Step into the arena

Below is a quote from Teddy Roosevelt.    

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

What prevents many people from stepping into the arena is fear and self-doubt.  How many great ideas, how many great questions go unheard because people are scared?   While it would be great to promise you that nobody is going to judge you, the truth is that there will always be the critics.  What we need to do is tune out the people who criticize us but are too scared to get into the arena themselves.

The second critic we would need to shut out is ourselves.  Many of us are our own worst critics which often prevents us from the triumphs of high achievement.  What we must realize is that most often what we are trying to accomplish is bigger than us.  That we will make errors along the way but if we continue to follow our passion we will love the journey.

This is not to say that we do not need constructive criticism. I send these essays to two people each week before I publish because I trust that their feedback will make the essay better.  We all need those critical friends who will tell us when we are going down the wrong path, who will pick us up when we fall (we all fall).  What I have found is those who are successful fall at a six and bounce back like a ten.  What we do not need is those people who crush dreams or ideas because they themselves are too scared to enter the arena.

I once worked with a boss who told me “if I am not thinking about firing you every 90 days I am going to fire you” At first this seems like a crazy statement which would increase fear.  However, what my boss wanted was for me to push the envelope so far that it made him uncomfortable.  To take risks because he realized that you could not have a great company if you were doing the norm.

What made my boss special is that he celebrated failures and those who took risks. As you might suspect many successes came out of those failures.  It developed a thought process of if it is not broken break it.  That change is difficult but almost always needed.

So, I will leave you with some questions you can ask yourself as you try to change your mindset to be more comfortable entering the arena.  What did you disagree with today?  What did you learn from somebody who disagreed with you?  What have you failed at recently?  Is there another way to solve that problem?

Look forward to seeing you in the arena.

As usual your feedback and comments are always wanted.