Will you DARE in 2024?

When my eldest daughter was born, at the close of the last century, we were living next door to an extremely wise, retired doctor, to whose thoughts I loved to listen.

Some days later, I lifted my daughter from her pram and proudly showed the doctor her new neighbour. She gazed deeply into my daughter’s eyes and held her tiny hand. “Ah’, she said, “I wonder what you will make happen in the world.” Words that stayed with me.

Born in the 1920’s, my neighbour fully expected to use her power and did. In the 2020’s even admitting that you have power verges on taboo.

But every human has great power to make things happen.

A New Year is about to dawn.

Whether you want to be a leader who inspires humans, be part of a great transformation, change your career, lose some weight or go from couch to 5k to IRONMAN:  your starting place is accepting and celebrating your power. Like it or not, there is no escaping it.

But how do you use your power to create a change? That has been my area of work for two decades. For today, let’s be simple; and powerful.

We Decide. We Act. We get a Result. If we’re smart and can control our ego, we then Evaluate the result thoughtfully, before improving and repeating the process.

In my writing and speaking, I named that a DARE loop. This is how we write our life story.  How we build our confidence, character and our reputation. You are the sum of all the Decisions you have taken so far. Even when others dictated the situation, you decided your response.

If you want a different Result, you must change the Decisions and Actions and do new things.

But if you do new things, you meet the TIGER.

New things bring uncertainty. Uncertainty brings risk. Risk fires up your entire biochemistry. Now you have emotions telling you that you’re an imposter, that you will fail, you will be ridiculed. Now the Tiger is roaring – will you DECIDE to be courageous and overcome your emotions?

New things also require effort. And if it is a truly hard thing you will not be rewarded for the effort for weeks or even years. Now the Tiger is roaring – will you DECIDE to persevere when the doubt comes?

The Tiger tries to block you from using your power. Society tells you the idea of having power is dirty and is related to privilege and ‘abuse’. Yet Victor Frankl used his power during his three years in four concentration camps. Rosa Parks used her power in near-apartheid conditions.