How do you fare with taking risks?Do you learn from your mistakes?Are you risk adverse or are you a risk-taker? Whatever you answered above, I’m sure you like many people you have taken risks whether by choice or enforced and felt they were either big mistakes or the best decision ever made. But how do we try and change our perceptions about risk-taking and making potentially big mistakes? Most of us were brought up being encouraged to take chances, stepping outside our comfort zone, stepping into the unknown, and yet we often take less risks the older we get as our fear of failure seems to increase. Why is this? What changes in us? What makes us more risk adverse? Let’s look at what risk feels like in the first place. Is it a calculated risk or is it a risk you are willing to take with the odds stacked
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Change! The definition being to make or become different; alter; to replace with or exchange for another to change; to transform or convert or to be transformed or converted. Most of us resist change, particularly if we aren’t in control or part of that change process. There are some of us who embrace change and see change as being an opportunity rather than a nuisance. If we aren’t prepared for change then how can we embrace it with confidence? There’s a lot to be said about staying put, remaining in our little cocoon, our comfort zone, safe, or appearing safe. However, we aren’t standing-still are we? We are going backwards because most other people are changing and moving forward. You may feel we don’t really have a choice, change is inevitable and we have to think positively about change itself, how we might change and how this might affect us,
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Often, we are faced with challenges which derail us sending us into a downward spiral of negativity and hopelessness. When this happens, we can’t stop the feeling of impending gloom or doom. We find it hard to focus on any strands of positivity. I’m sure like me you come across people who always seem to be and remain positive despite the challenges they face. In fact, I would go as far as saying that those with the most challenges and dire circumstances seem to be the most determined and positive people I’ve ever met. But where do they get it from? Is it learned, is it inherent in us, were we always like this or did it materialise because of our circumstances? Alternatively, perhaps it’s a choice with positive people; they decide to choose the positive option or is it something they work on? I wonder how anyone with continued
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The ‘F’ Word! What is it about the ‘F’ word that we hate? The word failure is seeped with emotions, stress, memories which can trigger so many responses from us – one of them is flee! Yes, we flee from potential failure, but why? Just the mere thought of failing can bring about so many feelings within us of our own inabilities, inadequacies, that we want to avoid at all costs. And yet failure whilst difficult, you could argue is a definite, a certainty isn’t it? Failure involves us stepping outside our comfort zone, doing things we don’t feel totally confident in doing, taking risks whether large or small. We avoid facing or taking these risks because we fear failure. And yet, we know that taking risks will by default, regardless of whether we succeed or fail, help us grow in confidence. With the ‘at least we tried’ mentality! As
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Wow! Talk about a leading question, however, the reason I wanted to cover this today was because it has cropped up a couple of times with various people I’ve spoken to recently which led me to think there are a few ‘schools of thought’ out there and perhaps it was worth mentioning these to gauge your thoughts and to get you thinking about whether your confidence is where you want it to be and if not what you might be able to do about it from now on. It is commonly believed that confidence isn’t something that can be learned, like learning how to drive a car, but that it’s more of a state of mind. If we work on the basis that it’s based on our state of mind, then we know confidence comes more from how we feel about ourselves. Our own self-belief and how we feel about
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