Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” While she was encouraging personal boldness, the message is also applicable to corporate life. Courage pays off.
Jen Lawrence, co-author of “Engage the Fox: A Business Fable About Thinking Critically and Motivating Your Team” (Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2014), offers these ideas for bringing Roosevelt’s sense of bravery to the job:
Have a strong vision of what you want. “I used to be terrified of needles and would do everything in my power to avoid them. Then, when I wanted to have children, I had to have needles almost every day. Suddenly they were not as scary, as my clear vision of family life trumped my fear,” Lawrence says. The same thing happens at work. You might be terrified of public speaking, but if you want to take on more interesting work in your field, the opportunity to keynote at a conference will help you get over your fears. Have a clear vision of what you want, write it down and tape it someplace prominent. The daily risks you must take to get you where you want to go will not seem as scary.
Courage can be borrowed. There are a lot of people out there who are taking risks and doing interesting things. Spend more time with them and you will find their courage is contagious. In a third century BC parable from Zhan Guo Ce, a fox is caught
by a hungry tiger. The fox, trying to figure out a way to save himself, tells that tiger that he is king of the beasts and should not be eaten. The tiger does not believe the much smaller animal so the fox challenges him to follow him through the forest and see how the other animals react. The two set off together and the other animals, seeing the tiger, run away in fear. The fox takes full credit for their fearful response and the tiger, believing him, spares his life. While this parable mainly seems to be about the gullibility of tigers, it also shows how we can borrow courage.
Do something today to flex your courage muscles. It’s fun, makes your job more interesting, and can serve to inspire others. Most people regret what they don’t do more than what they do, so take a page from Eleanor and do that thing that scares you just a bit.
