Image credit: Courtesy of Carla Ondrasik

If you want to build a business, there’s one word you need to eliminate from your vocabulary: It’s the word try.

Sometimes, we aren’t even given the option to try. For instance, when airlines issue a boarding pass, the message isn’t “try to be at the gate by 9:30 because we’d like to try taking off by 10:00!” Similarly, when the utility company sends a bill, the payment stub doesn’t say, “Please try to pay so we can attempt to keep your lights on.” When your car’s fuel tank is empty, the dashboard doesn’t gently suggest, “Hey, please try and fill me up when you can, thanks!” Instead, it displays a gas pump icon, sounds alarms, and might even start blinking. It’s essentially warning, “I’m low on fuel and will stall if you don’t refuel now!”

Setting the humor aside, there’s a reason “trying” isn’t an option in such scenarios. For many of us, these are mandatory events with significant consequences if not followed through. Pay your bills or face the cessation of services, legal ramifications, harm to credit ratings, or strained relationships with cohabitants. Arriving at the airport on time is critical to avoid missing your flight, which can lead to costly rescheduling or missing important events like a friend’s wedding. When trying isn’t an option, we must act decisively.

Deep down, we recognize that trying isn’t the ideal choice when tasks need completion. Entrepreneurs understand this, as do major corporations. They aim for success and know that a half-hearted approach is futile. By allowing the option to try, they invite potential failure and its consequences. Thus, they eliminate any possibility of failure by removing the chance to merely try.

For instance, airlines can’t function if passengers merely try to arrive on time, and flights depart only once everyone shows up. With thousands of flights daily, strict schedules are essential for efficiency and safety. Employers don’t accept employees merely trying to show up and work. Employees are expected to work their designated hours and fulfill their responsibilities.

Can you adopt a business mindset? If you are the CEO, the Leader, the Captain of your own life—which, indeed, you are!—wouldn’t it be wiser to remove the option to try?

When We Don’t Allow for Trying

Would you try or would you act? Imagine there’s a suitcase with five million dollars, tax-free, in a hotel room across the country. It’s yours with no strings attached if you retrieve it within 12 hours, free to spend, save, or share. Sounds like a great opportunity, right?

So, tell me: would you try to get the money? As in, “Oh, I’ll see if I can try to make that happen,” or “I’ll try to find a babysitter for the kids,” or “I’ll try to get permission to take the day off of work.” In other words, would you drag your feet over this opportunity, or would you go get that money?!

I’m betting you’d have a private jet booked before you could finish reading the next sentence. There would be no trying to get that cashola. The only question in your mind would be whether to sip celebratory champagne or 50-year-old scotch as a newly minted millionaire while you soar through the clouds on your way home.

Sure, this is an outrageous example that would likely never happen… but can you for a minute connect to the inherent wisdom of your gut reaction? There was no trying in this scenario, just pure doing. Knowing when to do is deep in our subconscious mind. We have an awareness that doing is mandatory in some cases.

But what about most cases? What if five million dollars isn’t on the line, but your health or family is. What then? Can you instead tap into your inner knowledge, where deep down inside you know that trying allows for failure and is a weakened half-hearted effort and that doing allows for success?

Here are some questions to ponder:

• Would you hire the surgeon who promises to “try and remember which leg to amputate?”

• Would you hire a skydive instructor that pledges to “try and remember the best time to pull the rip cord” on your first skydive ever?

• Would you send your child down the driveway on their first solo drive (in your car) suggesting that they, “try to drive safely, try not to speed, and try to stop at all of the stop signs”?

Personally, as a mother and a businesswoman, I find that when I eliminate the option to try with my kids or associates, everything seems to run much smoother. Chores get completed more often than not, meetings run on time, and I know I can count on the people in my life to show up for me, to be accountable, and not have to be subjected to excuses or blame when the work doesn’t get done.

So, let me ask you, When the stakes are high enough and you don’t allow for trying, why do you welcome it in other parts of your life? Will you continue to try and lose weight, try and quit smoking, try and be a better parent or try and have a healthy relationship? I fully realize that some goals or opportunities may not feel as sexy as the gift of five million dollars in tax-free cash (tax free!) that I mentioned earlier, but don’t underestimate how rich you’ll feel when you finally achieve the happiness you’re after. Your hopes and dreams matter, and they deserve every whole-hearted effort you can throw at them.

This essay is adapted from Stop Trying! The Life Transforming Power of Trying Less and Doing More by Carla Ondrasik