Daring Greatly

Does your organization or company have a number one goal, a BHAG (big, hairy and audacious), a 10 YEAR TARGET? If you have one, is it audacious; does it inspire and motivate you? Or have you limited yourself by what you think is possible instead of the possibilities of daring greatly.

About 30 years ago my brother presented me with a pencil drawing of my favorite president, Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy is laughing through teeth that look like a trimmed white picket fence. He’s exuberant, triumphant. I had my brother’s drawing framed with a famous Roosevelt quote from a speech he made at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

In a great little book by Price Pritchett, “You²”, he shares that experts agree that we typically use only ten percent of our full potential. Whether we agree with the experts or not, it’s hard to argue that we’re really living up to our full potential. And, we should ask ourselves, is my organization or company living up to its full potential? Think about what your company or organization would be like if it was performing at 10 times or 5 times or even 2 times where it is today. Whether it is doubt, fear or as Brene’ Brown would argue, an inability to be vulnerable, we fail to trust ourselves enough to take that giant leap.

We limit ourselves by taking tiny steps when we should be taking a big leap. Don’t focus on the midpoint, focus on the end point. So, take that leap of faith in yourself. You’ll taste either victory or defeat. Don’t be timid and don’t be left in the cold.