I had a great conversation today with Cyndi Mitchell in which we were talking about career, planning, not planning, breakthroughs, etc. And I was left with a phrase in my mind “apply fear to your career.”
I am a bit of a thrill seeker in my personal life. Not extremely so, I have no desire to sky dive for example, but I love to challenge myself to do new things. Jazz singing lessons that culminate in performances in a club that challenge my stage fright, aerial acrobatics lessons where I perform high above the crowd challenging my fear of heights, learning to conquer my fear of ocean swimming by learning to surf. These are challenges I can come up with easily for myself I pick a fear, set a goal and do it. I can think them up with ease and make it happen. These activities also make me feel alive and I think they make me grow into a different and better person. For some reason it is harder to create these experiences at work and take these risks. I got to have one such experience with work recently being asked (with a weeks notice) to give a Ted talk. I almost actually turned the experience down. My thought process went something like this. “What, a talk? In a week? Video to be put on YouTube no less, what do I have to say that matters? Why should anyone want to hear from me?” All of these voices came up and I gave myself permission to not do it. But then I felt sad imagining not doing it. I already saw it would be a missed opportunity. I knew I would regret it and wonder, what if I hadn’t let my fear prevent me. So I bit the bullet and said yes. I’m so glad I did. I’m proud of what I did (though of course would like to improve it) and I think it made me better, different. Now how about I create a plan to do something like this more intentionally. What if I dream about something I’m a little afraid of doing and then try to make that happen. That talk fell in my lap which is great, but what if I apply my fears to create a new challenge for myself at work? What will I do?
