Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Paul Enfield on how you have to take risks, to get the rewards. I’ve worked with Paul for many years at Microsoft, and he was one of my early mentors. I’ve learned a lot of life wisdom from him, and I thought this particular nugget was especially useful. It’s about taking a leap of faith.

The big idea is that for so many things in life, there is no way to be 100% certain before we act. We have to take risks. We can spend all our time trying to make things certain, know the unknowables, and wait for the perfect conditions, or we can dive in a little more.  We can do more big things and act on more windows of opportunity.  This is the heart of bold action.

Without further ado, here’s Paul on the leap of faith …

Some life decisions we face can seem colossal. Some seem so large that we can get stuck attempting to reach our decision and fail to ever act. I found myself in one of these situations when I came upon a revelation that empowered me make my decision.

Quite a while back, I was faced with a decision on whether or not to propose to my wife. While pondering the decision, I realized that no matter how much I thought about it, I would never be 100% sure that I was making the right choice. It was at that time that I also realized this correlated to a concept I had learned in college Statistics class called “degree of certainty.”

In a simplistic form, degree of certainty indicates how likely it is that the decision is the correct one. You can be fairly sure of your choice, and therefore have a high degree of certainty.

I also realized that different people will need to achieve different degrees of certainty before they will act upon their decisions. However, the commonality would always be that you can never achieve 100% certainty on your decision. Therefore we are always faced with a “gap” we must jump to reach 100% certainty. I chose to name this gap the “leap of faith.”

I was 90% sure I should make this decision to propose, but was forced to realize that I must make this leap of faith if I were ever to make my decision.

Being armed with this truth is empowering. Once you realize you must be willing to take a chance no matter what your decision, you can move forward and evaluate other factors.  Other factors might include what is the opportunity cost for not making the choice. IOTW, what will I lose if I fail to act?  Also, what is the benefit I can obtain by making the choice?

Empower yourself to make tough decisions. Recognize your personal needs to support your decision and when you reach your threshold, jump. Make your decision and take your leap of faith.

Photo by Hunterrrr.

“It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.” — Tony Robbins

It’s tough stuff.   Doing meaningful work means stretching past your limits and taking risks.  As such, the most meaningful work often comes with the greatest challenges.

You become more as you grow past the hurdles.  As you grow your ability to take on bigger challenges, you create new arenas and capabilities for deeper engagement and more fulfillment.  It’s the place where you find your “flow” and get “in the zone.”

Failure comes with the territory.  As one of my mentors put it, if you’re not failing enough, you’re not trying enough.  You learn more when you fail, and a healthy habit is to carry the lessons forward.

By recognizing the value of meaningful work on our inner lives, and what we become in the process of growth, you set the stage for a healthy environment of meaningful progress.  The key is to have a high tolerance for risk and failure and create a learning environment.

In the book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
, by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, the authors write about focusing on the progress and positive feedback, while embracing the failures along the way.  It’s part of the journey of meaningful work.

Failure is Inevitable Along the Way
The most meaningful work also often comes with the greatest challenges.  Teresa and Steven write:

“By its very nature, meaningful work is hard; people often get the greatest satisfaction from overcoming the most difficult challenges.  Failure is inevitable along the path to innovation.”

Focus on Catalysts and Nourishers
You can’t avoid all the problems.  Instead, you can respond to the problems, and you can focus on the wins along the way.  Teresa and Steven write:

“Thought you should try to minimize obstacles and setbacks under your control, you can never create a problem-free bubble for your people.  You can’t nourish inner work life if you drive yourself and your team crazy trying to avoid all problems.  Rather, focus on providing people with the catalysts and nourishers they need to overcome the obstacles they will inevitably face. “

Failure is a Chance to Start Over Smarter
Teresa and Steven write:

“As legendary industrialist Henry Ford once said, ‘Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.’”

Grow your skills by leaps and bounds as you take on more meaningful work, and remember that the most important meaning maker in your life is you.

My Related Posts

• Sustain Virtuous Cycles and Halt Vicious Ones
• The Seven Major Catalysts that Inspire Progress
• Fear of Weakness, Fear of Failure, Fear of Who You Are

Photo by mkd.

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.” — Dale Carnegie

You can use criticism to change your game, achieve your dreams, and bring out your best.  Criticism is a blessing in disguise if you know how to use it effectively.  Yeah, sometimes the disguise can be pretty bad, but take a look beyond the surface or the sting.

In my experience, the key is how you look at criticism.  To be effective, you need to look at criticism as an opportunity to improve.  This takes out the emotional reaction and helps you get curious and see what you might otherwise miss.

