Say YES to New Adventures
Adventure! Just the word conjures up images of fun, excitement and probably a bit of fear. Adventure means leaving your comfort zone, doing something new, taking a risk.
Success in life always involves taking a risk. One of my favourite sayings that inspires me is:
“Do not fear failure, but be terrified of regret.”
How often do you hear someone say, yeah, I had an opportunity to do that once, but I decided not to do it…….who knows what wonderful experiences that person may have missed out on.
As a business owner, you have already taken your biggest risk – starting your own business!
Now if you want your business to grow and succeed, you will need to take more risks. You might be questioning if it is time to take on a new employee, or move into new premises, or scale your business. These are just a few examples of the risks we are business owners take.
There are never any guarantees with risks, but as Richard Branson says
“If you opt for a safe life, you will never know what it’s like to win.”
Taking risks, and saying yes to adventure, helps you build confidence and develop new skills. Successful risk taking helps you develop a sense of pride and accomplishment. And, if those risks should fail, shift your thinking from seeing this as an absolute, life-destroying disaster and see this simply as feedback, and use it as an opportunity to learn and grow
Here are my 5 tips for taking better risks:
- Undertake a risk assessment: it doesn’t have to be complicated, a simple list of pros and cons is a great place to start.
- Move past the fear of failure, what is the cost of staying as you are now and not trying?
- Think about the upside of change – what are the benefits of taking this risk – Bigger and better premises? More profit? More free time with your family?
- Find ways to take on incremental risk – often you don’t have to do everything at once, give yourself a timeline to achieve the end goal.
- Seek out advice from mentors and other calculates risk takers
You can do this, take a deep breath, and say YES to new adventures – this is YOUR time!
And remember always, Keep smiling!
