Recently I found myself sat in the corner office of the Chairman of a large multi-national organisation. It was one of those moments in life where you stop and pause and you think to yourself “How did this happen?”
I was about to meet a guy who led a massive organisation who had invited me to spend 30 mins with him to discuss leadership and challenges around succession planning, in his office as his guest. I have no idea if this will lead to anything commercially – of course I hope that our businesses can work together. That would be great as genuinely feel on the back of our conversation that I could help his leadership team – that was why I was there right?
However, the reason I am writing this blog is not to discuss this or any other opportunity but just to reflect on the experience of being sat somewhere and having that moment of appreciation for how far you have come.
It’s a moment that beautifully combines gratitude, appreciation and fear into a powerful cocktail of emotion. I sat there and whilst I waited for him to join me I looked around the office and just thought to myself “how have i ended up here?” Part of me was of course feeling like “do i really belong here?”! Yes my brain was shouting out “what could this hugely successful guy possibly want to speak to me for?”. But there was also this sense of “I am here because this is where I have worked so hard since starting the business to be” – a feeling of the hard work paying off and of course there was also a real sense of gratitude – not aimed at the person I was meeting (althouh I was grateful for his time) but more so a sense of being thankful and blessed to be able to do what i do and love and that others find value in the services I love to offer.
In life we can all have these “don’t look down moments” during our climb up life’s success mountain. Most of the time we can become so consumed by the hard work and the journey that we don’t always take in how far we have come and every now and again something will happen that stops us and makes us look down and sometimes we can frighten ourselves by the heights we have reached.
Please don’t read this as in any way arrogant – I know in terms of my success compared to others I am still only on the baby slopes and I have so much more to learn and to do to reach anywhere near the top of my own ascent. I don’t mean to sound boastful as to my achievements – they are not noteworthy and I am not claiming otherwise.
My point is its when we are forced to look down (by circumstance or design) and the distance we have travelled can either frighten us or be a source of motivation to keep going – and perhaps it can be both at the same time. In my own don’t look down moment i did draw a deep breath and part of me wanted to get up and say this is all a big mistake from a fear that maybe I was about to fall. But the other part of me, the part that I hope won in this scenario was to take that deep breath and just say to myself “Bratt (I often use my surname when I have a word with myself) – you are here now so you best just make the most of it, enjoy the view and keep climbing”
In life we have moments where we can either look down and appreciate the heights we have reached and use this to push us to climb higher, or these same moments can fill us full of fear and encourage us to step back down so we don’t fall. The famous motivational quote is “feel the fear and do it anyway” and this is what I did on this day – I felt the fear and I looked doubt squarely in the eye but I stepped up and went for it.
Mindset Associates help leaders of all levels to make their own personal climb and maximise the moments in their personal leadership journey to try and achieve heightened levels of success – if you would like help with how you can feel the fear and do it anyway then please visit our website and drop us a line.
Haydn Bratt, Pioneer, Mindset Associates