You also need to look at both the critic and the criticism.  For example, does the critic have your best interest in mind?  Does the critic know what they are talking about?  This helps immediately put the criticism in perspective.  When you look at the criticism, you need to determine if it’s relevant or accurate.  It’s not a matter of defending.  Instead, make feedback useful and actionable.  I find that looking for the actionable insight is the most effective way I can make criticism a worthwhile venture.

In just about any worthwhile adventure, criticism is part of the journey.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  If you have a process for dealing with feedback, and if you embrace it, rather than fear it, you can grow with your challenges.

In the book, Mentored by a Millionaire: Master Strategies of Super Achievers (See all Motivational Management & Leadership Books) , Steven K. Scott shares a three-step skill for dealing with criticism, as well as a metaphor for thinking about criticism.  He suggests thinking of it like a bucket of water, sand, and gold, where the gold is hidden in the sand at the bottom.

A Three-Step Skill to Turn Criticism into Your Powerful Ally
Scott suggests a three-part process for responding to criticism in a more effective way:

• Step 1. Consider the source of the criticism.  Scott suggests three questions to help you evaluate the source of the criticism: 1) How qualified is the critic? 2) What is the basis of the criticism?, and 3) What is the critic’s motive for the criticism?
• Step 2. Consider the accuracy of the criticism.  Scott says that with criticisms you’ll find that some are extremely accurate, some are partially accurate, and many are totally inaccurate.
• Step 3. Take responsibility for your response to the criticism and mine it for gold. Scott suggests responding effectively to the criticism instead of just reacting.  To do so, he suggests writing down the stinging criticisms and look for the gold nuggets that can help you improve.

A Bucket of Water, a Few Inches of Sand, and a Little Bit of Gold
Every bucket of criticism is full of water, has a bit of sand, and if you’re lucky, some gold on the bottom.  Scott writes:

“Criticism is like somebody grabbing a bucket of that water and throwing it on you.  A bucket of criticism is full of water, has a few inches of sand, and nearly always has a little bit of gold buried somewhere in the sand.  A whole bucket of criticism might have a great big gold nuggets, or it may only have one tiny little flake of gold — one that requires a lot of searching to find.”

The Gold is Hidden in the Sand
Ignore the water, deal with the sand, but hunt for the gold.   Scott writes:

“When a bucket of criticism is thrown at us, the first thing that hits our face is the water.  It’s cold, and it’s shocking, but it’s really quite harmless.  All we have to do is grab a towel and dry off.  Some of the sand in the bottom of the bucket also hits us in the face, and a few grains get into our eyes.  That’s a little more painful and irritating and needs to be removed from our eyes, not only to end the pain and irritation but so we can see more clearly.  And finally there’s the gold.  It’s hidden in the couple inches of sand left in the bottom of the bucket.”

The Gold is the Criticisms that Makes Us Wiser
The gold is the truth.  Sometimes the truth hurts.   You can use the feedback to empower you and grow wiser in the process.  Scott writes:

“The gold is the truth of the criticism that can make us wiser and help us adjust our behavior, our attitudes, or our words for the better.  There may only be a flak of truth that really needs to be searched for, or there may be a giant gold nugget of truth that will be of immeasurable value.  This is what Churchill, Solomon, and Lillian Gish were talking about.  They realized that with criticism, there’s often a measure of truth that can be of great benefit to us and to those we relate to.”

With the process on your side and a metaphor at your back, test drive your ability to respond to criticism and welcome the next chance that comes along to take your game to a new level.

Photo by peasap.

One of my mentors shared their favorite inspirational passage with me.  It’s The Man in the Arena.

The Man in the Arena is a famous passage from the speech  Citizenship in a Republic, given by by Theodore Roosevelt.  It’s about standing strong when tested.

It goes like this …

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

You grow, by putting yourself out there.  If you’ve ever been in a situation that requires great courage, skill or tenacity, then, you know what it’s like to be “the man in the arena.”

If you’re going to fail, then at least dare greatly, and remember, it’s not the critic who counts.

Photo by West Point Public Affairs.

I got a chance to see The Green Lantern this weekend.  I liked it way more than I thought I would.  I wasn’t really a Green Lantern fan, but after this, I have a change of heart.

Fear and will played a central role throughout the movie.  The interplay of these twin powers gave me  a new perspective and  a new respect for both.

The real power of the Green Lantern is his ability to “will” his way forward, focus on a solution, and find the courage to act in the face of fear.  As a result, he can overcome any limits imposed by himself or others.  As you might expect, self-imposed limits are the toughest kind.

