Often, it takes courage to change what needs to be changed

Mack Story

Ria and I just finished conducting a 4 hour workshop for a consulting firm on Change Happens: Leading Yourself and Others through Change in Montgomery, AL last week and are preparing to travel to Phoenix, AZ to speak to a large healthcare group on it later this week. While Change Happens is on my mind, I want to share a little from the book with you.

(Great pic below of us with the Legacy Consulting Services team last week. They make things happen!)

Note: Don't miss our upcoming, complimentary webinar based on this book. It will be hosted by ATD. Click here to learn more and to register.

The Courage to Change

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” ~ Anais Nin

Change has the power to launch you into a new career, a new relationship, a new city, and even a new way of thinking. When you change what you do, you change what you get. Saying no to the wrong things frees you up to say yes to the right things. What you say yes to shapes your future. Saying no to something old gives you the freedom to say yes to something new.

Without the courage to change, you will get left behind by those brave enough to take risks and fail their way to a better future. Failure isn’t really the appropriate word to use. Failure is actually often misused. People use the word failure as an excuse not to try something. However, it’s only failure if you quit and never try again.

As a baby, you fell endless times as you attempted to walk. Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Fail. But, that’s not really what happened. In the end, did you fail to walk, or did you learn to walk? You learned to walk like the rest of us.

What really happened was this. Try. Learn. Try. Learn. Try. Learn. Try. Succeed. Find something new to learn.

The rest of life should be the same way. It took courage then, and it’ll take even more courage to try new things now. Why? Because when you were learning to walk, you received endless encouragement from everyone around you. And most often, when you would fall, someone would pick you up. Learning as an adult is a bit harder.

Things are different once you grow up. As an adult, you will mostly receive a lot of doubting questions and negative feedback from other adults. If babies could talk and understand each other, they would probably never learn to walk. Could you imagine what it would be like in the nursery listening to the babies talking?

• Why do you want to walk?
• Don’t you think you might fall?
• I tried that once, and it didn’t work.
• Have you considered what will happen if you do fall? I bet it will really hurt!
• I saw Danny try that last week. He fell, broke his nose, and cried for hours.
• Have you thought about what will happen once you get going? How will you stop?

I was having a little fun with you, but I’m sure you get the point. That’s what adults do all day long. You’ve heard those voices. They try to talk other adults out of trying something new because they’re afraid themselves. If you want to get to a new level, you’ve got to change how you invest your time and who you invest it with.

You need to be reading, watching videos, or listening to audios of people who are doing what you want to be doing or that have done what you want to do. Whatever you do, don’t seek advice about your life and your future from anyone who has not been where you want to go.

They don’t know how to get there, and they don’t want to go. Why would you ever give them a right to veto your dream? You shouldn’t. Don’t do it!

When it comes to effectively and courageously leading yourself through change, I want to leave you with a few nuggets of wisdom I’ve learned along the way that have had a tremendous and positive impact on my journey.

Ask yourself this question constantly, “Will what I’m about to do move me in the right direction?” However, it only works if you know where you’re going. So, figure that out first. Then, if the answer is yes, do it immediately. If the answer is no, don’t do it all. Get it right, move forward. Get it wrong, slow down, stop, or go backward. You first make your choices. Then, your choices make you. Not sometime. Every time.

Next, figure out what you need to stop doing, and stop doing it. This will free up some time and resources. Then, consider what’s working great, and keep doing it. Finally, figure out what you’re not doing, but should be doing, and start doing it.

These last two paragraphs are filled with many changes that will transform your life and deliver amazing results if you’re willing to change how you think, and then, change what you do.

If you won’t invest in your own growth and development, why should anyone else?

Courage allows you to transform yourself from who you are today to who you want to become tomorrow.

Brian Tracy said it this way:

“There are two types of courage that you need:

First, you need the courage to launch, and to take action, to take a leap of faith. You need the courage to go ‘all-in’ without any guarantee of success and with a high possibility of failure, at least in the short-term.

The second type of courage that you need is called ‘courageous patience.’ This is the ability to hang in there and continue working and fighting after you have gone all in and before you have yet seen any results or rewards. Many people can muster up the courage to take action toward a new goal, but when they see no immediate results they quickly lose heart and pull back to safety and security. They don't have staying power.”

Change what needs to be changed, not what is easy to change. Make it happen or someone else will!

转自https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackstory/