We all know the generic ways that people do certain things.  If you want to work out your biceps, a regular way that many people do it is to go to the gym or use their weights at home and curl them repeatedly until the work out is done.  Now, let’s say that is boring to you, but you find it very enjoyable to hang all your clothes on opposite ends of a broomstick and curl that instead.  Should you feel weird for doing this?

Certainly not.  All over the internet, or if you ask someone face-to-face, when you ask for advice, people will most often tell you to follow the most generic path.  This is not a bad thing, but it doesn’t reinforce any other atypical ways to do things.

Wacky Actions Trumps Non-Actions Every Time

However, here is what you want to think.  Is it better that, for the example above, you work out using the clothes hung on opposite ends of a broomstick, or that you don’t work out at all?  Sometimes it does come down to this.  You may not find the generic way of doing something interesting, and wouldn’t do it at all, but would do it another way that gets the same results and leaves you fulfilled.

You Might Already Be Outside The Box

In these types of situations, always do your atypical thing and don’t worry about how it comes off.  If you like to shop for groceries in a very circuitous fashion by walking around the fruits and vegetables section repeatedly so you don’t miss things, or read books in random order by chapters you feel like reading, or any other example like this, remember that you are at least reading the book, or at least getting groceries to make healthy food.

Maybe It Is What makes You Special

We all have things that we like to do, that get us into action mode, and which we know are beneficial for our long-term growth.  Maybe, many year s ago, Michael Dell from Dell Corporation liked to use a typewriter to type documents to send instead of a word processor(I just made this up), or maybe some other notable figure of our current time had/has wacky eating habits or communication habits.  They might have looked atypical then, but these figures didn’t care, and now some of their atypical habits are labeled their “secrets to success”.

A flowing river is one of the coolest things a person can see and hike or walk around, but an area where the water is stopped accumulates insects and dirt and lacks anything appealing.  Stick to what keeps you active and moving and thinking.

In this post of the 12 days of posts, I want to bring up a great lyric from Jay-Z that sends a wonderful message.  He said:

I dumbed down for my audience and doubled my dollars.  They criticized me for it yet they all yell “holla”.

I think there is something very interesting with this lyric and the lyrics he followed with.  He was basically telling his audience of the rap, who are the people listening to the words, that he lowered the intelligence level of his lyrics for them, and ended up with more profit because of it.

Your Confidence Level Is Always Tested

I think this is very bold.  Sean(Jay-Z) was not afraid of offending his audience at all, as he had a bigger message to present.  This is big in the same sense as telling someone that they are making a big mistake without worry that they will take offense.  It takes a lot of confidence to go at your audience or friends in this way.  People who do this are destined for big things.

Think With A Business Sense

Back to the concept from the lyric, I want to discuss the actual message he was presenting.  He said that he dumbed his message down and profited more from this change.  Any business person knows that money is what a business runs on and expands with, and so doubling your profit is a no-brainer in a business sense.  In a later lyric, Sean says that he would rather rap at a more intelligent level, but that he didn’t do as well financially with that type of output.

Be The One People Notice

There is a lot of intelligence and boldness in what he said and did.  What separates him from the average rapper, in the same way that something could separate you from the average person?  He wasn’t afraid of losing out by putting a message that was honest in his mind out in the public eye.  This is exactly what we all want to see more of in society, and since so few do it, the few that do become stars or well-known figures.

“I dumbed down for my audience and doubled my dollars.”  He was telling Listener A and Listener B “I lowered the intelligence level of my message because you were less interested in it than some low-level short-term entertainment, so I switched to what you want.”

You May Have A Couple Of Undesirable Steps Along The Way

There is another reason why his response was very smart.  If you want to do a big thing, but can’t do the big thing until you have a certain amount of support or funding or material possessions, “the ends justify the means”, and so you can do like Sean did in giving people what they wanted, sacrificing his own interest in what he wanted to put out, and once he became huge, he could put out any thoughtful message he wanted and millions would be there to hear it.

I used to not like this type of method, but I fully support it now.  The road to your destination is never straight.

