I spent a lot of time this past week thinking about fear – what it means to me and how it manifests itself in my life.
Because we are hard-wired to fight change, to view it as a threat, we often stick to the status quo.
On March 7, Seth Godin taught me and my fellow Ruckusmakers how detrimental a move that is.
Why? Because we live in a culture that thrives on change.
We live in a world where success is often achieved by those who do something different.
Doing something different, creating change, is always risky because there’s no way to forecast the results.
As a change-maker, you’re doing something that hasn’t been done before; the outcome of your actions remains a mystery until you finish your work.
That’s a scary place to be for many.
“We insist on seeing the end before we start and that’s a problem,” Seth said this weekend.
In my opinion, the challenge isn’t learning how to get rid of the fear.
The fear is always going to be there. We are hard-wired to be afraid of change.
The challenge is first learning how to build resilience into the structure of what we’re doing and then learning to be okay with being in a place that doesn’t work.
“It’s important to build resilience into the structure of your work, so that you can budget for a misstep and not feel like you’ve failed. We can simulate the feeling of hitting rock bottom to show ourselves that it won’t kill us,” Seth said.
The real challenge is learning how to not tie our self-identity into the outcome of our actions.
Our tendency to do this prevents us from having the courage and confidence to be a change-maker because after the first failed attempt, we view ourselves as a failure and give up.
My advice: next time you fail, instead of telling yourself you’re a failure, ask yourself what you could have done differently and try that tactic next time.
My advice: make sure there’s a next time.
“You have to remind yourself that there’s always tension in doing something that’s real. Everything isn’t fatal,” Seth reminded us.
I think that embracing this idea is our only shot at being able to take risks with confidence.
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Is there something that you’ve always wanted to try but have been too afraid?
Comment below sharing what you think is holding you back and whether this blog post has helped give you the courage to try!
