Over the years – the last 10 in particular – I have grown to realise the importance of challenge, of stepping outside your comfort zone, pushing yourself to reach new limits. It is how we grow as individuals, how we achieve amazing things and I think, for many, the fear of failure is a barrier when actually it should be the driver.
I listened to the Diary of a CEO podcast and he talked about just this, how making yourself uncomfortable it a great thing. When he recorded his first video on his phone it was awful; he hated it, it was embarrassing and it wasn’t very good, so he did another, and another and gradually got better. He started to enjoy it and then it became not only a skill but something that others began watching/listening to and now he feels nothing but excitement about speaking on a global platform. It all started with something he wasn’t good at.
Yesterday I read a ‘short blub’ that Ryan Reynolds wrote for Time100 about Michael J Fox (very touching and worth a read). The bit that resonated the most was this: ‘He’s handsome and intensely smart. He also falls a lot. Not just because he has Parkinson’s. He falls a lot because he is unafraid to fly.’
I think this applies to every person and probably every business too. Success does not seek you out; you have to go find it. But when you do it won’t just comfortably sit in your lap, happy with the occasional stroke, it will leap off and run away and hide, or go and move in next door and you have to go find it again.
So, I urge to you be inspired. Perhaps a good start is with something you are really bad at – or dislike doing because it makes you feel sick just thinking about doing it – and give it a go. And then do it again and maybe, just maybe, you will find a new skill. But if you don’t and you fall, at least you know you tried to fly.
With that in mind I completed a 100k walk over the May Bank Holiday weekend, the coast to coast of Devon, with some of my best friends raising money for Dementia UK. I did it once before and it was honestly the toughest thing I have ever done (the 30 degree heatwave didn’t help). This time, the weather was a little kinder (just!) but the terrain was still very challenging. But we did it and we are very grateful for all the donations we received for this very worthwhile cause.
Alice, MD