3 Take Aways from the Green Lantern
Here are my three main take aways:

1. Fear is the enemy of will.  This was a beautiful line in the movie, and so true: “Fear is the enemy of will.  Will is what makes you take action.”   Along these lines, another powerful message in the movie was that just because we are human, vulnerable, and afraid, it does not mean we are weak.
2. It starts with what you see in your mind.  Chalk one up to the power of focus.  In the movie, The Green Lantern says, “Anything I can see in my mind, I can create.  I just have to focus.”
3. You can beat the fear. Don’t feed the fear.  If you feed the fear, it gets stronger.  Courage is the way you beat your fear.  You can become courageous.  You flex your courage when you take action in the face of fear.

A key message throughout the movie was this: Don’t let other people tell you what you’re capable of.  At the same time, sometimes other people see the things in you that you don’t see yourself.  At the end of the day, what really matters is what you believe.

Photo by Big C Harvey.

“The secret of confidence is focusing on what you can control, not on what you can’t.” – Mira Kirshenbaum

Self-confidence is the key to emotional energy. Without confidence, everything can feel like an uphill battle or an impossible hurdle.  Instead of a bounce in your step, or springing to action, you drag your feet, or you expect the worst. Just imagine the energy you would get if you knew you couldn’t fail.

There is a way.  But you have to focus on the right thing. In the case of confidence, knowing what to focus on is more than half the battle. It’s everything!

If you ever feel a loss of confidence or find yourself in the No-Confidence Trap, you need to know how to break out of it. To break out of it, you need to first understand how it works. Basically, you lose your confidence when you focus on the wrong things.  People that lack confidence focus on the outcomes.  They focus on the times they struck out, their mistakes, their failures, and disasters.  Basically, they focus on the things they can’t control. Confident people on the other hand, focus on what they can control, such as taking action or giving their best.  This one little distinction is the key to building your unshakeable confidence and getting back on the saddle again.

In the book, The Emotional Energy Factor: The Secrets High-Energy People Use to Beat Emotional Fatigue , Mira Kirshenbaum writes about the secret of confident people.

Key Take Aways

Here are my key take aways:

• A loss of confidence drains you emotionally. Without confidence you can’t see a way out or you approach things half-heartedly.  When you approach things half-heartedly, you lose.  It’s a downard spiral.
• You can break the No-Confidence Trap if you know how.  The No-Confidence Trap is a vicious cycle: You can’t win without confidence and you can’t get confidence without winning.  However, it’s easy to break out of the No-Confidence Trap, if you know how.
• Focus on what you control. Don’t focus on outcomes.  You can’t control the outcomes for a situation. To build your confidence, you have to focus on what you control, not on what you can’t.  This is the sure-fire way to break out of the No-Confidence Trap and build or rebuild your confidence.

Confidence is the Holy Grail

Kirshenbaum writes:

“In people’s lifelong journey to improve themselves, confidence is the Holy Grail.  With it, you can walk on water.  Without it, you’re soggy toast.  That’s why we all want it.  What gives you more emotional energy than confidence, than knowing that you can step up to the challenge and win?”

With great confidence, comes great results.  But it’s the journey and how you approach things that makes the difference.

"Why Try?"

Kirshenbaum writes:

“Loss of confidence is devastating for our emotional energy.  Without confidence, the two most horrible words in the English language take hold of us: ‘Why try?’  These words are horrible because they’re the beginning of doom for any enterprise we care about, including love.”

Losing your confidence is one way to feel emotionally drained, as if you can’t win.

Focus on What You Control

Kirshenbaum writes:

“The secret of confident people is that they focus on what they know they can do and then they do that in the best way they can.  And they don’t worry about the outcome.  The batter steps up to the plate.  All he can do is keep his eye on the ball and do his best. That’s what all the good hitters do.”

Don’t fall into the No-Confidence Trap.  If you’re asking yourself, “Why try?”, it’s because you’re focusing on the outcomes instead of what you can control.  Don’t focus on outcomes.  Focus on your actions.

My Related Posts

• Confidence is Knowing and Going
• Real and Durable Confidence
• Getting Out of a Slump
• Secrets of Self-Esteem

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Does fear stop you from becoming your best?  Is fear an obstacle to building on your strengths?  Our fear of weaknesses can overshadow our confidence in our strengths.  Our fear of failure can stop us from giving our all.  The ultimate fear that can hold us back is fear of who we really are.