I sure have a lot of topics I want to cover, but one that requires no effort from me is of running in the rain.  I have done it a few times recently, and it has been a wonderful experience.  I have a couple of take-away messages from the activity, and I like talking about this subject, mostly because it involves nature and healthy material.

As The Rain Drops

When you run in the rain, you get cooled off by the water that drops.  It was raining very lightly during my recent runs at the park, so I wasn’t getting drenched, but that could be just as good.  After a while, when you would normally start to sweat during a standard run, your sweat blends with the rain to create water that feels clean and cools you down.

While I was running, there were very few people around the park, as there were only a few walking their dogs, or standing around, or walking slowly.  I saw very little activity, but I am sure there was a lot of activity at local gyms(folks missing the event).  Regardless, I was near the end of my run and saw another guy like me who was running, and who seemed to be just about finished.  We started running as a team, and making jokes, and it was good because he made up for the total lack of activity elsewhere in the park.  His name was Max and I might run into him again sometime.

You Can Find People Like You

One message to take away from this is that there are people like you out there.  I don’t lose hope that there are those like Max out there, who bring energy and a cool attitude to the table.  I see/meet them once in a while, and it is refreshing.  You have a certain way you look at people, or a specific interest like salsa dancing or geography, and so you can’t lose hope that there are people who can connect with you quite well in this category.  They are out there.  Also, you will not find these people if you don’t put out your interests in practice.  If you hide your salsa dancing passion, the person with that interest who you could have met will not know, and you won’t end up connecting.  This is why you have to exhibit your interests regardless of the response of many, because you then open up opportunity with a few.

Your Area Likely Has More For You To Use

Another message here is to use what you have.  There are people in the houses close to the park I ran at that I am sure are obese, or have health or stress problems, or so on, that would be in a completely different situation if they crossed the street every two days and walked or ran at the park.  Instead of this, some of them look at being close to the park as annoying because it brings slightly more traffic around.  We have to take note of what we have available to us, because it could be the world to someone else.

Some Adventures Are Freeing

Lastly, when you run in the rain, you forget almost everything else.  You feel invigorated from the cooling effects of the rain water, as well as the effects of running, and you get that natural feeling that you can’t get in most other exercise scenarios.  If it rains in your area at some time, I suggest you try this out.  If you are not interested in specifically running in the rain, then I would suggest you try out some activity around your area that you haven’t done much of before.

Added Message

Let me know what you think about running in the rain, or a similar activity that you do.  Also, if anyone with a site with more than 100 readers is interested in a guest post, let me know in a comment here, or through my contact form/e-mail/Twitter.

The moment the seducer hesitates, the charm is broken, because we become aware of the process, of their deliberate effort to seduce us, of their self-consciousness.  (Robert Greene, 48 Laws Of Power)

Some others love what you create, whether it is a charming scenario, an event involving many people, or a story that resonates, because then in the vast nothingness, there is your “somethingness”.  The goal of what you create is to seduce the subject, bringing them closer due to your very presence.  Any moments that don’t fit into your seductive plans can render them fruitless, because there has to be a continuous pull in place, or the process is given away.

Magic Is About The Unknown

It is somewhat like a magic trick losing its worth once the audience has an idea of how it is done.  The pull of the trick is the unknown in its process.  The pull of your seductive efforts is the unknown thought process of yours that others want to figure out.  Any stop, lack of boldness, or switch in your plan, will cut the pulling “rope”.

See The Rope

If this is so simple, why do many fail at seduction time and time again?  One reason is not seeing the rope in the first place.  If you don’t understand how the dynamics of seduction lead to complete loss when hesitation kicks in, you are more likely to let it occur and wonder what happened.

Take A Look Around

Since boldness and seduction go hand-in-hand, you can look at the most persuasive/seductive/compelling people you know, and realize that they are bold on a continuous basis, which draws in their audience or subjects.  Who are some speakers you have enjoyed speeches from in the past?  Maybe you liked a speech by Richard Dawkins because he had a specific viewpoint about religion or humanity, and defended it as well as he possibly could.  Maybe you like seeing Fareed Zakaria interview people on his show due to your view that he doesn’t back down from getting certain questions asked.  As a last example, maybe you are drawn into Malcolm Gladwell’s books because of the way he keeps sending messages across that leave your viewpoint changed.

