Learning the hard way

At an event last week, someone asked me what book had been the most important for me in my career.

It was an easy answer – ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Covey. It helped me realise I had some good habits and some that needed work!

However, whenever his name comes up, it takes me back to when Stephen played a starring role in an important lesson for me about taking risks.

Let me set the scene…

Many years ago (back when I had hair so a very long time ago!), Stephen was the guest speaker for an audience of 2000 people at a global Customer Experience conference in London. He had just finished his talk and everyone was leaving the auditorium for a coffee break.

I was standing near a closed door towards the back of the communal area and then suddenly, the door opened and in walked Stephen. He stopped no more than 2-3 metres from me and was looking around as if he was lost or in the wrong room. It would have been the perfect opportunity to say hi, introduce myself to him and help him if he was, in fact, lost.

However my mind had other ideas.

Immediately the internal voice started chattering…
🫷 “He probably doesn’t want to be disturbed”…
🫷 “He will probably think I want something”…
🫷 “Why would he want to talk to me?”…
🫷 “I’ll do it next time”…
etc. etc.

And before I knew it, he had turned round and gone back through the door. An opportunity to meet one of the legends gone. An opportunity for which there would never be a ‘next time’.

This is a good example of how our mindset can hold us back. The instant the opportunity presented itself, all the possible negative outcomes flooded my mind. There were just as many, if not more, potential positive outcomes of speaking to him but the human mind can be very good at filtering these out.

So next time your internal chatter warns you against taking relatively safe risks like the one I describe here, do the following instead…
✅Press the pause button.
✅Remember, the negative thoughts may sound like they are inevitable but they are only stories we tell ourselves.
✅Remind yourself of the equally (and often more likely) potentially positive outcomes and…
✅Go for it! The outcome is usually better than we think it is going to be.