Sit Back & Relax Until It's Over?
How’s your patience level these days?
Are you comfortable with the pace of positive change, positive progress?
I’m not.
Sometimes, I just want to shout, “Wake up!”
But now, more than ever, is a great time to play it safe, unless your name is Seth Godin or Hugh MacLeod.
They Both Lead To Fear
Look, all of us dream big dreams. This is an endowment from our creator.
And when we were kids, we had no inhibitions about pretending and fantasizing. I mean, we were 100% okay walking around with chocolate smeared on our faces, and we couldn’t give a hoot if our clothes didn’t match.
Heck, we’d even walk around in public, naked. Or wear a smelly diaper. We didn’t care. Not for a nano-second.
But look at us now. Fear paralyzes us. And it all comes down to two simple reasons:
It’s this fear of success that is the stealth robber of our childhood dreams.
We all have within us another endowment. One which needs our attention, before it’s too late.
Quit Monkeying Around
Humans are fearful creatures. Fear is a gift bestowed on us to help us survive.
Funny thing is though, Saber-Toothed Tigers are extinct, yet we live as if we might get eaten.
When we hear people complain about their boss, the Government, their colleagues, you know what that person is really complaining about?
They are really complaining about their own insecurities to take initiative and thrive, instead of simply surviving.
As people read this, a third will embrace it, a third will not care, and a third think I’m an idiot.
Life goes on.
Poisonous Thinking
I feel sorry for all the leaders who are so busy trying to survive. Why? Because I’m one of them too. And so are you. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You know the pain. The anxiety. The fear. The doubt.
It’s the odorless, colorless, invisible poison that sucks creativity, risk-taking and most importantly, innovation, right out of the room.
And what is the most frustrating, for nearly everyone, is that we all pretend that everything is fine.
It isn’t.
The antidote?
Ah, if I told you, you’d be happy in knowing it, but you wouldn’t do anything with it.
Would you?
PS. Like Tuesday’s post claimed, nothing is private anymore. Learn to live in this new atmosphere. It ain’t going away.
Get In Line
Sometimes we need the proverbial spanking, or maybe a kick in the buttocks, to rattle our cage enough to do what’s common sense but not common practice.
Ask yourself, “Why don’t I have a personal vision/mission statement?”
Imagine a child – maybe your child, niece or nephew – asking you, very seriously, “What’s the meaning of life?”
We expect everyone else to have a clue. But not ourselves.
Mind-boggling.
Then one lucky day, someone did me the favor of a major cage rattling, and I finally did something about it.
Any other way is just lame.
Want a tip to help you resist the urge to wait? In a moment, I’ll share what happened last month, what I did about it, and how it impacted my leadership philosophy.
But it’s a double edge sword isn’t it? If consistency is the hallmark of quality, and continuous improvement is the key to becoming world class, how do you balance risk and reward?
Faced with a opportunity to do something the way I’ve always done it, or a way I’ve been dreaming about but always chicken out, I was once again presented the opportunity, but was afraid I’d pass on it again.
But not this time. Finally choose the way I had envisioned.
It was amazingly exhilarating! Why? Which is a good question because the thing I did differently, was actually very small in the big scheme of things.
Then why was it exhilarating? Because conquering a small fear builds the confidence to conquer another small fear.
Eventually, the fears that get conquered are bigger and bigger, until we are faced with very little fear that we can’t act on.
Well, we will always come across scary things, but the confidence to confront and conquer is a priceless ROI for small risk taking habit.
The key, the simple tip – “Do at least one thing each day that scares you.”
Dear jungle jeff readers, you probably know this, but jungle jeff is just one of five daily blogs that I write.
After speaking of fear yesterday here at jungle jeff, a few minutes later I posted an important jeff noel blog post.
And the topic at jeffnoel.com yesterday was the antithesis of the one here at jungle jeff.
Is it okay to notice personal growth and use that confidence to make a dramatic leap in progress?
One thing for sure, I’m not afraid to find out.
Click here to go there.
“We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for.” — Marie von Ebner Eschenbach
How is it with you? I mean, if you really gave earnest consideration, what’s your honest answer?
Well for me, it used to be true; however, reading, writing and thinking at an accelerated pace for the past nine months, has heightened an awareness that there are people who will never change. Duh, right?
Okay, so I’m stupid a little slow sometimes.
This is no secret. But I’ve always held out hope that people would change. Now, I’m convinced, not that they won’t change, but that it no longer matters.
And the day this epiphany came, it was glorious.
I’ve learned to move on, to be strong, and to focus on transformational personal change – not in others, but in the mirror. It’s hard as hell, of course, but I will not stop. Doing the impossible will take everything you have.
And there are people out there, they might even be reading this now, who will think it’s crazy. Who cares So.
“Fear not those who argue but those who dodge.” – Marie von Ebner Eschenbach
Early in my Fortune 100 career, there was a new assignment which required that I move and inherit an existing, high-performing team.
And even though they knew much more about how things ran, they still wanted me to help them improve. They brought dozens of creative ideas.
I was on a huge learning curve and loving every minute of it. However, you know what happened?
Nothing.
Being insanely busy, and blindly disorganized, none of their ideas moved forward. I was overwhelmed and didn’t even know it.
Crazy thing though, I thought things were actually getting better, because their ideas started to dwindle, but not because things got better.
Even crazier, they thought, “Don’t go to Jeff, he won’t do anything.”
Wished they would have argued with me, “Why aren’t you helping us?” Instead, they dodged.
And who could blame them?
Click here to see list on Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites on the Web. Social networking has many tools, and many challenges. There’s an ocean of competition, but technology makes for smoother sailing.
Don’t ya just love technology? The more we do something, the less fearful we are of it. That’s one of the key drivers that makes many people want to try something new – to lessen fear.
And that’s one of our key accountabilities as a leader, isn’t it? To lessen fear. Carpe diem.
PS. Skyped a friend in South Africa yesterday. Wasn’t exactly fearful of it, but had never done an International video chat before. Now I wonder why I waited so long. It was ridiculously easy.