Run To The Battle

“He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.” This is undoubtedly the most idiotic advice ever offered!! Never, is the point to reward cowards. To the contrary, in combat or conflict, preparation and bravery are typically rewarded. In the epic battle of David and Goliath confidence and belief won the fight. Whether the battle is physical, emotional, or spiritual, strength begins within each individual fighter before engagement starts. What happens before the battle is equally important to the results, as what happens in it. So, what happens when someone runs away?

Feel the Fear
Upon entering a conflict, fear, apprehension, and anxiety are normal emotions. Once the clash starts, managing those emotions are very important for success. When the choice is fight or flight, flight does not end the skirmish. Once you begin running, there is a good chance you will never stop. Very little keeps the aggressor from chasing.

The alternative is to acknowledge the fear, embrace the fear, feel the fear. Labelling FEAR as False Expectation Appearing Real is comforting. In the heat of battle when the aggressor is displaying superior firepower, “True” takes over “False” in the acronym! Nevertheless, proper preparation and training before engaging in the battle offers certain advantages, particularly mental advantages. Feel the fear is accepting the reality. Preparing ahead to be aggressive and to plan contingencies creates a competitive edge. “Fortune favors the prepared mind!” is legitimate advice during conflicts!

Do It Anyway
Regardless of the fear, the time for battle arrives. Another comforting thought is that the other party may be fearful, as well. Nevertheless, a better tactic is to assume the role of aggressor. In boxing, this approach is known as “a puncher’s chance”. In academia, the term is “lucky guess”. In all cases taking action at the point of conflict provides an opportunity for victory. If nothing else, try!

Most importantly, prepare for the possibility of competition. Have a plan just in case. The element of surprise is a powerful ally. Take a chance. Above all, take action! When the threat becomes imminent, attack.” Do it anyway”, naturally follows “feel the fear”. Prior preparation facilitates the courage necessary for winning. Preparation also strengthens the element of surprise. Doing it anyway quickly seizes the advantage and takes the fight to the opponent!

Running to the battle means the threat is in front. It demonstrates assumed confidence. It leads others to feed off that confidence. It does not guarantee victory. Chances are the other guy can fight, too. But, when running to the battle, a sudden, surprising show of courage can be disorienting. Opportunity emerges to dictate terms of the conflict. As Edgar Albert Guest’s poem, “See It Through” says, “When you’re up against a trouble, Meet it squarely face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace.” Seize the moment. Take the fight to the competition. More than clichés, these tactics are engrained in winners. Claim the victory before the battle starts. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway!

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

Overcommunicate

How many relationships turn for the worse because someone else does not communicate enough? Organizationally, romantically, relationship dynamics work the same. A listener checks out, then the speaker overcompensates. The opposite of overcommunicate is not under-communicate. Overcommunication’s opposite is disinterest! Considering that Dr. Albert Mehrabian’s legendary research states that up to 93% of emotional communication is non-verbal, overcommunicating requires two parties to be over-exposed to language, tone, and visual cues in a conversation. Consequently, in the time for a listener to roll their eyes, communication has smashed into a roadblock. One gas-face, or daydream, during a discussion and communication suffers. Overcommunication? How about at the beginning paying attention explicitly and implicitly to what is said?

Lack of Respect
Across groups and organizations too often co-workers suffer from self-absorption. Typical they feel that they are under-challenged and definitely under-paid. They do not respect their role, or their superiors in too many instances. According to comedian George Carlin, “Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” Purpose is an afterthought.

Overcommunication typically occurs after the lack of communication has created an impasse. Lack of respect precedes the lack of communication. Regardless of the relationship’s structure, people pay attention to people whom they respect. No respect leads to minimal communication. Lips move. The other party nods during pauses. The verbal affirmation, meaningful response, or insightful questions that are signs that communication transpired is missing. Consequently, understanding is absent. Communication does not occur and respect is doomed!

Lack of Care
Unwillingness to care creates a similar dysfunction. Communication fails, then overcommunication seeks to fill the gap. The classic story of the aloof teenager being scolded in high school illustrates this point. The teacher accurately, but poorly worded, berates the disengaged teenager for not paying attention. “Child, what is wrong with you? Are you ignorant, or apathetic?” Then, the teenager makes eye contact with the teacher long enough to respond: “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Not caring has deeper ramifications than lack of respect. Without respect, acknowledgment can still occur. Not caring creates an emotional vacuum. Overcoming the emotional void that leads to overcommunication is nearly impossible. Overcommunication results from an overcompensating mechanism from a prior lack of communication. Without caring, an individual will not even fake a relationship. Consequently, communication fails to launch. Overcompensation to enforce the point results. Overcommunication starts. It does not matter.

When poor communication fundamentals invade any relationship’s or organization’s culture, accountability falters and performance erodes. The following office sign summarizes this phenomenon: “Helen Waite takes care of such problems. If you have a problem go to Hell-En Wait!” But, to save this environment, communication has to be prioritized at every level of interaction. Fundamentals, like listening, seeking clarification, and acknowledging common understanding, have to be practiced repeatedly and routinely. Communication starts with respect and accelerates with caring. So, when does overcommunicating intercede? It does not! Overcommunication is a compensating behavior. Get it right the first time. Listen and seek understanding! Then cooperate. That is how functional people operate.

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

Defeating the Enemy Within

Why do heroes always win? Because winners write history! Upon emerging from the battlefield, heroes create the legend. However, conflict and competition does not produce winners without producing ancillary damage, or unintended consequences. Sometimes winners lose comrades, integrity, or dignity. Nevertheless, no one else cares much about the failures that heroes endure on their way to epic accomplishments. Heroes simply win! But inside, winners know the sacrifices, scars and compromises involved with victory. So, how do they manage that internal conflict?

Emotion
“If there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do us no harm” is an old African proverb. The enemy within magnifies vulnerability. Fear, insecurity, emotional baggage can cripple any effort. The emerging victor must first overcome their internal conflicts. The successful combatant must be emotionally superior to their adversary. They require more resolve and focus. Unyielding belief in victory is an exceptional advantage. Feel the fear and do it anyway!

Realize that fear is a notable weapon. Winners first attack opponents with heavy doses of negativity. In the heat of battle, “it does not matter whether I win or lose. It matters that I win and you lose!” In individual or group competition, projecting a losing mentality on the opponent creates huge advantages. Before engaging the enemy expose weakness in their character, their cause, and their core beliefs. Strip away the adversary’s why! Create doubt. The winner’s story will read that he crushed his enemy. In reality, he defeated the loser in the mind before even attacking the body.

Logic
To secure their inner advantage, winners must eliminate their own disabling thoughts. Kick out the enemy within! