Never Play It Safe

A Practical Guide to Freedom, Creativity, and a Life You Love

De: Chase Jarvis

Narrado por: Chase Jarvis

Bestselling author and award-winning photographer Chase Jarvis argues that we don’t need gimmicky new life hacks or “productivity” gadgets; we already have what what’s necessary—all we need is to learn to leverage it.

Photographer, entrepreneur, and bestselling author, Chase Jarvis has collaborated with some of the world’s most successful athletes, entrepreneurs, performers, and artists. What’s the secret to a good life? he’s asked them. Is it having enough money in the bank? Chasing the right dream? Surrounding themselves with the right people? What are the secrets not just of success but of fulfillment?

In Never Play It Safe, Jarvis reveals the surprising answer: It’s not a new gadget, technique, or life-hack. It’s something much simpler. Instead of striving for external validation, the key is to look inside and leverage the tools already available to every single one of us.

By digging deep into the seven essential levers, Jarvis shows you how to get honest with yourself, unleash your own creativity, and build the life you’ve always wanted. Filled with stories and insights from some of the world’s top performers and thought leaders, including the author himself, Never Play It Safe will reshape how you think about attention, time, intuition, constraints, play, work, failure, and practice to help you achieve extraordinary results and become more creative, fulfilled, and successful every day.

©2024 Chase Jarvis (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

The Rescue

More than words of motivation or inspiration, this book shines a welcomed light into the tiniest of dark corners, revealing the Path up and out. The Soul, extending a Ladder to climb into the Light.

Honest reflections and thoughts that helped the author.

I really was hoping this book would help me, but it may have helped the author more than anyone. Maybe it will help later after another pass? Good books are capable of lingering towards inspiration if it’s any good. This book is advice well told, but it gives reflections more than direction, which is what an eager reader looks for when looking for books like this. To be fair, it’s possible that no book on how to make your life better, or how to get unstuck in life or career, truly helps. At its best, it can bring about a conversation in you, but the choices are your own and it won’t give you the map you hoped for. This is merely a book on what helped Chase, the author, and the reader is glad Chase found himself. But now that the reading is over and Chase’s light has twisted into smoke, the reader, pleased for Chase, is left in the dark.

Just what I needed to hear

Chase Jarvis' style of storytelling and coaching has always resonated with me. He pulls in wisdom from wildly varied sources, cites data from far reaching disciplines, then synthesizes and shares the information in an easy to understand, aspirational way that makes it easy to apply to your own life. Never Play It Safe will definitely be on my short-list of books to regularly re-read. Thanks Chase!

Meh

Not sure what to do with this. Don’t feel a need to listen to it again, though he insists you should.

Motivational with a slice of Cali-lib

Pretty good message.
But be prepared for some left-leaning point of view.

For example, as a conservative myself, I feel that EM's purchase of Twitter has provide a voice for 60%++ of Americans where they were loosing representation all together in "leftest-captured media."
Chase offhandedly describes that purchase as a billionaire just wanting more attention. While I don't know enough to argue that aspect, I can certainly argue that providing at least one major social media channel outside the control of "corporate-tech-Democratic" machine is "American" in the most positive meaning of the word in a critical time where we need to hear more than the state-determined narrative. It was also the opposite of playing it safe. Non?

Great for entrepreneurs taking the next step!

I love how listening to this confirmed I was doing a lot of things right by listening to my gut. It’s so easy to allow societal pressure to make you feel like you just need to work. This book allows you to think maybe that path isn’t right and maybe adjust your attention. Definitely recommend this book!

Good book - nothing groundbreaking here!!

It was good listen for some inspiration!! The tools and leverage mentioned are from the same subset you will get on this theme anywhere on internet!!

Simply the best I’ve ever read/listened to.

I have read and listened to so many books about business and social emotional well being. This book combined both for me as I try to expand the impact I want STRIVE tlc to have and taking care of my own freedom and also trying to be a good wife, mom, daughter, sister, aunt, and friend. Thank you for writing this book. I am so grateful that you did! I got so many tangible ideas I’m already implementing…30 day challenge as I sit on my deck drinking coffee. I will listen to this one again, which I have not done with any other book. Thank you also for reading it. Your voice with your writing made it so engaging.

Advice and strategy to pursue your potential

Main points of the book 'Never Play It Safe' by Chase Jarvis:
If you 'play it safe', which means not taking risks, you will not achieve your potential (not even close) and leave you unfulfilled. Playing it safe generally has you ignoring your true purpose, not pursuing your passion. Playing it safe is about fear, so you never leave your comfort zone. If you 'Never Play It Safe', you use your abilities and experiences (your tools) to pursue what you want and how you want to be, to fulfill your potential, to be happy with your life. Along this path it is important to get in touch with and not ignore your intuition. The book has seven chapters which present 7 concepts to adopt in order to live boldly, not succumb to self-limiting fear, and not succumb to other's opinions of what we should or should not do or be.

1. Attention - the ability to focus your attention is the main key to success. Mediation is a recommended practice to train your brain to focus. Mindfulness is a key to attention focus - taking time to be present in the moment rather than constantly distracted is fundamental to attention focus.
2. Time - we make time for what is important. Be intentional with your time as well as your attention.
3. Intuition. - be still, be quiet, listen to and trust your intuition. Feel the alignment that comes with your intuition - inner peace.
4. Constraints - Constrain to re-train. Constrain your focus to be specific; constrain your ideation process. Introduce new constraints, self-imposed constraints. We default first to using prior experience, then to what we have seen before, as our default thinking. However, if we discard the default constraints and put in task specific constraints, together with resource constraints. we can limit the breadth of considerations and focus on depth. Chase Jarvis lists 4 types of constraints: Self-imposed constraints like time boxing, External constraints, perceived constraints, and environmental constraints
5. Play - spending time playing is critically important for our overall health, especially mental health, and our creativity.
6. Failure - Failure is key to progress and growth. We grow more from what we learn through failure than from success. Don't be afraid to fail, and when failure happens study it in detail to learn as much as you can from each failure, then apply the learnings to your next endeavor.
7. Practice - intentional practice is what is important, not just repetitiveness. Focus on the basics - you can't make extraordinary achievements without having the basics so well practiced that they are second nature.

Exercise to get started: Every day for 30 days write down what you want and how you want to be. Refine it as you go. Then work on strategy and planning to start pursuing your passion.

Masterpiece

Chase, thank you for not playing it safe. The insight, courage and humble wisdom shared in this book is a gift to the world. It stands shoulder to shoulder with masterpieces like Steven Pressfield’s ‘The War of Art”, and ‘The Creative Act’, by Rick Ruben. 5/5 Stars and a slow clap.