Let me ask you something. How many risks have you taken in the last one year? Not big ones. I mean small ones. Speaking in a meeting. Trying a new route to work. Asking for a role nobody offered you.
If your answer is "very few", you are not unusual. Most of us go through each day doing what needs to be done, and doing it well, but never really stretching ourselves. We say, "I'm not good enough," or "I don't really want it anyway." We live inside our comfort zone, and it feels safe.
In the last chapter of my book, I explain what happens to confidence when we live like this. I compare confidence to a muscle.
Confidence is a muscle
Think about your biceps. How do you develop them? By doing exercises designed to work that muscle, again and again over time, until you see results. If you stop, the muscle shrinks and wastes away. It is the same with confidence. The fewer risks you take, the less confidence you need, and so the less confident you become.
The difference is that your biceps tend to stay in one place, and your confidence muscle is harder to find. So you need to give it a job. You must be willing to stretch yourself in an unfamiliar direction. Try something new, or try something in a slightly different way. The more open you are to risk, opportunity and possibility, the more confidence you need, and the more you develop. The question I ask at the end of that passage is the one I ask you now. What are you going to do to exercise it?
You cannot cross the sea by staring at the water
The chapter has a list that I like to read aloud. It begins, "It's time to quit waiting for". And then the list goes on. Waiting for perfection. Inspiration. Permission. Reassurance. Someone to change. The right person to come along. The kids to leave home. A more favourable horoscope. The new administration to take over. An absence of risk. Someone to discover you. A clear set of instructions. More self confidence. The pain to go away.
Read that list slowly. Which line is yours? Most of us wait for at least two. The list ends with a plain order: "Get on with it already!" And then comes a question from Jimmy Johnson that I find very fair. Do you want to be safe and good, or do you want to take a chance and be great?
The book also reminds us of the saying that nothing ventured, nothing lost. It is the careful man's motto. But nothing ventured is also nothing gained. If you are not ready to take risks, you may not lose what you have, but you will gain nothing either. And do not sit imagining everything that could go wrong. If you do that, the book says, you will lose your appetite even for water.
Now, I am not asking you to be careless. In the same chapter, I say that even the bravest combatant must protect himself from the enemy, because he cannot fight well otherwise. Take the risk, but think. Know what you are ready to give up for what you want.
Do one small risk today
- Take the "Quit Waiting" list above and circle the one line that is truly yours.
- Ask yourself what you would do today if that line were not there.
- Choose a small version of that action. If you are waiting for permission, ask for it, or decide you do not need it. If you are waiting for more confidence, do the thing once, badly, and see that you survive.
- Do it before the day ends. Tonight, write one sentence about what happened.
- Next week, increase the risk by a small amount.
You may go wrong the first time. The book tells us to talk even if we go wrong the first time, the second time, or ten times, until on the eleventh time the person we are talking to is paying attention. And on every attempt, we use the lessons of the previous one.
A small thing that stays with me
A young man named V.P. Menon once lost all his money in Delhi. An elderly gentleman lent him fifteen rupees and told him not to repay it to him, but to any stranger who came in need. Menon kept that promise all his life. Years later, a man at a baggage counter in Bombay had no money to claim his bags and an Indian standing nearby paid for him. When the foreigner asked how he could pay it back, the helper told him the story of V.P. Menon. His father had been Menon's assistant, and had passed on to his son the habit of seeing himself in debt to strangers. One small act made years earlier was still passing from person to person.
Giving is also a small risk, because you cannot be sure how your help will be used. Give anyway. A good word, an encouraging smile or a timely act, the book says, may change the whole world for another person. Add that to your list of small risks.
This is one chapter from my book Simply the Best.
