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Came across this lovely quote from Marilyn Monroe today . Context of most of these quotes are usually hard, but we will try and tune it in the line of personality development.

It is of course quite a catchy line – it is better to be absolutely ridiculous. I would like to look at this in the context of decision making in the lens of a conservative approach.

Recently, we discussed about being different – it takes nothing to join the crowd but everything to stand alone . It does show a few parallels to this quote analysis today. The three facets I would like to touch upon are: Comfort Zone, Leaps in decision making and tackling risks.  

1. Being absolutely ridiculous

I suppose all we have in front of us is a wide opportunity to pursue something we’d like and work towards it. Of course, there are always risks, challenges and roadblocks in our way. One of the biggest risk is about decision making. The risks are compounded when we move in new and untouched directions.

Naturally most of these goals would be coined extravagant or absolutely ridiculous. The one respite I can think of is – not everyone around us can see the path or journey we want to take. To be honest, they don’t even see the commitment and motivation to achieve the results we desire. So for an external eye, most goals and extravagant aspirations can easily appear absolutely ridiculous.

It will also be coined as impossible and risky. It has been a similar sort of response all through my entrepreneurship journey and the coinage – extravagant or ridiculous has been all too familiar.

But that’s not something which drives all our decision making – does it? It takes a lot of our internal conviction and strength to take strides in the path we wish to pursue.

2. Being absolutely boring

For me, I would like to look at this as a path often traced. I mean no disrespect to a common path or journey which has predictable results. It is the known path for a reason and quite honestly, I do know a fair amount of people who have been extremely successful in this. It takes a fool or perhaps even a jealous person to dismiss the journey others have taken. We must definitely be able to respect the well traversed path albeit it might sound absolutely boring!

But then again, I would like to move the focus back to what we gain from the unknown path and journeys. For me, it is more about moving out of a comfort zone. The comfort zone is called so for a reaosn, it does limit us in the amount of growth or stretch we can achieve. There is often a great set of results outside of these comfort zone which we will never realise unless we take the decision to step out.

The question is never easy to answer – should I move out of my comfort zone? It comes down to how prepared we are and how prepared we want to get. This recalls a piece which I had written sometime back about coming out of the comfort zone.

3. Balancing act

As with most important things, it is mostly about the balancing act between the comfort zone and discomfort. We know that a lever of excitement lies outside the comfort zone. There is a world of adventure which lures us to be absolutely ridiculous.

Playing Safe: At the same time, there is part of us which wants to be safe. We all know that unless we take certain calculated risks, the rewards are fairly minimal. There is going to be a lot of competition in these safe zones.

We do need to remind ourselves- decision making is not in vacuum. It is about the losses and gains which we can foresee in our decisions. Although it is a move out of the comfort zone, we will still need to decide the driving forces.It comes down to the consumable leaps we all can take to make the risk more consumable. On that note, I leave you with the lovely quote from Marilyn Monroe

Although going outside comfort zone is not easy, we need to be aware of consumable leaps. If the leaps are too big, they can throw us out of balance. This is not to say that it is bad, but something to be aware of.

It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring

– Marilyn Monroe

Inspiration for the quote: Link