You Only Get One Shot!

Was ruminating about Hamilton with my family yesterday.  My wife and I had seen the play in Chicago.  This post isn’t about what happened in New York.  It’s about getting one shot. If you haven’t heard the song, here is a Soundcloud link.

Awhile ago, Eminem had a song about “one chance”. I like Eminem so I decided to throw up a link to it.

You know what that is? Entertainment. Entertainment tries to create tension and drama. It’s not real life. The lines between entertainment and life don’t blur. Real life is different.

In life you get more than one chance. You never know when that chance is going to come, so you have to be prepared for it and you have to perform when it happens. But, it’s rare that you only get one shot. It might be a single shot in a single instance and the stars don’t line up exactly like that again. But, they will line up again and you will get another chance.

The people that don’t get more than one chance aren’t working for that chance. Or, they are waiting for their chance. You have to make your chance happen. Hamilton could have sat down in Nevis waiting. But, instead he found a way to come to America. He was active once he got here.

To get the shot that you want, you have to put yourself in a position to get it. I would have never become a floor trader without quitting my job and taking a menial runner’s job on the floor. I was 24. It was the right time in my life to do it. There was a clear path that I needed to follow that other’s had trod. Runner—>Clerk—>Trader. As long as I didn’t burn through my capital as a trader, I got more than one shot. As a matter of fact, if you approach life as a one shot deal, you will fail.

A tangential way to look at it is to read Mark Suster’s post about getting a job in another city. His advice: Go to that city and live there. Design your own life. Teddy Roosevelt talked about the man in the arena. To get your shot, you have to get your hands dirty. It doesn’t come looking for you.