September 7th 2026, The Risk It Takes to Blossom

There is a teaching that I have been thinking about lately and it goes, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” I like this teaching because I think it explains something about change that we don't always want to admit. Most of us know when something in our lives needs to change long before we actually change it. We know we need to lose weight, eat healthier, find another job, start the business, save more money, write the book or whatever else it may be. The problem usually isn't that we don't know what we should be doing. The problem is that what we are currently doing is comfortable enough that we are willing to stay there. It may not even be good, but we know it. There is a difference between something being good and something being familiar and I think we confuse the two all the time.

There is another saying that I am sure most of us have heard before, you have to get sick and tired of being sick and tired. I think that saying and this teaching are basically talking about the same thing. There comes a point where the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Think about someone who has been saying they want to get in shape for years. They know they need to exercise. They know eating McDonald's every day probably isn't helping. They know all of this but knowing it doesn't automatically make them do anything about it. Then something happens. Maybe they see a picture of themselves that they hate. Maybe they go to the doctor. Maybe walking up a flight of stairs is suddenly harder than they remember. Whatever it is, there is a moment where continuing to do what they have always done becomes more uncomfortable than the thought of doing something different. That is when the risk to remain in the bud finally becomes more painful than the risk of trying to blossom.

The bud is the part of the teaching that interests me because the bud isn't necessarily a bad place. At one point it served a purpose and it was probably exactly where you needed to be. The problem comes when you grow past it and still refuse to leave. We do this with jobs all the time. Maybe the job was perfect when you first started. You needed money, you learned a lot and maybe it gave you opportunities that you didn't have before. Ten years later you hate waking up every morning, complain about it every Sunday night and spend half of Monday wishing it was Friday. The job didn't necessarily become evil overnight, you may have simply outgrown where you are. The same thing can happen with habits, relationships with money, the way we take care of ourselves and even the goals that we have. Something that once fit us doesn't fit anymore but because we know how to exist there, we convince ourselves that staying is safer.

Here is the problem, blossoming isn't safe either. I don't want to turn this teaching into one of those motivational things where I tell you to take the risk because everything is going to magically work out. I don't know if it will work out and neither do you. That is why it is called a risk. If you want to start a business you may fail. If you start going to the gym you might feel like you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. If you change your eating habits you are probably going to have days where you eat something you weren't supposed to. If you decide to write your first book there is a very good chance that the first thing you write isn't going to be the greatest book ever written. I know mine wasn't. The problem is we sometimes take being bad at something in the beginning as proof that we shouldn't be doing it, when in reality we are bad at it because we just started.

Think about how ridiculous it would be to walk into a gym for the first time, struggle through a workout and then say this clearly isn't for me because the person next to you can lift three times as much weight. That person may have been working out for ten years. Of course they are better at it. Yet we do the same exact thing with almost everything else in life. We start a business and compare ourselves to someone who has been running theirs for twenty years. We post something online and compare our ten views to somebody with a million followers. We write our first book and compare it to an author who has written fifty. We try eating healthier for a week and somehow expect twenty years of bad habits to disappear. Then when the results aren't immediate we decide the change isn't working. We don't give ourselves enough time to actually become good at the thing we decided we wanted to become.

This is also where I can apply this teaching directly to what I am doing with Books By Josh right now. I have been doing this for a long time and there are parts of the business that are very comfortable to me. Writing a book is comfortable. Publishing books is comfortable. Recording my podcast is comfortable. Running this website is comfortable. I could continue doing the same things that I have been doing and there is a certain safety in that because I already know how to do them. But I have also reached the point where I know that if I want Books By Josh to become something bigger, I can't keep running it exactly the same way and expect a completely different result. At some point I have to leave the part of the business that I already understand and start learning the parts that I don't.

One of the ways I have been doing that is with the books themselves. Instead of only staying inside the same areas that I already know, I have been experimenting with different series and different markets. My current approach has been to give some of these ideas two books and then actually look at what happens. Do readers care about this series? Are people reading through to the second book? Is this something that deserves another four or five books or is it something that I tested and learned from? That means I have to accept that some of the books I create may not turn into a successful series. I can spend the time writing them, editing them, making covers and getting everything ready only to find out that readers aren't interested. Obviously that isn't what I want to happen, but the alternative is to only make things that feel safe and never find out what else could work.

That is a risk I am willing to take because I am getting to the point where not knowing bothers me more than trying and failing. I would rather test a series and discover that the market isn't there than spend the next three years wondering if I should have written it. I would rather experiment with different categories and different ways of presenting my books than decide I already know exactly what Books By Josh should be forever. Some of those experiments will probably look stupid in hindsight. I may look at something a year from now and wonder why I thought it was a good idea. That has happened plenty of times before and I am sure it will happen again. The important part is that I will know because I actually tried it.

I have also been looking at Books By Josh much more like a business instead of only thinking about the next thing I want to create. That has meant looking at analytics, looking at what the site is doing, thinking more about the podcast, figuring out how people find the books, paying attention to which series actually make money and trying to understand how all of these things connect. That is uncomfortable in a completely different way because some of it isn't what I originally got into this to do. I got into this because I wanted to write. I didn't start writing because I had a lifelong dream of looking at conversion rates and spreadsheets. But if I want the writing to become a stronger business then I have to learn the business side of being a writer too.

