The leader is brave, is to be free, even knowing that freedom comes at a high cost, because it requires facing your fears. To lead is to be happy and master of your own beliefs. On the other hand, the opposite of courage is cowardice. Courage and cowardice are attributes, adjectives, qualities - being brave versus being cowardly.
Life is about evolution, growth, adaptation, new phases, new steps, journey, new paths, in short, change and movement.
Humans need to move. If you look at people who evolve, grow, build, they are always moving, standing out, leading, achieving. That's why it's said that Opportunity is created, because creating is movement, and people who notably have opportunities are those who move.
Conversely, if you look at people who are stagnant, they have in common the fact that they don't move, they call a pile-up of "the same thing" stability, a virtual security. I say they live within the context of others, are hostages to the life plan of those who truly live, they are happy inside canned goods, and that is what separates them from opportunities.
Therefore, everything that is good and relates to evolution, growth, and opportunity is viewed or used negatively. I'll prove it by citing just 5 basic ones:
All these things are seen as negative by most people, but let's see:
if it paralyzes you, if it dominates you, you become a coward. But fear is a resource, it's a safety device we have, it's a resource that plays in our favor, you just need to know how to use it for what it exists! You always have the option to act or be passive. Being passive in the face of fear is a waste of resource! There's something called faith, which although seems totally antithetical to fear, has much more in common than it seems, and the only difference is in the result that both cause in you. But you learned, it was hammered into your head that fear is bad and is related to imminent defeat. But the truth is that fear in the end is only bad if you live in it, otherwise, it's over, buddy, there's nothing you can't do! Fear is a sign of life, otherwise your nervous system wouldn't try to defend itself!
Whenever we talk about problems, our mind refers us to something bad, difficult, energy-consuming, failing, etc. We were punished when we got problems wrong at school, remember? So people tend to avoid them. Problems are nothing more than the distance between where you are and where you want to go. Period. Every problem is a business rule, so you just need a map and go after your goal. If solving a problem, a situation doesn't take you where you want, then here's a tip, that problem is not yours! Leave it to whoever is interested in solving it! Solving other people's problems is stealing their opportunity for growth! Contrary to what you were made to believe, you need to fall in love with your problems to the point of giving the best possible solution, because this best solution will come along with the best changes, which will bring new situations and with them, new… problems! So problems are here to stay, problems should not be avoided! Embrace them, Problems are proof of your evolution.
Another misconception. Making mistakes is human. Yes, but not because it points to failure, as you were taught. Mistakes come from practicing, from the learning process and building wisdom and results. All learning involves practice, by practicing you make mistakes and your mistakes generate strong memories, then you learn. So there is no learning without mistakes! So mistakes are your teacher, as they will tell you where the flaws in your knowledge are, where there are gaps that need to be filled with new possibilities. Someone might argue: "ah, but I made a mistake in something I had done before!", which is a valid question, but easy to answer and prove my point. The fact that we get it right and achieve a result doesn't mean we covered all possibilities, so probably if it didn't work this time, the mistake will tell us what possibilities we didn't count on, what routes we didn't put on our map. It's important here to be honest about what we call a mistake. A mistake is the result of an attempt to get it right. Making the same mistake repeatedly knowing it won't work is no longer a mistake, it's a decision. In other words, the conscious mistake is a decision.
Everyone has heard of the famous topic "difficult conversations". People even teach how to conduct this. This is about communication, then I ask: what's the difficulty? What's difficult in this communication? Going deeper, why do we communicate? What's the goal? Communication is about making common, so, it makes sense that any conversation points to a common target. If the target is common, where's the difficulty? In the conversation or in our ability to appreciate the world model of the other people involved? Again the question: Where's the difficulty? In the conversation or in our ability to accept another form of representation about the same subject? Once more: where's the difficulty? In the conversation, or in our willingness to see the final goal as more important than our ego? I propose an agreement: whenever you come to a discussion write somewhere visible, where your eyes can't avoid, what the common final goal is. Assume that you're there for that, and feel part of it and not the whole, offer your contribution and be willing to mix it and receive improvements on your point of view. On this planet, things are not about me or you, it's about us!
But there are some good things that also become traps if you stagnate in them:
Empathy is beautiful to have and apply, but when we talk about results it's important that from there you build a perspective, which is something realistic, otherwise your empathy sinks an entire ship. Here is where things stop being simple and require maturity and emotional intelligence. People nowadays dive into this discourse of empathy for empathy's sake, for the human purpose and such, but the problem is that empathy puts you in the place of the other, and there is their vision, their feelings and their representation of the situation. There's a lot of talk about accepting your own weaknesses, having empathy and the problem is that empathy is usually necessary or triggered with more force when a weakness manifests, and then stepping into the position of someone who needs help becomes dangerous if you live there, assuming the same resources. It's necessary to connect but seek a position, a third position where everything is seen through a frame, maturing expectations and bringing a realistic perspective of things. Look at the map, have clarity of the 3 fundamental elements of the map and assume the strategy to be followed (opportunity to make a call to the video about the map). Getting stuck in empathy after empathy, you sink into a downward spiral of resource loss, until the symptoms of the team's depression, which is the drop in performance, organizational climate, ending everything in a real embrace of the drowning!
You have powerful friends, only no one taught you how to use them correctly!
