Squiggly sprint 24: Day 17 - Courage

Day 17 of the SquigglySprint, and the topic of the day is courage. Of course the book recommendation is Brene Brown, which is coincidental as I was reading an interview with her today!

I often give a piece of advice, which has stood up well for me. I legitimately think it came from a Squiggly Careers podcast but have no idea which one, so if anyone can remind me, that would be appreciated. Anyway…

The advice is, always know what you will do if you lose your job tomorrow. Once you have that, you are freed of the fear about taking risks where you are.

One of the exercises that Sarah and Helen talk about in their work on confidence is to run a 5 whys analysis on why you have a particular issue with confidence. Ultimately, I find that when someone runs this exercise in a workplace context, it boils down to “and then I will lose my job.”

People often cite research that losing your job is one of the most stressful things that someone can endure. I’ve been there, and while it’s no cakewalk, I like to think I dealt with it well. In part, I suspected something was coming, so it wasn’t a surprise. I’d also given a lot of thought to what I would do if I did lose a job. How much well needed time off would I have, how & when would I go about the job search, and what training & development would I take the time to do.

I’d had that approach for some time, and it was always great for me. When things were going south, or when I had to do something stressful, I knew in the back of my head I had a plan B that I was ready to do. As it turned out, 99% of those times when having a plan B helped, I didn’t need it. The one time it did, it wasn’t a presentation going wrong that necessitated it. 

On some level, courage is needed when you are doing something that in some way involves risk. Maybe what I’m saying is not about how to develop courage, but to look at the risk more firmly, and realize that you don’t need that much courage in the first place.

https://youtu.be/uZ7vFD7HgKU