How many times have you held off making a decision out of the fear of ‘what if’?
What if I make the wrong choice in hiring this person? What if the product doesn’t meet market taste? What if my branding isn’t what the public are looking for? What if I have misjudged the mood of the Managing Director?
What if I fail?
Alfred Hitchcock famously said ‘there is no terror in the bang… only in the anticipation of it’. This is something many of us face in our business life on a fairly regular basis; we let our fear of the ‘what might go wrong’ overwhelm to the point where we don’t take action.
You cannot succeed in business without decision making. With every decision comes an element of risk, and with every decision comes an element of fear – because yes, you may fail. Does failing mean you are a failure? No. Does not making the decision mean you are a failure? No – but it does mean you have given in to your fears, and with them, your chance to move forward – and upward.
That anticipation of the bang – if you give into it – will hold you back. Face it head on, and fear it less. Don’t let it overtake you or reduce your enthusiasm for what you do now, and what you want to do in the future.
The best leaders recognise that their teams will have those fears, and do what they can to alleviate them. This is because they have been through the process themselves, and are not scared to share this vulnerability.
If you need to defeat that anticipatory ‘what if’, think of a black box on a plane. As the flight recorder, it is the plane’s virtual memory, storing the journey from x to y.
Do this for yourself. Think about your journey so far.
Make your Black Box of business memories a record of your achievements; a journey of pinpointed ‘I did this’ and ‘wow, I have made it this far already’ blips that will echo down to the place where you are now.
When you face the ‘what if?’ moments, and feel as though a crash landing may be imminent, replay the Black Box in your mind.
I think you’ll find you are right on course for a normal landing.
And that the bang has turned into an insignificant bump of the wheels.
