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Hey there, Maureen Chiana here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you flourish and exceed expectations. Welcome to another episode, episode 16 of the Lead to Excel Podcast, a show designed to equip you with knowledge to understand the science of how your brain works so that you can unlock your leadership potentials with the tools to rewire your brain for you to flourish, excel, and achieve high performance in every area of your life. So I'm so thrilled to be with you today as we look into the risk of playing safe. So as usual, grab your cup of coffee, put your feet up and listen in. So let's start with this quote from Stephen Covey that says, I'm not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. If I step out, I might fail. What if I get the promotion and find that I'm not good enough? It's better to stick with what I know. This way I don't have to discover the ugly possibility that I can't do it and fail. Have you or anyone you know said those words recently? The job that I do means that I travel around a lot and I've concluded that I don't have patience with slow drivers that are in the wrong lane. I remember doing the school run daily along the double carriageway in the UK with a maximum speed of 60 miles per hour. My worst nightmare was when my neighbor, who was also doing the school run, was in front of me. She was always playing safe at 40 miles per hour. There was this long stretch of about 15 miles of very windy roads, so it was actually really difficult to overtake once you got onto that stretch. And I remember the number of times I ended up stuck behind her, and it was a huge nightmare. I had to remind myself in those times to stay calm and use that time to listen to my ebook and just make the time more productive. Remembering this got me thinking of driving on the motorway. Now I want you to listen and see if you can identify yourself. I was recently driving back on the motorway from Heathrow Airport in the UK. I noticed different types of drivers. The ones that stayed safe on the slow left lane, going at a steady slow pace. Then you had the ones that entered the left lane temporarily to be able to enter or exit the lane. Majority of drivers I noticed stayed in the middle lane where they maintained a steady, predictable speed as they cruised along. Then you had the drivers like me on the right fast lane, the impatient ones, some of them that were quite aggressive, plucking up the higher speeds as they fled past. I observed as people maneuvered in and out of lanes to be able to improve their position, overtaking other cars as they pushed ahead to achieve quicker arrival times where they were going. On occasion, you notice someone in the wrong lane that was not following the rules. I'm talking about the drivers that hog the middle lanes but are too slow and refuse to move out as other drivers either close up behind them and the ones on the right lane that are moving much slower, so you have to put your brakes on and hope that they would move over into the middle lane, or they end up forcing the drivers to navigate around them in order to maintain the desired speeds. So, which driver are you? Both of these scenarios are good examples to make you think about your own approach to life and how you make career-related decisions. Are you the driver in the left slow lane, the slow mover, content to take things slow and play it safe? The ones that are risk averse and quite content to stay where they are while others pass them by. Where are you now? Have you just driven into the left from your exit? Then you now need to decide if you will stay there or refuse the status quo and move into the middle lane to start a new journey and chart a different course. Or are you in the middle lane? Okay, let's talk about this lane. These people are the ones that get comfortable and cruise on this lane and not very dissimilar to the ones in the left slow lane. Okay, if you're in this lane, agreed you're not as slow as the people in the left lane, but you're also relatively risk averse because you like that comfort zone, that comfort of predictability and conformity. The interesting thing is that being in the middle lane can be quite deceptive because you end up feeling that you're progressing faster than the people in the left lane. But you are in every respect more risk-averse as you don't have to contend with the incoming traffic that the left lanes have to deal with. You literally get into that middle lane and set your life to cruise control, happily cruising through life as you follow and react to what other people are doing in front of you. Or are you in the right fast lane? This is my favorite lane. Those in the right lane are considered to be the biggest risk takers as they set their own speeds, get irritated when they come across those blockers in front of them, and watch as they hoot their horns to get these blockers to move or they decide to maneuver their way around them. The risk that comes with their impatience or the aggression or whatever you decide to call it is the price that they pay for living, be it fast but also quite liberating, as it gives them freedom. The fact is that risks are everywhere. And I'll ask you this: are risks only encountered in the right fast lane? And the answer is definitely not. The fact is that each lane has its own risk. But which lane would you consider to be the safest? You might think that the slowest left lane is the safest one, but research has shown that the fast lane or the middle lane are actually the safest. While crashes in the right lane are often more severe, it actually has the fewest crashes overall. The left slow lane with its continuous merging of traffic is actually where the highest rate of accidents occur. Your ability to navigate your career moving forward will depend on your willingness to adapt to change and take risks. While most people may think that living safely carries least risk, the question is: is that really true? And let's not actually talk about how boring living safely can be. Many career decisions people take are based on the fact that either nothing changes in their current situation, for example, assuming your job