When you have too much to lose, you take risks
Knowing you have to do something to survive is what takes us out of our comfort zone.
It’s been a privilege to share a space, a place, and the opportunity to change lives over the past three decades. I have had the most amazing clients and, whilst I may have shared my knowledge and skills to get them to where they needed to be, I have also learnt a lot.
Survival is a stressor that makes us take risks, but what if we could master that skill without having too much to lose? We don’t need to learn skills under extreme measures, we can learn through observation and also by doing things in small steps, but one thing often gets in the way: inaction. When we don’t need to, we often don’t do anything. So we stay where we are.
I was listening to someone talk recently, and they said something that was quite profound: “If we are always fed, we never go hungry.”
At that moment, I realised we are always fed. Not just food but information. We are always kept busy in our minds, and this prevents us from experiencing silence unless we need to, and that is when we stop the over-flooding of everything around us to simply survive.
The culture of "want"
We live in a culture of "want”. That is what we see today globally, where just about everything is accessible and in reach, so we seldom need to take risks.
The difference between “want” and “need” is usually around accessibility. If we don’t need anything, let’s face it, we live a life of habit!
There is no need to “stretch” in “habit”. It is what you have always done and what you know. It is the place of “common” and comfort, and so many people are happy to stay there. Or so they think until they begin to feel “stuck” or are “disenfranchised”, “bored”, or even “lost”.
Being hungry
Your hunger from needs becomes your hunger from habits. This simple mindset is what so many people admire and see as success.
If you don’t have the desire, drive, passion, and commitment to do something bad enough that your “life depended on it”, your behaviours stay in a “fed” mindset, and you stay complacent. You stay in your comfort zone. You play small.
Being hungry is not about greed, it’s about wanting something so bad that, if you don’t get it, someone may die. It is a matter of pure survival. It is about being able to act decisively and to be able to give clear directions.
It is about taking risks so that you survive and succeed.
Stretch today to avoid a crisis tomorrow
It is about responding so that you are not faced with the need to react. I have often shared that when you anticipate potential problems, you mitigate risks. But it is about testing the waters too. Taking risks is about taking them in small steps. It’s the stretch.
Learning to stretch without snapping, without breaking, helps you break cycles and expand your learnings and capabilities. It is about you moving from a mind that is always fed by external forces to a mind that is hungry for internal sources.
If you do take risks, you will succeed. If you plan for a response, you will succeed.
Act decisively and give clear direction.
Hunger only comes when you have clarity of what you need
The inability of knowing what you need is where most people get stuck. After all, most of us have everything we need, yet, we still feel unsatisfied. We still feel like something is missing.
Hunger is about evolving to think beyond self. It is what helps us think, feel, and want to do something that is bigger than us.
Often people are trapped in the cycle of “self’, and this is why we live in our habits. This is why so many of us stay in a routine of comfort even when we’re not happy.
Hunger comes from us knowing that we need to do something to either survive or to make a change that nobody else is doing because we can no longer continue to live the way we are; we are no longer prepared to see a status quo.
Becoming Hungry
I realised this as I heard my children speak around the dining table back in 2015: “Mum, you can’t begrudge us for being born into the world that we have been born to, but you can do something about it”.
What a novel idea! I can do something about it. This is where my hunger came from. It was not about my survival, but about the survival of humanity. It was about the survival of those born in an environment that was not filled with having everything they wanted at their fingertips.
Yes, it is bigger than me but, when there is too much to lose, you take risks.
The hunger to find ways to help those that were not born into privilege, not born into an environment of “wants everywhere”, is what made me take risks.
The risk began with encouraging my then 16-year-old daughter to go to Africa to volunteer on her own.
The risk was to then take time out and spend two months with her (after she had been away for 1 month)
The risk was to go back and discover what else I could do.
The risk was to leave a stable job and explore what else was possible
The risk was to train people on the ground to upskill others
The risk was to set up a business that was focused on Social Impact
The risk was to keep investing time in developing others rather than lining my pocket for more “wants”.
The risk was to expand what I was providing into these communities and into the not-for-profits to equip them with tools and knowledge to run businesses so that they are sustainable and scalable
There is always a risk, but when you take it, the rewards far outway the risks taken or the sacrifices made.
When you are hungry enough, you find ways to do what you need to do. You take risks because you cannot fail. There is too much at risk for you not to succeed.
If you want to know more and are hungry enough to take that opportunity, reach out.
It’s now up to you.
There is nothing holding you back.