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All in at 100 mph

My mom told me a story of when I was a kid beginning swimming lessons, all of the kids would be in the pool while I sat outside of the pool being strongly encouraged to jump in. When I did finally get in, I was an ok swimmer and hung with the other kids, but it didn't really captivate me.
Another story is when I got to high school, I had just transferred from another high school where I was establishing my popularity. I was so mad at my parents for making me transfer that it was probably one of those periods for my parents where it sucked having a teenage boy. The encouraged me to run for student body president and I really didn't want to. But I did it anyway and won.
So based on those two stories, I have a strong tendency not to jump into something with both feet because of fear of failure (or just not wanting to do it). But if/when I do actually do it, I'm one of the lucky ones to either hang tough of excel.
Those two stories lead me to this. I believe that in order to progress in the management consulting business you have to go 100 mph and put all of your chips on the table. Once you make that decision, then there is no turning back until you simply run out of energy or someones makes a decision about you that makes you hit the brakes.
As I think about the future and what my life would be 15 years from now, I think that I'm still that kid sitting on the edge of the pool being encouraged by his parents to jump in. Let's hope that I really can swim.

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