When the landscape is unfamiliar, fear can set in. It's also where opportunities to discover and grow kick in. (Illustration credit: Jon Klassen)
Your work.
It’s probably something you're great at, some place where you shine bright.
Which is to say – you do what you know and you do it well.
With that kind of knowledge, chances are you tend to stay in your lane.
And you stay there in order to champion your expertise (that’s a much easier narrative).
The inverse of this is fear of the unknown.
Or, in a results-driven world, fear of failure.
But what if that so-called fear was just opportunity in disguise?
* * * * *
What if you hinted at the idea that among all of the things you could possibly deliver, discovery just might be the most important?
Instead of loading your pitches for clients and customers with buzzwords of the best-in-class variety you showed a bit of vulnerability, perhaps even came clean by revealing that you didn’t have a trademarked approach to guarantee predictable results from rote formulas.
Instead of issuing the next RFP (or responding to it) with restrictions that actually stymie creative solutions, what if it went like something like this:
Here’s our challenge. We’re ill-equipped to solve it alone. Admittedly, we don’t know what we don’t know. We’re asking for your insight and expertise based on a track record of solving similar challenges. Might we talk?
Confront what you’re really afraid of: is it being vulnerable? Being perceived somehow as less smart or running out-of-step with a crowded field of thought leaders? Are you content faking it until you make it – or, worse, get found out?
* * * * *
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been there and done that.
And so you’re veering outside of your lane, taking some calculated risks, and embracing a journey filled with insights that provide an interesting and highly viable set of outcomes that are all but impossible to predetermine in a plan. (Because plans change and course correction is necessary. Which is why you’re more interested in roadmaps that provide multiple avenues -- and unexpected detours too -- that help you get to your destination.)
Perhaps you’re finding out fear isn’t that scary after all.
Maybe fear is just another four-letter word.
You're considering it as a prompt that really means ‘get ready, this is going to stretch you.’
And by embracing fear for what it is, perhaps you’re starting to realize that your comfort zone is really your complacency zone.
Complacency: shouldn’t that be your fear?
* * * * *
If there is anything else to be afraid of, perhaps it is being average.
Or not realizing your potential.
Or intentionally foregoing meaningful experiences and new relationships because they are unfamiliar.
Or blending in to the point that you’re indistinguishable from the crowd.
If fear is your opportunity to grow, then you must equally consider what it means to play it safe.