Quote Analysis – Boldness

“The mind, ever the willing servant, will respond to boldness, for boldness, in effect, is a command to deliver mental resources.” – Norman Vincent Peale

Obama’s book is called “The Audacity of Hope“.  Sir Alan Sugar once told an apprentice “Be bold” when he was hesitating to voice his opinion(In a past comment I also pointed out that not voicing your opinion causes your blood pressure to slightly rise.)  “Go big or go home” is a well-known saying about bringing effervescent potency to something or not doing it at all, leaving out the ineffectual middle-ground.  Here I discuss boldness and the responses associated with it.

Boldness Leads To Rewards Every Time

One key point to set the stage is that boldness is rewarded time and time again.  Before I point out any examples, think about the examples of boldness being exemplified during your day.  Either you or people that you saw or dealt with brought boldness in some fashion.  How did people respond when they did so?  I have seen that the majority of cases where boldness was shown resulted in positive or highly positive results.  A select few resulted in minor negative results in the short-term, but then the results turned out favorably for those dauntless individuals, as they bounced up from their mistake with vigor.  This is doable because actual errors are very minor entities, but being scared to make them is a much larger issue.

To Stick Your Neck Out Or Not

Think about the people that you see praised for their efforts.  The majority of the time, if you take away the boldness they implemented to do something quicker than others, or stick their neck out in public, or do something that the others around them wouldn’t have even risked doing if left for 10 hours, they would then have very little to be praised for.  Example after example shows the bold person moving ahead.  Ask a question in class and you are now more likely to do well in the class because

1. you get your question answered

2. you show everyone in the class that you are looking to pass

3. you show the teacher that you value your position as a student with an opportunity

4. you asked what 10 other people wanted to ask, and they now partially look up to you for that, and are more likely to study with you or help you out

That all came from asking a question.

Boldness Represents Acceptance Of Accountability

Connecting back to the quote at the beginning of this article, boldness is an indirect signal that you will be providing mental resources, and are allowing yourself to be held accountable for what you are about to do.  Accountability is a large part of boldness, or else everyone would be bolder and not back up their initial claims.

Communication/Discussion Example

You are interested in jewelry, and have your own jewelry site.  You are walking through a bookstore and pass someone reading a jewelry book.  Your level of boldness determines what comes of that situation.  People who are not bold won’t even see the opportunity there, or will pass by the person and feel quite disappointed for not talking to them.  A bold individual, or a regular individual that decides to be bold, will create something of that situation.  Talking to the book reader could present the opportunity to bring someone to your jewelry site, find out information about jewelry, get a testimonial, find a member for a future meeting, etc.

When you don’t take this opportunity, there is only one person in the world who will know of your weakness, and that will be yourself, which will result in disappointment.  If you see the person reading a book on something that relates to your own site, but don’t mention anything, he has no way of knowing all the ideas floating in your head.  Boldness is the separator between opportunities created and opportunities missed.

Bold Social Networking In Public

We can see that people are becoming more and more connected through numerous technologies and methods of socialization.  At the same time, people remain very hesitant to say what is on their mind in public.  The 1 bold person out of 10 people is rewarded with tremendous amounts of attention and communication, but what about those other 9 people?  Everyone is able to see what lavish rewards bold people get, but not everyone skips right into presenting themselves equally as bold.  Keeping in mind the wonderful benefits that bold people get should be enough to motivate emulation of their action.

Here I will run through a list of boldness examples that come to my mind:

1. Zappos CEO Tony was on the show The Apprentice a few weeks back.  It is key to realize that it is just as likely that he was not on the show, and that another individual from another company was in his place; however, he was likely provided the opportunity to appear on the show, and boldly went through the procedure to heavily endorse his brand.  Boldness like this is not to be ignored.  Another person placed in his position might have gotten scared of not representing his brand properly, or some other self-created fear.

2. The first person who responds to a question or comment gets the most feedback and chance for learning.  On sites, the first comment on an article tends to be viewed and analyzed the most.  Someone who lacks boldness might end up taking long enough on their weak comment to have it show up as the 5th comment, so they will lose both on the listing of their comment and the potency of their presented opinion.

3. In real-time chat, people who lack boldness are easily identified, as their factual responses come quite slowly, and they use qualifiers in their statements to protect from damaging the other person, which actually ends up damaging their message transmission

4. On Twitter, Ashton Kutcher has currently created a pseudo-battle between himself and CNN Breaking News to become the first account with 1 million followers.  Although there is no relation between his writing material and that of CNN breaking news, and the battle was completely created out of thin air, his boldness in creating hype around it has netted him hundreds of thousands of followers on his account.  While another person is probably quite disappointed for hesitating, Ashton has gotten more followers in a few days than most will ever get on Twitter.

5. The musician John Mayer made a comment on his page that said “Some girl just knocked on my car window at a red light and handed me her demo. That’s how you DO IT!!”  He showed exuberance at the fact that someone had the boldness to present their material to him directly.  That quick bold action is worth more than a month of generic processed action with no vigor behind it.  Had the girl seen John, and then hesitated, and then gotten too afraid to give him her demo, one huge opportunity would have been lost.

A Little Boldness Will Set You Apart

Boldness is quite rare in our times, which is why it is so easy to stand out.  A small action can propel you up in an instant.  Hesitation is the enemy of what boldness can be.  When you hesitate to do something, you have made a choice to give up any benefits that boldness would have provided.  Hesitating, even for a second, is a conscious decision made by you that communicates your giving up of any shot of acting boldly.

Implement Your Idea Boldly Or Consequences Show Up

As an ending note, this should be one that will prompt you towards boldness.  There has certainly been a time when you had an idea and someone else had an idea that was very similar to it, if not identical.  They were bold and released it before you.  They ignored the possibility that it wouldn’t be received well, because they knew that that was irrelevant, and ignored any nonconstructive criticism, because it was not transmitted with good intent.  They then received accolades and kudos for their effort, while you got nothing for being afraid of the backlash, disappointment, feedback, and other issues that were made large in your mind, but were actually the smallest problems one could imagine.  Don’t let that happen again.

Tagged as: accountability, hesitation