Leap of Faith: Embracing Risk with Confidence and Intelligence

I believe I’m a risk-taker. Not like a day trader on stock investing, or like a dare devil, but as in trying something new while being willing to fail and try again. Like speaking out loud when I know that what I’m about to say isn’t widely accepted.

When I try something new, I have a fallback plan, and before I make that plan, I do my homework. By the time I decide to jump into what feels like a risk, I feel pretty sure that I’ll survive the jump, and that I’ll learn and grow from it.

I’d like to say that always happens, but it doesn’t always happen. I can still get carried away with the attractiveness of an idea, but at least now I have alternatives. Even when I check off all the boxes, a metaphorical outcropping can still snag me on the way down. It just happened a few days ago, when someone working for me didn’t do what I’d assumed someone doing that work would do, so even though I’d asked the question, I needed to ask more questions and make sure they understood.

Lesson learned, and I’ll survive in tact, because I have a fallback plan. 

Seth Godin, in his blog Appropriate tension charts this clearly: What feels risky and is actually safe promotes growth. Anything else is either not a risk or too great a risk.

Quote of the Week

Most men either compromise or drop their greatest talents and start running after, what they perceive to be, a more reasonable success, and somewhere in between they end up with a discontented settlement. Safety is indeed stability, but it is not progression. - Criss Jami

Teach girls bravery, not perfection

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