"Trust in your next step more than you fear the fall" - Futurist Jim Carroll
What's holding you back?
Why are you not trying?
Why are you frozen?
These are some of the questions I've asked myself of others as I began to work on the Mediocrity series of books. In them, I've been trying to capture what it is that holds some people back from moving forward while others seem to have the 'right stuff.' A lot of it seems to have to do with how we treat the issues of action and risk.
And I kept on coming back to the issue that through the years, I've seen a lot of people and organizations who haven't had the confidence to take the first step. They are convinced that they don't have the right skills, the right idea, or the right mindset. The result is they never even bother trying because they convince themselves right out of the gate that they are doomed to fail - and fear the failure more than they should.
One of the worst things we can ever do in the arc of our trajectory is to never take the first step to try something. That's why mindset matters - if you ever find yourself in these circumstances, know that your hope for your future should outweigh your doubt about your potential for success!
Think about it - you might have big dreams for your future, but they also carry within you an innate fear of what comes next. That’s because the future is uncertain, unknown, unpredictable. The result of the uncertainty is that we can often begin to doubt our potential at the same time that we have big ideas about what we might be able to accomplish. We then up living a life in which our goals and our realities are always in a state of mismatch, and we end up never being happy with our situation.
Different people approach this conundrum in different ways. Some manage to let their hope override their doubt and bust through to success. In other cases, the doubt far outweighs the hope and failure is the result - but at least they've tried. And then there is the muddling middle, hope and doubt are equally balanced, such that action never happens - and mediocrity rules their lives.
Bust the equilibrium. Shift the balance. Tilt the scale! (This is where AI can be a bit of fun - I fed ChatGPT the paragraph above, and it came back with this image.)'
Recognize that you have a choice as to how your future turns out, and a lot of it depends on the attitude that you carry around with you; the determination that you embed within your soul; and the focus that you feature in your mindset.
Be relentless in thinking about your hopes and dreams, and actively work every dispel the doubt! That can be the one key thing that tips the scales in your favor!
Let your belief in tomorrow be louder than your fear of it. Stack your hope higher than your hesitation. Let your dreams shout louder than your doubts whisper. Make your hope heavier than your hesitation. When the future feels uncertain, choose to bet on yourself, and when in doubt, lean harder into your potential.
Because you should fuel your ambition more than you feed your fear!
Futurist Jim Carroll often likes to start a lot of things and never quite finishes them. He's pondering what this might mean from a creativity and innovation perspective.
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