The Drawing Factor Is Easily Lost

If any of those people, or others who are able to be quite persuasive, are not consistent in their boldness or consistency, they will lose that spark that draws you to them.  If they make a mistake that shows that they were weak in some fashion, their audience/viewers/readers will start wondering about the things they have said or presented, and their charm may no longer draw as many to them.

Seduction Is Widespread

Where are your seducing skills made useful?  They are used in attracting an appealing mate, or in drawing a customer to you, or in making a sale, or acquiring a job, or drawing people toward the event or creation you have made, along with other examples.  The one who is not able to maintain the boldness plus consistency combination doesn’t know how much they are missing out on because they only notice that people are not drawn to them and their ideas.  There is a quote that says you don’t know what you have until you lose it, but it is also true that you don’t know what you don’t have until you either get it later or figure it out by analyzing others that have it.  This seductive quality is one of those items.

Article in audio form:

This concept is a terrible one but is worth taking into mind.  When you do real well, or do something you consider “good”, or show off your amazing skills, or present something you have earned, you will almost always get some sort of punishment sent at you.  This is how human nature works.

Parenting Example

One great example of this type relates to good parenting.  Some of the best parents are not appreciated by their children for many years of their youth, until they one day realize how the great guidance they got placed them in a solid position.  Many children will do whatever they can to battle against the care that great parents try to provide, resisting help with creating a routine, and getting angry at rules that help protect them and protect their use of time.  This is counter-intuitive to most great parents, but they realize that the children will one day see the worth of their actions.  A child might slam their door one day, but the important point is that they figure out that their wrongdoing is to be corrected, and that they are lucky to have someone to help correct it.

Pointing Out Faults

Let’s say you are looking to help someone clear out a bad habit they have of getting angry and loud with people when things don’t go their way.  If you bring them a list of times they have performed this bad habit, present a routine for them to follow to be able to release their feelings in a calmer way, and encourage them to follow these, there is a good chance they will resist this directly or indirectly.  (Speaking of which, so much of society is indirect that it is a joke.  Instead of saying point #1 and point #2, we will dance around a topic because we want to ignore the real issue.)

Back to the example, there is a good chance the person will take offense to your telling them about their bad habit, and will think you are thinking about them as out of control whenever you are with them.  Your effort to help, in this case, can completely backfire.   You get all the negatives, until possibly many months later when the person internally realizes their problem.

Basketball Example

Another example I am more than glad to point out relates to my latest basketball injuries.  The last four times I have gotten hurt playing basketball, it has been because I beat the defender with my speed and he had to foul me hard to stop me from heading toward the basket and taking an easy shot.  I obviously will have to adjust my play style to avoid future injuries, but this example relates to the message of this piece.  It is easy to foul someone when you are not up to par as a player, but the difficulty lies in not punishing someone for doing something well.

When you do something great, someone somewhere will try to knock you back down.  This is because your show of skill represents your success, which in comparison to someone else, lessens their position or feeling of self-worth, and so they try to damage you in order to return things to as they were.  This is a normal lower-level response, and you have to get used to it if you are doing great things.

Also, remember that there is a potential scenario at play.  You may be competing somewhere below your level, and so it doesn’t make sense to push hard and receive the punishment.  If you are playing tennis against a 6th grader as an adult, playing hard will just make you look foolish.  In the same way, when battling against others lower than your experience or skill level, in any competition or walk of life, you want to take it easy and then return to those at your level.  There’s no use getting insulted or hurt or something of that type when you have nothing to gain if you win.

I was reading a book about courage that said that bravery and fear are both wrong.  Fear inhibits action and bravery lacks rational thought.  It said that a person would want to do a month of the opposite of what they have been doing to partially cancel out fear on both ends, and then you can be more fearless, while still having courage.  Someone who is a bit too bold, if that is even possible, would then benefit from spending some time analyzing and bringing up their fears.

