What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?
-Dr. Robert Schuller
A lot about taking risks is being okay with the possibility of failure. You have to overcome the fear of losing everything you have now in order to push forward into a place of uncertainty. There is a protective mechanism in us all that wants to feel safe and comfortable in what we know. Despite the dark unknown side of risk, taking risk is quite common in our everyday lives. We face risk in our career, education, investment, and personal lives. What matters most is how we handle those risks that lie in our hands.
We came into this program not knowing the outcome, seeing a date of destination, but not knowing which way we would be traveling, or what detours we would have to overcome along the way. We saw the possibility to grow as leaders, and we risked it. As risks are often tied to reward, we realized the reward in the end would not be a gold trophy, a life-size check, or piece of fancy paper. In the end the reward would be the feeling of growing intrinsically as a person throughout this program and as a leader throughout our organization and our lives. Coming into the program we never failed to ask ourselves over and over again as the days wore us thin “is this risk we’re taking and the sacrifice we are making worth the end result?”
Well PRL. Here we are. The end result is here; as we stand on the balcony and look below at the dance floor and the steps we have completed to achieve such success. The countless hours of late night Starbucks trips, over prepared presentations, 12.5 Font Courier New Double Spaced Proposals, and red bull mornings is finally right here paying off.
So ask yourself now, was it worth the end result?
As Alfred P. Sloan, of General Motors suggests: "Life itself is a process of trial and error... And those people who make no mistakes are those who make nothing."
We came into this program risking everything, with a fear of failing, not being smart enough, or being too old to re-enter the classroom. We leave this program with so much more. We take with us mistakes well learned and lessons forever etched in our minds. Through time and experiential learning we learned from and cared for a cohort that not even the flaming paradoxes could destroy. We absorbed the value of life, learned about ourselves in the midst of learning from others, and we built core knowledge of powerless leadership right within our own classroom, and within our own hearts. So, was it worth it?
I know so.
This program is not about how many books we had to buy for each class, the ten page papers, or the A’s or B’s. This program is about learning without barriers, growing without boundaries, and living without walls. I want to be the risk-taker, and I want to be surrounded by classmates and colleagues that appreciate how courageous that want is. So I’m writing on the PRL blog. It might be horrible, or it might be better than the last post in Novermber. I made my choice today, but will I make it again tomorrow?
Risk-taking, after all, requires a fear of the unknown. What will your next choice be after May 9th? Will you risk being a leader?
(Tera is shown in the photo above. We do not yet take our students to a ropes course! Tera is a recreation therapist and this is her on a climbing tower. (Adventure Therapy Team Building for at risk youth with a local npo, 2006).
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