Wayne Gretsky Wants You To Take Shots

As you may know, I live in Canada where our national sport is ice hockey. This of course was quite evident during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver this year. If you ask any long time hockey fan who he or she would regard as the greatest hockey player ever, there's a very good chance that you will hear Wayne Gretsky as the top pick.

Wayne Gretsky once made a very interesting quote as follows.

"You'll always miss 100% of the shots you don't take"

Of course, he was referring to hockey where in order for players to score, they must always at least try to shoot the puck towards the goal (the puck is the hockey equivalent to ball for my international readers who are not familiar with this sport). If they never try shooting, there's zero chance of ever scoring.

This quote can be applied off the ice to other parts of life as well. Let's take a look at some scenarios. Let's say you always wanted to network or do business with individuals or companies from a certain type of group but never had the experience. If the lack of experience is holding you back from even making any approaches to this new group, you will probably never accomplish the goal of making new connections with them.

The end result of never making new connections with this group will be never ever having them as potential friends or customers, all because you were reluctant to make the initial moves.

You could have been reluctant to 'take the shots' because you were too shy or not feeling confident about unfamiliar territories that might have a high rate of failure. You basically wanted to avoid failure. The end result is the same regardless of the reasons though - no goals scored!

However, if you approach this knowing that sometimes you will miss the goal and accept this fact without stopping you from taking more shots, then you will eventually score. If any of the shots you take do not result in something that is favorable to you and you take them as learning situations to help you improve your future shots, you will benefit greatly.

This is the same in dating. As you can imagine if you never take chances with the people of your desires, you will always end up alone. I'm sure the married folks are nodding in agreement here. Sure, you might strike out but if you keep trying over time and learn from your misses, you will eventually have the company of that man or woman of your dreams. It might not be the original person targeted but he or she will be a good substitute!

So as Wayne Gretsky suggests, keep shooting. Sure, you might miss a lot of the shots but if you don't take any, you will certainly miss out on all opportunities in life.