Whatever it is you think you have, you have nothing to lose.

Everybody has a story.

I was thinking recently about how entrepreneurship consists of three components:

1. Coming up with an idea first, and then gaining an understanding of what’s going on in the market.
2. Having some form of leadership to be able to take that idea and talk people into it.
3. Understanding the risk: Is it going to work?

Oftentimes people get confused in the risk, though. They are terrified of losing.  Losing has a more profound effect than winning, no matter what.

If you are reading this you can relate to being in a relationship where you were dumped. We’ve all had a girlfriend or boyfriend leave us. It’s devastating and it takes you awhile to pick up the pieces. But when you think about it – it’s happened repeatedly and you always learn from it.

Like me for example, before I got married, I think I was dumped about three or four times over the course of my dating life, but I probably had 50 successful relationships.  Would you believe I was completely devastated over those 3 or 4 bad relationships and when I thought about why I didn’t want to get into a more serious relationship, I realized it was because there was always that break-up that caused me not to want to trust somebody or get involved in something new.  I was always devastated, but looking back, I realize there was always something to learn.  We need to focus on the few good relationships we had rather than the bad.

Another example is when you get fired from a job. You may have had 10 jobs that go great (even though I always cringe when I see more than a few jobs on a resume in a short period of time), but then there’s that one job where the boss of the company screwed you and now you have this chip on your shoulder thinking, “Everybody’s going to screw me.”

Sometimes when you lose it has a more profound effect on you, in a negative way, than you should let it. Don’t let losing get in the way of you getting after it and taking the final steps toward success.

What do you really have to lose other than your ego? Your ego gets a lot more bruised when you lose than it does get built up when you win.

Understand that there are times when you are going to lose, but don’t let the longstanding effects of losing get in the way of what you need to accomplish to be successful and happy.

What is the most devastating break-up or bad situation that’s happened to you?

Do you carry that forward when you get into a new relationship every time or do you put that behind you?