I find that sometimes the most important growth is painful.  One of my mentors has a saying for this "… that’s what growth feels like."  I’m in a challenging environment and I see people fail all the time.  In fact, when people aren’t failing, they aren’t trying hard enough.  There is no failure, only lessons.  Sometimes the most difficult lesson is when somebody finds out they aren’t cut out for the job they’re in.  But even this usually turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  This is where I’ve seen people pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and follow a new path of their strengths.

In the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D., teach us about the fears that limit your potential.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Fear can hold you back.  Fear of weakness, fear of failure, and fear of who you are hold you back from becoming your best.
• Improving weaknesses doesn’t make you great.  Investing in your weaknesses is not the path to greatness.  Fixing your weaknesses only limits your failure, it doesn’t improve your success.
• Strengths are the path to greatness.  Shift from a weakness orientation to a strengths orientation.   The secret to improvement lies in understanding your strengths.  When you follow your strengths and you fail, it might be the wrong time, or the wrong place, or just the start of your journey.
• Leverage and lead with your strengths.  Accept your weak points as is, leverage and lead with your strengths.  Unless you have significant liabilities, in which case, work on your weaknesses but that isn’t enough, it’s more important to find where your strengths work.

3 Fears that Can Hold You Back
According to Buckingham and Clifton, the three fears that hold you back are:

• Fear of weaknesses
• Fear of failure
• Fear of who you are

Fear of Weaknesses
We assume our weaknesses trump our strengths. 

Buckingham and Clifton write:

“For many of us our fear of our weaknesses seems to overshadow our confidence in our strengths.  To use an analogy, if life is a game of cards and each of us has been dealt our hand of strengths and weaknesses, most of us assume that our weaknesses trump our strengths.”

Weaknesses Get Our Attention
We see our weaknesses as opportunities, over our strengths.  That’s the pitfall — assuming that the weakness is an area of opportunity.

Buckingham and Clifton write:

“For example, if we excel at selling but struggle with strategy, it is our difficulty with strategy that gets the attention because an inability to think strategically will surely hurt us somewhere down the line, won’t it?  If we build trusting relationships with ease but falter when it comes to making presentations, we sign up for the ubiquitous public speaking class because public speaking is a prerequisite for success, isn’t it?  Whatever the weakness, whatever the strength is just a strength – to be admired and then simply assumed – but the weakness, ah, the weakness is an ‘area of opportunity.’”

Our Fixation with Weakness is Deeply Rooted
We learn early on to focus on what’s wrong with us, over what’s right with us. 

Buckingham and Clifton write:

“This fixation with weakness is deeply rooted in our education and upbringing.  We presented parents with this scenario: Say your child returns home with the following grades: an A in English, an A in social studies, a C in biology, and an F in algebra.  Which of these grades would you spend the most time discussing with your sons or daughter? Seventy-seven percent of parents chose to focus on the F in algebra, only 6 percent on the A in English, and an even more minuscule number, 1 percent, on the A in social studies.  Obviously, the algebra grade requires some attention because to progress in school and secure a place at a college or university, the child cannot afford to fail a subject.  But the question was phrased quite carefully:  Which of these grades would you spend the most time discussing with your son or daughter?  Despite the demands of today’s education system, does the most time really deserve to be invested in the child’s weakness?”

“All failures are not created equal.  Some are fairly easy to digest, usually those where we can explain away the failure without tarnishing our self-image.  It may sound a little different in kinder-garten (‘Hey, I wasn’t ready!’) than it does in the working world (‘I’m afraid that’s not my specialty’), but the principle is the same.  When the cause of the failure seems to have nothing to do with who we really are, we can accept it.  But some failures stick in our threat and lodge there.  Of this kind the most persistent and the most damaging are those times when we pick out one of our strengths, stake a claim, go all out, and yet still fail.  The anguish that accompanies this kind of failure can be acute.  Do you remember the scene in the film Chariots of Fire where the runner Abrahams turns to his girlfriend after losing a race for which he had prepared diligently and in a stunned whisper confesses, ‘I just don’t think I can run any faster’?”

What If Your Strengths Aren’t Good Enough?
What if your best isn’t good enough? 

Buckingham and Clifton write:

“Whether we are competitive like Abrahams or judge ourselves against our own standards, our sense of failure is most pervasive whenever we reach down, call upon our strengths, and they are found wanting.  Despite society’s well-intentioned advice to ‘try, try again,’ at times like these we can start to feel a little desperate.  ‘I identified a talent, cultivated it into a strength, claimed it, practiced it, and still failed! So where do I turn now?’”