That is my bud right now. I know how to create. I am comfortable creating. I can sit down and come up with a book, a podcast episode or a blog post without feeling like I am entering some completely unknown world. Growing the operation around those things is different. It means trying things that may not work, spending money in places where I have to figure out whether there is actually a return, looking at data that may tell me something I don't want to hear and changing things that I may personally like because the numbers say they aren't doing anything. None of this means I suddenly stop being creative and turn into some guy sitting in a room staring at spreadsheets all day. It means if I want the business to grow, I also have to grow into somebody capable of running the business I say that I want.

That last part is probably the biggest thing I take from this teaching. We spend a lot of time thinking about what we want without thinking about who we have to become to actually have it. Everyone wants the result. People want to be in shape but becoming someone who regularly works out is different. People want to be healthier but becoming someone who thinks differently about food is different. People want a successful business but becoming someone who can deal with risk, failure, customers, money, taxes, marketing and all the other headaches that come with a business is different. People want to write a book but becoming someone who can sit down and write when the book isn't fun anymore is different. Wanting the flower is easy. Becoming the person capable of blossoming into it is where the work is.

The beginning of that process is probably going to suck a little bit. I think we should be more honest about that. Your first week at the gym may make you question every decision that led you there. Eating differently may feel like a punishment at first. Starting a business may make you wonder why you voluntarily gave yourself another job. Writing your first book may make you realize that the awesome story in your head doesn't automatically turn into awesome words on the page. You are trying to leave your shell and become something that you weren't before. Why would we expect that to feel completely normal? If it felt normal then you probably wouldn't be changing very much.

The good news is that things that are uncomfortable can become comfortable. I can use writing as an example because I have lived that one. There was a time where finishing one book seemed like this massive thing. Now I have an entire catalog of them. That doesn't mean every book is easy or that I never struggle with one, but I am not the same writer I was when I started. The things that I had to think about back then are things I can do without thinking about now. That didn't happen because I found some secret. I did it enough times that I got better at doing it. The same applies to almost anything. You go to the gym enough and eventually you don't feel like the new person anymore. You cook enough healthy meals and eventually you have meals that you actually like. You run a business long enough and some of the problems that used to ruin your entire day become another Tuesday.

I think that is what we forget when we are scared to take the risk. We imagine the discomfort we feel at the beginning lasting forever. We think if going to the gym feels horrible today then going to the gym will always feel horrible. If putting yourself out there feels awkward now then it will always feel awkward. If running a business feels overwhelming now then it will always feel overwhelming. It won't. You will change. That is literally the entire point. The person standing at the beginning isn't supposed to have all of the skills that the person at the other end of the journey has. You gain those skills by going through it.

Now, obviously, I am not telling anyone to be reckless. There is a difference between taking a risk and doing something stupid. Don't read this post, walk into your job tomorrow, quit with five dollars in your checking account and tell everyone Josh told you to blossom. That isn't what I am saying. You can take calculated risks. You can start going to the gym three days a week instead of deciding you're going to live there. You can change a few meals before changing your entire diet. You can work on a business while you still have a job. You can write the book at night. You can test an idea before throwing your entire savings account at it. Risk doesn't have to mean putting everything you have on one spin of the wheel. Sometimes the risk is simply doing something different than you did yesterday and accepting that you don't know exactly where it is going to lead.

I also don't think there is one big moment where we blossom and suddenly that's it. I wish life worked that way because it would make things a lot easier. I think we keep finding new buds. Writing my first book was one. Publishing it was another. Building a catalog became another. Taking Books By Josh more seriously as a business is another one I am working through now. If that works, I am sure there will be something else after it that I currently don't even know I need to learn. The things that scare us change because we change. Something that feels like a huge risk today may be the thing we barely think about five years from now.

So when I look at this teaching, I don't see it as someone telling us that we need to constantly take huge risks or throw away everything comfortable in our lives. I see it as a reminder to pay attention when comfortable starts turning into miserable. There is a point where you know you are staying somewhere because you are scared of what comes next and not because where you are is actually where you want to be. That is usually when we start saying we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. We have complained enough. We have thought about it enough. We have imagined changing enough. Eventually we have to decide whether we would rather deal with the pain we already know or take a chance on a different kind of pain that may actually lead somewhere.

Maybe you are already there with something in your life. Maybe you have been talking about getting in shape for the last five years. Maybe every Sunday you dread going back to work on Monday. Maybe there is a business idea you can't stop thinking about. Maybe there is a book you have been saying you are going to write someday. Maybe you know you need to change something about the way you spend money, the way you eat or how you use your time. I don't know what your thing is, but chances are you do. We normally know. The question is how long we are willing to stay inside something we have already outgrown.

The risk to blossom is real. You might fail. You might look stupid. You will probably be bad at some parts of it. You may have to start over a few times and you may find out that the first direction you chose wasn't the right one. But there is also a risk in staying where you are. We just don't talk about that risk as much because it feels familiar. Another year passes. Then another. The business never gets started. The book never gets written. The weight never comes off. The job you said you would leave three years ago is still the job you complain about today. Staying still feels safe until you look back and realize how much time you gave it.

Maybe that is the real teaching here. Eventually there comes a day where the risk of trying no longer scares you as much as the thought of never finding out. When that day comes, you don't suddenly know what you are doing and you don't suddenly become fearless. You just know that you have had enough of where you are. So you take the risk, you struggle through being new at it, you learn, you screw up, you adjust and little by little the thing that once felt completely foreign starts becoming part of who you are.

You blossom, not because it was comfortable, but because staying in the bud finally wasn't.

Thanks,

Josh