role stays the same, you're assuming that your organization will stay the same, your clients will always be there, and there's the assumption that the people in front of you that you're following are doing the right thing, so you just follow suit. I don't need to tell you how unrealistic this kind of thinking or mindset is. The fact is that life is full of ups and downs, twists and turns. There's now an urgent need to equip yourself to cope better with this relentless change and promote your personal well-being for both your personal and professional survival. The only thing constant in life is change. Let's look at the following example. A middle-aged lady named Rita has been working in a hospital laboratory for nine years. Rita's line manager gets a new role in a private hospital, which is much smaller than the hospital in which they're currently working. So the laboratory there is also small and quite new. But he asks Rita to join him in this new adventure so that she can be the head of the lab there. This new role will give Rita the opportunity to leave the current job, which she has grown to dislike quite a lot recently. She will have the opportunity to get into senior leadership and progress her career and be able to make a bigger impact. This new role comes with a slightly higher salary, but the commute to work is slightly longer, but it has great career progression prospects, fantastic management training, and it will also give Rita more time to spend with her family because it's less hours. Rita is unsure about the longer commute. It only takes her 10 minutes to get to work and she can even go home for lunch now. This new role will add another 15 minutes on top of her journey to work, and she'll have to catch a bus. And she feels that nothing is guaranteed with this job. What if she gets there and dislikes the job? At least she knows what she's getting where she currently is. This new role is going into unknown territories. In the end, Rita decides to stay in her stable position and reject the job offer. Nine months later, there's a restructure in the hospital and they decide to get rid of a whole level of management, and that was Rita's level. Rita lost her job in this restructure and was offered a new role in a different area with less responsibilities. She's now left a lot worse off than if she had taken the new job offered to her previously. When Rita had an opportunity to leave earlier but turned it down, she could not have anticipated that her current job situation could change so drastically. While at the time, the prospect of changing her job seemed like the riskier move. Rita could have spent time to reflect and evaluate the situation much better about what she actually wants for herself and actually take that bold step to step out of her comfort zone. But she didn't. Not taking action has costs that can be as consequential as taking risks. It's so important to reflect on the consequences of inaction. In today's marketplace, where jobs and job categories are being destroyed and invented at an accelerating rate, the riskiest move one can make is to assume that your job, your industry, your business are secure. In life, there's no such thing as stability or certainty anymore. Sometimes playing it safe is the riskiest strategy of all. Change is the norm, not the exception. Let's look at Jeff Bezos, the Amazon guru. You might think that the world's richest man in charge of the world's richest company doesn't fail. But Bezos is not afraid of failure. He has invested in many companies and ventures that never worked out. He's not afraid to take risks, explore, and push back boundaries. Sometimes those efforts that he put in didn't yield much for him or for the organization in terms of financial gain. And actually, many resulted in financial loss. But he learned from failure and never stopped pushing forward with his vision. And that's why he's achieved the amount of success that he has today. On my webinar on how to achieve high performance and resilience, I actually talk a bit more about other successful people who've taken risks, seen failure, but come out on the other side extremely successful. You can also listen to my story there, how I experienced massive failure, public failure actually, and that is what has set me up for the success that I enjoy today. Let's look at some ways to become more risk tolerant and be able to take proper action. The first thing is you need to develop self-awareness. Start by understanding who you really are. Why do you think the way you do? Why do you act the way you do? Why do you respond or react to situations the way you do? Listen to my podcast, Episode 11, where I talk about who am I to enable you to understand your purpose and what makes you you. Or you can visit my online academy, the Mindsight Academy. I'll leave all these links in the description. The important thing is that you need to decide what you want to do in your life. The second thing is discover your passion and purpose. Your passion or purpose is closely interwoven with your value system. Values are something you instinctively move towards. So it's prompted from within you. Finding your passion or purpose is very important as it satisfies a core human need. And that's for you to have clarity, especially in this constantly changing world. You need to be able to be sure where you are going because, like we said, change will constantly keep coming. But if you don't have clarity about where you're going or where you want to go, you'll be swayed and moved and turned and pushed around as the constant change comes. It's just like wind that will come and start blowing you in different directions, and you find yourself not actually progressing because you're being blown around by this wind of change. There needs to be a meaning to who you believe you are. A life without meaning is painful. It's like being lost and afraid. Design a powerful future based on possibility rather than on circumstances so that you're not changing every minute based on things that are happening around you. So you're not basing your own life on what other people are doing. Got clarity where you're going and you make that choice. So if you're in the middle lane and you notice