Your Strengths are Your Talents, Not Your Diplomas
It’s easier to point to external validation, than to trust your talents. 

Buckingham and Clifton write:

“In part this explains why, when asked to describe their strengths, people rarely refer to their natural talents.  Instead, they talk about external things that they have gathered during their life, such as certificates and diplomas, experiences and awards.  Here is the ‘proof’ that they have improved themselves, that they have acquired something valuable to offer”"

Don’t Miss the Wonders of Your Strength
What if your best you stays shackled for a lifetime? 

Buckingham and Clifton write:

“We do want to remind you, however, that if you stop investigating yourself for fear of how little you might find, you will miss the wonder of your strengths.  We say ‘remind’ because so many of us take our strengths for granted.  We live with them every day, and they come so easily to us that they cease to be precious.  Like the New Yorker who no longer hears the sirens and the horns, we are so close to our strengths that we don’t see them anymore.”

My Related Posts

• Real and Durable Confidence
• Finding Your Strengths
• Fear of Becoming Who You Truly Are
• Secrets of Self-Esteem
• Why It’s Great to Be Able to Make Mistakes
• Test Your Can’ts
• How To Figure out What You Really Want

Photo by Capture Queen.

Does fear of failure hold you back?  Don’t be the person in your life that holds you back.  Be the first person that picks you up when you fall down.

Perfectionism can get in the way of your best results.  Don’t let it push your off your path.  Mistakes are a part of life.  You can either embrace them and find the lessons, or you can try to avoid them and become a shadow of your potential self.

In Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated, David Burns teaches us why it’s great to be able to make mistakes.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• The make mistakes path is unlimited.  I think contrasting two paths, helps illustrate the point. The fear of failure path is limiting and stressful. The make mistakes and learn path is unlimited.
• Avoiding mistakes limits your growth.  If you operate under a mindset where you can’t take chances or make mistakes, you limit your growth and your experiences. Additionally, you get worse at dealing with mistakes because you always try to avoid them.
• Make mistakes and learn.  If you operate under the mindset that you can make mistakes and learn, you stay in the game, grow and adapt. I think you also get better at dealing with mistakes. This can be anything from your own self-talk, to a support network, to your approaches for learning.
• It’s when you stop getting on your horse, that you slide down.  If you keep getting knocked off your horse, but you keep getting back on, you get stronger, faster, and continue to climb. I think in life you’re either climbing or sliding, and it’s when you stop getting on your horse that you slide down.

Why It’s Great to Be Able to Make Mistakes
Burns writes the following:

1. I fear mistakes because I see everything in absolutist, perfectionist terms — one mistake and the whole is ruined. This is erroneous. A small mistake certainly doesn’t ruin an otherwise fine whole.
2. It’s good to make mistakes because then we learn — in fact, we won’t learn unless we make mistakes. No one can avoid making mistakes — and since it’s going to happen in any case, we may as well accept it and learn from it.
3. Recognizing our mistakes helps us adjust our behavior so that we can get results we’re more pleased with — so we might say that mistakes ultimately operate to make us happier and to make things better.
4. If we fear making mistakes, we become paralyzed — we’re afraid to do or try anything, since we might (in fact, probably will) make some mistakes. If we restrict our activities so that we won’t make mistakes, then we are really defeating ourselves. The more we try and the more mistakes we make, the faster we’ll learn, and the happier we’ll be ultimately.
5. Most people aren’t going to be mad at us or dislike us because we make mistakes — they all make mistakes, and most people feel uncomfortable around “perfect” people.
6. We don’t die if we make mistakes.

My Related Posts

• 13 Negative Motivation Patterns
• 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns
• Fear of Becoming Who You Truly Are
• How To Overcome Resistance
• How Experts Make Decisions

Photo by kaibara87

Is the fear of failure holding you back? Maybe not. Maybe it’s actually the fear of success. In The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, Steven Pressfield writes about how we fear becoming who we truly are.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• That little voice inside that tells you that you’re capable of more is right.
• It’s a path of self-discovery that can sometimes be lonely.
• As you become who you’re really capable of, you’ll lose some friends, but find new ones.

You’re Capable of More
Pressfield writes, “We fear discovering more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us.”

Why Fear Success?
Pressfield writes, “We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. … We will lose our friends and family who will no longer recognize us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.”

But is it really that bad?
Pressfield reveals a surprise, “Of course, this is exactly what happens. But here’s the trick. We wind up in space, but no alone. Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.”

Photo by Violator3.