chamberlain at Gettysburg. Great story about ‘do something’.

I am sure what Joshua was doing was his last choice. To charge when he was out of ammo into a superior force would seem like a bad idea at the time but it turned out right. The Confederate forces surrendered and Gettysburg was a Union victory that many say was the turning point of the war.

Had the Union lost at that point the South would likely have won and we would have been a much different nation. We would likely looked a lot more like Europe. At least the North, South and West but more likely would have fractured into 9-13 nations.

So what? Some think that would have been better than what we have now. Maybe but the reality is that there would have been no one big enough or strong enough to withstand Nazi Germany and Japan in WWII 75 years later. No one big enough to stop them in their quest to take over the world. As for me, if I think about it that way I am really glad Joshua Chamberlain ‘did something’ even if it looked foolish at the time.

Thanks for listening,

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Jerry Robertson | Associate Broker | Certified Investor Agent Specialist (CIAS)

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