We belong to a community pool in our neighborhood. One of the things you notice is there are many approaches to getting into a pool.

People tend to fall into four categories: those who stick a toe in the water, and then dive in; those who dive in without checking the water temperature; those who stick a toe in, and then immediately go to the steps and take about 30 minutes to wade in; those who stick a toe in, then go sit in a chair and watch everyone else.

Watching this little human drama one day, it occurred to me that this is how many people approach life as well. Let's take a look at each of these approaches to life. Which one is your approach and which one would you like to live in?

Just watch

Some people are simply afraid of life. Either they are just flat-out scared for no identifiable reason, or they tried life once and got badly hurt and decided to sit it out. Whatever the case, the outcome is the same: While they may protect themselves from the bumps and bruises of life, they miss out on the joys and thrills as well.

Wade slowly

This one's certainly better than sitting it out. But notice something about this style - the focus is on the negative _ much more on how cold, uncomfortable and perhaps painful the water is instead of how good and refreshing it can feel.

What we focus on creates what our experience will be. You can't experience how good the water feels because you are so focused on getting wet or how cold it is.

Dive right in

While at first glance this might seem like the preferred approach, upon closer examination we can see that it's not. Those who dive right in tend to not learn from experience, and they make the same mistakes over and over again .

It has been said success comes from good judgment, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. Those who dive right in tend to be impulsive and fail to learn from experience. They never develop good judgment, and so the above success process breaks down.

Test it, then dive

An important rule of life is to know as much as you can about what you are getting into. In the business world, it's called doing "due diligence." Once you know as much as you can about what you're getting into, you can dive into it with passion, and play/live full out.