http://www.caelsanderson.com/blog/courage-to-develop-our-talents/

“Courage comes from God. Fear and doubt do not.

To reach your potential you have to attack. Attack without the fear of failure. “

Before retelling the same parable of the talents, he says:

“My redshirt year in college while at the Olympic Training Center I saw a quote that really hit me. The quote was from Olympic wrestling champion Jeff Blatnick. The quote read “I learned to win by learning to lose; that is, not being afraid to lose.”

As the saying goes….He that isn’t willing to take risks, takes the greatest risk of all. “

“If you play and lose, you’ve at least played the game. Whatever you learned from playing may prepare you for the next time around.”

Exactly. I would say that a guy who tries to turn one talent into two and ends up losing it is better off than the guy who just keeps it. Why? Because the first guy now has an education that the couch potato doesn’t. Certain actions, like starting a business, can only be learned by doing.

The Buddhist in me also says that by investing that talent, you’ve also released your talent and are teaching yourself to let go, to stop grasping. Yoga practitioners call it aparigraha. By learning to let go of that talent, that thing, your past, you learn how to progress.

I also like your example of A, B, and C. It’s true–you need to invest according to what you can afford. But anyone can make at least something. The third slave could’ve just lived off that talent while working for someone else.

Loss is not a bad thing. I have always found it is better to do something and fail than to not do anything at all. Even if you are failing, there is often time to cure, if you apply yourself.

If you play and lose, you’ve at least played the game. Whatever you learned from playing may prepare you for the next time around.

That fear the third servant had is in all of us, but some of us gain the confidence to not let it keep us from going out and trying to turn two talents into four, or five talents into ten.

Fast foward to today. We are in an economic recession. Sometime you need to go out on a limb and make business happen. Staying at home and waiting for the next thing to come along may be one way of biding your time. Or, one could be a part of that wave, generating jobs, revitalizing the economy, even if it is only in a small way.

If you realize a loss instead of a gain, accept that you will not always be down. Maybe the servant with the five and two talents had an advantage of leverage. Maybe with only one talent, the third servant did not feel he had anything to leverage and better to stand still than lose all. But really, how hard is it to make a bit of money?

Having different amounts of capital is like working with different landscapes. The battle on 5, 2 and 1 would be different, but if you know your terrain, you can conquor the battle field.

Let’s say you need $100 as a down payment to buy a building which would collect rents to cover the mortgage and then some. A, B and C have $500, $200 and $100 respectively. A might be able to go out and buy four properties with $100 reserve for lack of rent, improvements and repair costs. B might be able to go out and buy one property with $100 in his pocket to deal with lack of rent, improvements and costs. C can only buy one property, but will have no money as a back up. C could lose the property and the downpayment if he defaults on the loan, where as A and B have some reserve to cover unexpected expenses. Markets will go up and down and I and B might be able to weather those changes and realize hevty returns. C cannot behave like A & B. C will have to get in when the market is low and hope for a recovery. C might want to think of using the $100 to invest in something else (ie., if people need a quick cheap lunch and like kosher dogs, buy a hot dog cart, some kosher dogs & buns; then sell kosher dogs) that would give a return. Hence to each servant, talents equal to his capacity. And who knows, maybe C would have made 11 talents if he sold hot dogs rather than bury the talent.

It’s very hard to tell the difference sometimes. I’ve noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs are “restless;” they get involved with a company, build it up, sell it, and then move on to the next company.

It’s also hard because, as Alpha mentioned in the other post, there are also dreamers. John Lennon wrote about “watching the wheels go round and round,” but Lennon himself was clearly a very busy man with his songwriting.

I think you’re right–it’s indifference to both themselves and society. The restless guy is always trying to get better.

A lazy person is just wasting both talent and time. They are indifferent to thier own development and to their contribution to society, and thus, are in a state of talent atrophe. In other words, they “bury” their talent.

Conversely, a restless person is often bored by things that do not interest them, but can be very animated by things that do. The restless person is not lazy, in fact, they may be working harder than the average person. However, they are searching for something that will hold their interest and inspire their passion. Somethimes they find it… sometimes they don’t.

The big difference is in motivation, one guy leaves a job after 6 months because he wants go sit on his mom’s house and play video games all day. The other guy quits the same job after 6 months because he wants to work at another job that he has become passionate about.