How To Take The Right Opportunities With Courage and Energy

By Alan Taylor

It is so easy to fall back on the apparent safe course. We all do it. Whether it is just following the same food or travelling habits, or sticking to a formula, in a work context, that creates safe output and earnings. So how do we nurture courage? How do we step away from that comfort zone? How do we judge when it is worth it?

First of all you have to believe in courage. Can you accept that it is a positive quality, to facilitate innovation, energy, passion and resilience? For sure, a courageous mentality means more brave efforts. It means more steps into the unknown. And, as a consequence, that means more pitfalls and potentially more failure. Either from random misfortune or unforeseen mistakes. It will happen. So the resilience comes from accepting that sometimes not everything will go your way. Then you have to trust your own judgment, on when you decide to still doggedly hang on in there regardless. Or when your instinct tells you that it really is better to cut your losses and get out fast.

Checklist for a Master Entrepreneur?

1. Will I learn from this leap into the unknown, whether I succeed or fail?

2. Is the opportunity new, innovative and differentiated enough, to have great upside potential if I put my full energy into it?

3. What are my exit criteria and my stop-loss position if things start to go wrong?

Checklist for a Cautious Optimist?

1. Do I currently have all of the time, energy and available cash resources to make this opportunity work?

2. Should I now wait for something even more compelling?

3. Is my personal and family safety net strong enough right now – and worth deploying against the downside risk of this opportunity failing?

Let’s recognize that there are few of us who go around consciously seeking continual courageous acts. Quite often, they arise as a result of another event that prompts you to act in response. This may be a confrontation that you are not prepared to accept. Or alternatively a threat to your current business, or your pride, or your livelihood, that means that you just have no alternative, other than to respond. In that situation doing nothing is not an option.

However, these acts of courage, to take that opportunity, do need a really conscious effort and a state of mind that reflects your persistent hunger for more. This is often driven by earlier events in your life that determine subconscious, internalized needs, often to prove something to yourself. And these needs do normally offset any doubts or aversion to risk. Understand them, harness them positively and nurture the need to prove yourself.

So with enough of your passion, focus, drive and energy, the doubts will fall away and courage comes naturally, to the Master Entrepreneur. Nurturing courage for the Cautious Optimist is often not so easy, because there will always be a stack of reasons for you not to take the opportunity. With real confidence in yourself and an understanding of the balance of reward versus risk, you still just have to give it a go. To learn much more about yourself, whether the venture works or not.

Alan Taylor has been a serial entrepeneur, as well as driving value through technology-led change as a director of leading companies. He now consults to clients of the world’s leading enterprise software company, on performance optimization. Get his insights to Why Wait Just Do and learn from his experience to nurture courage and take the right opportunity. You can also follow him on Elite Cycling Fitness on http://tinyurl.com/7tjznny

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Topics: Computers and Technology | Comments Off

Tags: Computers and Technology, Courage, energy, entrepreneur, opportunity, optimist, own business, risk, risk taking, self help, Success, taking action

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