Unfamiliarity Activates Your Amygdala

In another book I read, called Iconoclast(affiliate link), it mentioned that your amygdala in your brain goes off when you see something unfamiliar, like some one’s dog that just jumped on my leg while I’m writing this at the park.  On that note, it has been interesting that the items I write about sometimes occurs while I am writing them, but that is also because I write about mindset occurrences that happen repeatedly through the day.

Back to the amygdala, it remains quiet as long as it sees familiar objects.  If it sees something unfamiliar, it kicks in and you are out of your comfort zone.  This relates to fear in that we are fearful of the unknown.  The unknown represents possible danger or unnecessary risk to us.

Change Relates To Fear

If I change the colors on the side of this site, it could cause some of your amygdalas to get a little aroused, causing slight discomfort until you became accustomed to the new colors.  That wouldn’t be helpful for maintaining a product’s brand, but is helpful in the realm of challenging and staying out of a comfort zone.  Every change you see incites a small amount of fear until you figure out or rationalize why it occurred.

Fears Get Inflated In Our Minds To Unrealistic Proportions

Returning to the fear concept, when you let it be the dominant factor in your thoughts, your action in that aspect is reduced to nothing.  Any action you see others take means their level of bravery there was higher than their level of fear.  One of my interests is rapping.  I searched on Google for “personal development rapper” and got 0 results.  Due to the negative connotations rapping has, my motivational or informational raps would have to swim against a river current to have their intended impact.  Also, fear of association with a “puerile” activity in relation to impact with readers of the site, or future academic admissions personnel, or future business prospects, was enough to cause abeyance of that plan as of yet.   In that sense, fear is an in-activator.

Also, keep in mind that your biggest fears don’t materialize the way, or as bad as, you thought they would.

After reading Luciano‘s article about tackling any issue with a list of 100, which was one of the many articles in his recent Ebook containing some of the best material from Litemind in the last 2 years, there was no choice but to create one about boldness. I have written about boldness in this quote analysis, and this guest post, and so it was natural that it would be the topic of concern here.

This list is a set of actions and communications that I feel represent showing boldness to ourselves and others.  Although you might want to pick out a couple of items on the list to try for yourself, an item or two on the list might spark your thinking about something you feel it is time for you to act upon.  I would rather you try one item from the list, or relate one item on the list to something that comes to your mind that you then take action on, than to only read the whole list through.  The following is 100 ways to show boldness through your actions and communications:

#1

1. Raise your hand to ask a question in a class or meeting.
2. Run or compete for a position that you don’t meet the full requirements of.
3. Tell someone what one of the flaws they can correct is(in a friendly manner).
4. Lead a group of people toward a certain goal.
5. Set a pre-defined grade goal for yourself on an upcoming test.
6. Cook a meal for more people than just yourself.
7. E-mail the author of a book to make a point about a concept in it.
8. Talk to someone at the gas station.
9. Try to outdo someone at what they are best at.
10. Call up or e-mail an old friend that you perceive as more successful than you.

11. Voice your opposition against a rule or regulation that you feel is not appropriate.
12. Show your interest in a member of the opposite sex.
13. Exercise hard enough to push yourself slightly out of your comfort zone as far as health
14. Delete files on your computer that you have kept there for a long while out of uncertainty regarding whether you want to keep them or not.

#14

15. Tell your roommate about a problem you have with them with the intent of working out a cooperative solution.
16. Make a list article if you have not done so recently to show others you are willing and able to do that as well.
17. Turn someones offer down when you know it doesn’t suit you both well in the longer term.
18. Quit an activity that you have done for a long period of time which hasn’t shown you enough benefits, regardless of the lost time fallacy.
19. Drive into an unknown area without GPS and explore.
20. Contact a professor/researcher to see how you can contribute your ability.

21. Perform a surprise action without informing the audience beforehand, and without explaining yourself afterwards.
22. Correctly use vocabulary words like resplendent, pernicious, and auspicious in your daily communications.
23. Conquer a fear by making sure the fear is right in front of you before you squash it, so that the memory of success is etched in.
24. Offer to help someone before they ask you for the help.
25. Wear clothing that you have that is not of the type that you normally wear, providing others with a different perspective of you.

#28

26. Play music that you like, but usually refrain from showing people out of embarrassment, the next time you are able to show others in your car or a public setting.
27. Set a goal and accomplish it without informing anyone.
28. Try a food that you have avoided in the past, and continue trying one at a time until you find something you can’t help but add to your diet.
29. Create a word or phrase that people can attribute back to you, like David Allen’s “GTD” for Getting Things Done or “skuzz factor” for the amount of plaque on your teeth, and the various coinages of other well-known individuals.
30. E-mail someone in a big position with a powerful essay that could influence their attitude toward something they are currently doing.

#40

31. Remove a protective barrier/buffer that you normally maintain, such as sunglasses you wear to cover up an insecurity, or a defensive attitude you always use when in public.
32. Take responsibility for a task or project that will take a month, knowing that it could require your assistance and effort at various times during the month.
33. Take a shower with no hot water to give yourself a sense that you could handle if the luxury of heated water was lost.
34. Take someone else’s work or creation and build off of it in a way that they may or may not approve of, letting them know you meant no ill-will.
35. Don’t hesitate in what you are doing, regardless of errors along the way.
36. Leverage the positive influence of multiple people to do something by first placing the expectations they all have of you in your mind, tackling the task, and then completing it knowing they will all be glad they trusted you would follow through.
37. Go to your local dentist or other medical individuals to get teeth, blood pressure, moles, or other components checked out.
38. Tell a customer the story about how you started your business.
39. Do the items that you have allowed yourself to think others are holding you back on, to show yourself that they didn’t even matter in the process.
40. Apply for some competition like a writing contest, marathon, Jeopardy, scholarship, graphics design contest, or something similar.

41. Go further than you normally go in your running, or business marketing, or product improvement.
42. Show up early to a function even if you might be one of the only ones there, if only to prepare or talk to one of the other early-goers.
43. Do something as soon as you find out about it, eliminating the middle-man period of time between stimulus and your response.

#41

44. Tell a person or people something about you that you don’t normally reveal.
45. Go into a secluded space in a park or hidden area and loudly yell phrases you have been wanting to yell loudly.
46. Express happiness to others in the face of adversity.
47. Ask yourself why you have a certain bad habit, think about the source, and see if you can find a way to adjust the habit or replace it.
48. Show a high level of self-control, not giving in to impulses below a level higher than you normally set.
49. Filter less of what you normally say in order to seem like a more competent individual than you are.
50. Set up a meeting or event at a time days or weeks into the future.

#56

51. Proudly announce your name when introducing yourself to someone.
52. Challenge someone else in an effort to improve them in one of their skills.
53. Turn down or don’t accept a compliment that you feel was said in order to manipulate you.
54. Read a book that you don’t feel you would agree with.
55. Wear or style or cut your hair in a different way.
56. Dress professionally to let others know you have success on your mind, even if they may judge you in some jealous way for it.
57. Take a financial risk that could leave you in dire straits if you don’t couple it with productive action.
58. Remain the “bigger man” toward, or ignore, someone who is out of line until they adjust their behavior or go their own way.
59. Send an e-mail to someone so powerful or influential that it will be good if you get a response and fine if you don’t, because you will then still be less likely to hesitate in e-mailing influential figures closer to your level.
60. Continue when others tell you to quit only because they quit at the point you are at.

61. Toss aside any negative thoughts that come to your mind while you are working and/or producing material.
62. Provide your response to a situation before others, even if it makes them look bad in comparison.
63. Communicate directly with people who have a hand in your success so that you aren’t surprised by some negative outcome that could come from your lack of engagement.

#64

64. Tell someone you are going to read a book, read the book within a short period of time, and then tell them you read it and give them a summary.
65. In a social situation, make a joke or statement that drastically reduces tension.
66. Tell someone what you perceive their strengths to be.
67. Absorb change the minute it comes into your periphery.
68. Set a goal and then defend the time you set for work on the goal from external distractions/interruptions.
69. Take note of the jealousy others have of your position without letting it into your ego.
70. Switch your cell phone answering machine message to one that is more professional than your peers currently think you are.

#73

71. Take part in an event where something that you are in the minority about is one of the vital skills/traits involved, making you the odd one of the group.
72. Show your competitor something you have succeeded on.
73. Get some desk or backyard plants/herbs/fruit plants and maintain them regardless of local conditions.
74. Create a collage picture of a group of people you know that know each other and send it to all of them.
75. Join your local Toastmasters public speaking group and develop your message.
76. Do something that you normally avoid doing because you feel it is beneath you.
77. Work toward your career passion with a loose back-up plan(might be called reckless boldness).
78. Create a how-to video or document on a process that you have done numerous times.
79. Be the most outgoing dancer at a dance/night club.
80. Start a project at your place of employment that leaves your boss no choice but to promote you due to your exemplary competency.

81. Look at a tough time in your past, see what the value from it was, and then tell others a story about that time, including the tough parts.
82. Respond to others with definite and resolute statements, as opposed to weak postponement-related phrases and sounds.
83. Write a page about what the reality of your days is like without covering any parts up with excuses.

#84

84. Possibly with another person, find a tree you can climb and go a small amount further up than you would normally see yourself going.
85. Tell a curious person what your passion is instead of details about activities you have done that you were not interested in.
86. Correct a verbal mistake someone makes when you see that it affects how you perceive their message.
87. Question someone on how their past successes are relevant to them in the current environment and time.
88. Show appreciation to others for what they have helped you with, even if they have wronged you in other ways.
89. Announce your past successes when relevant to describe your reputation without worrying about intimidating others.
90. Adopt some type of restricted or structured diet(vegetarian or vegan or high-spinach et al) that suits you better and let others know when they are offering you food that doesn’t fit into it.

91. Apologize to someone you maligned in the past.
92. Sing along with a song when others are around.
93. Create a motivational quote of your own that you later use to motivate others, and also tell them that you made it, such as:

Head toward the finish line or watch your competitor cross it. – Armen Shirvanian

94. Remind others of a large-scale problem they might like to forget or ignore, with the intent to elicit spreading of a message.
95. Do the hard part yourself, and leave the easy parts for others to fill in.

#98

96. Compare yourself to successful figures when you are communicating.
97. Do your part to make more sales even when other co-workers have slowed down their efforts and thus are at risk of unemployment.
98. Travel to a worthwhile location in another city, county, state, or country, and then present others with pictures of your travel when you return.
99. Read a book that you feel is slightly above your level of reading comprehension.
100. Don’t hesitate to implement a good idea.

“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”  This quote represents why you need to stick to some passion you have and maintain it.  If you don’t have a foundation based on something you adhere to, you will be too weak to avoid getting stuck on any “good deal” that shows up.  Once you are grounded in some routine or set of procedures, and assign them a high priority, you have a protection against outside forces that would take you from your focused state to a state of confusion or addiction.

What You Stand For Will Provide You With Power

Once you pick something that you represent or stand for, you will end up putting a lot of work into defending it.  This work is returned to you as power.  When you start your gardening business every day at 7 AM, regardless of whether customers are there or not, people see that you have a higher priority set than most, as you adhere to something you have planned to accomplish through obstacles and new problems.  People will start to remember you as the person who is always there at 7 AM, which represents that you have all other parts of life under control, in order to make it in time each day.

Until You Stand For Something, People Will Assume You Are Confused

People quickly check what you stand for when you discuss with them, and if you don’t stand for something, they will start to wonder if things in your existence are currently too much for you to handle.  This is based on the assumption that a person who stands for something has the rest of their efforts under control.  Sean Carter said that his priorities are “honesty, loyalty, friends, and then wealth”.  When someone hears this, they know that Sean will stand for honesty, and avoid or punish people who are dishonest to him.  Standing for something means responding in a corrective fashion to others who try to affect the validity or value of that “something”.

Your Foundation Allows Others To Lean On You

The impact of you standing for something means that others are able to lean on you for support.  As you defend and protect your item or interest, others will absorb those qualities, and also benefit from seeing a person like you who isn’t confused about your priorities.  If you are looking for that self-esteem boost you get from bringing positive change to others, set your foundation in place, and the others you are to help will come directly to you for support.

Take a look at the friends you have who are the most important to you, as well as the ones who have helped you the most, and think for a minute about how you met them.  Most of our initial contacts were chance encounters in a public place, and it may have been just as likely that we would have not made the contact.  Think about all the things you have done and worked on with certain people, and imagine if you had not met them through a random encounter.  This thought solidifies the concept behind why you want to get to know more people.

Your Close Friendships Started Because You Risked Starting Them

You have some friends that you have spent time with for years.  You’ve gone here or there with them, tried things that were new for you and them at the same time, and have a historical time path of all these occurrences.  In your mental timeline is a long set of events that you would not have partaken in if those specific people did not bring them up or agree to join.  You might not have taken this car-ride, or gone to this meeting, or went to this sports match, or started this business venture, had it not been for them.

Create New Branch Points

Building off of this, you have the opportunity to create new branch encounters.  Each one has the potential to become another mental timeline you have of events or items you took part in with one person.  Networking events are so popular due to these random, or sometimes completely planned, encounters.  Adding a new branch provides you with an added selection of opportunities that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

People In Public Are Waiting Opportunities

Next time you are at a public place where you normally stay quiet and “go through the motions”, think of how one of the people in your view could be as valuable to you in a few years as a person you met a few years ago that you appreciate as a person in your current regular network.  You want to think of it like the opportunities you can get will look something like the two example possibilities in this flowchart:

Worry comes from uncertainty, but uncertainty is not possible when you are the one leading the course of events.  You can filter out unnecessary worry by taking charge in day-to-day scenarios.  It might seem like there is not much room available to get into a leadership position, but the percentage of individuals who take that leap is quite low.  Here I discuss the benefits of such a decision, as well as the inverted scenario in place.

Advantages Go Straight To The Leader

Once you take the initiative to run the show, it is up to you to assess the direction it heads.  Your worry is reduced since the only uncertainty can come from competing thoughts in your own mind.  Your blood pressure won’t rise when a change comes up, because you would be the one making that change.  Your cortisol and norepinephrine levels won’t shoot up, because stress and fear don’t tend to originate from activities you purposefully choose to do.  You will be able to manage your time, or as Celes from Embrace Living said in her podcast, lead yourself, because time plans will be in your control.

Leading Should Be The Only Option That Makes Sense

That should be enough of a reason to motivate you to take initiative in leading a group/team/pack.  As your health is your number one priority, acting pusillanimously when the option to take charge arises may start to seem like it isn’t even an option anymore.  Many people who you think of as risk-takers or bold leaders are at a point where they don’t even make a large decision to run the show, because they see all the negatives that come with the opposite, and make what is in their minds an obvious decision.

You want to get to the point where falling back and letting another person lead will feel as foolish as eating spoiled food or running into a wall.  Until then, it will seem like some people are amazing at making the right decisions over and over.

The Inverted Scenario

The item that works counter-intuitively to our thoughts is that the ones who take the leadership risks and put themselves in the spotlight are actually at lower risk of problems, since they have a foundation behind them.  We often think they are more likely to get the worst when problems arise, which is true, but they also have the ability to delegate or mitigate such problems up to the point where a manageable equilibrium state is reached.

The real risks are on the other end of the spectrum, where anxiousness about what the leaders will do or not do leads to the health issues discussed above, and the future remains an unknown entity since control has been given away.  There is a reason government officials don’t give up their position unless they get a better one or have made a severe mistake, because they know that their position in essence provides them with all that they need to maintain longevity and vigor.