that someone in front is either driving erratically or too slow, you know what? You move into the first lane, overtake him, and you can come back into the middle lane. Or you might have to stay on that fast lane for quite a bit to be able to get past all the people that are in front so that you can get in front and move to where you want to go because you know where you're going. No one crosses the messy middle lane to reach their goals unless they really want what's on the other side of discomfort. The third key is develop your travel plan. Now, would you embark on a journey to a new destination without a plan and without putting the destination into your sat nav? Dreams and goals are too important to entrust to a faulty system. In order to achieve your purpose, you must create a plan of action. By working towards goals through a solid plan of action, you learn to assert power over your life. The fourth point is you need to measure your progress. Guidelines keep you on track as you engage in the pursuit of a better life. Be honest with yourself about what you're doing and the progress that you're making or lack of progress so that you can then evaluate and reflect on what you need to change. Be determined to work smart and work hard as you journey towards your dreams. One of the best ways to overcome all the uncertainty you experience on your journey and to be able to make significant progress is to become fully aware of how much control you actually have. Don't be a victim of life. Don't go through life as if you don't have a choice. Don't be the one that is always complaining about what life has thrown at them. Be the one that makes a decision that, irrespective of the changes and the challenges and the pressures, you are in control of your life. You are in control of the decisions you're making, the actions you're taking. And most importantly, you're in control of what you're thinking. Are your thoughts beneficial or are they counterproductive, creating unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and the nagging feeling that the deck is somehow stacked against you? The good news is that you can change these limiting thoughts so that you experience transformative personal improvement in all areas of your life. The fifth key is that you need to step into the outer limits. To grow, you have to leave your comfort zone. Whether it's the slow left lane or the middle right lane, confront your fears and take risks. Learn how to overcome fear and step out of what has become comfortable and familiar to you. A lot of people struggle with this, and this is why I really truly enjoy what I do as a neurocoach. Helping people step out of their comfort zone and fearlessly take risks that lead them to success. The six keys pilot the seasons of change. If you keep doing what you've always done, you will keep getting the same results. Embrace challenges, learn from them, and manage how you respond to change. Become very emotionally intelligent so that you are able to manage your emotions, manage your thoughts, manage how you feel about different situations so that you're not stifled and stuck due to stress, due to anxiety or overwhelm. You need to surround yourself with builders. Learn how to build supportive relationships that help you and empower you to walk towards your goals. No one makes it alone. You have to learn the value of trust and the importance of being trustworthy. But it's important to ask yourself the question: who are you surrounding yourself with? Are you surrounding yourself with people that just see the negative in situations or in things you do? Are you surrounded by naysayers or people that are actually building you up? It's time to actually separate yourself from the people that are not supporting your goal or your vision. You see, at the end of the day, people can only support you based on their own experience, based on their own knowledge. If you're going way ahead of anything that they can envision, they will pull you down. And it could be very subconscious and it could be very conscious. Make decisions that promote growth. Who you are today is largely the result of the decisions that you made in the past. By learning how to make the right choices for your future, you're able to set yourself up to thrive. And finally, be determined to win. When you consistently devote your time and energy to the pursuit of your goals and vision, you find out that commitment is a non-negotiable trait that, when renewed daily, propels you towards your dream. Your ability to navigate your career and success depends solely on your willingness to adapt to change and to be able to take risks. So the challenge of uncertainty is the fun of high performance, and your key to achieving exceptional success is you overcoming fear, stepping out of your comfort zone, going into that first lane if you need to get into the first lane, having clarity of where you're going, and chatting the new course of journey to take you to where you're going to. Break problems into small actions and reflect on them and actually see if they're really problems or what the solution is for each of them. I hope you found this episode really useful. Be uncomfortable, being comfortable. Thank you for tuning in. And remember that you are in control of your thoughts. You can change your situation by taking back control first and foremost of your brain. I'd love to hear what your biggest takeaway from this episode is. And remember to subscribe to this podcast. If you haven't, please make sure you click that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast. Because once you subscribe, you will not miss an episode. I do bonus episodes and I don't email about them. So when I have a bonus episode, you'll get it in your app wherever you subscribe to the podcast. So make sure you do. I will also appreciate a review because I'll do a listener shout out each week and it just might be you. Finally, next week we're going to carry on looking at this stepping out of comfort zone. But the focus is going to be how leaders can navigate the unknown and still thrive. You don't want to miss the episode next week. So I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Have a fantastic week. Bye for now.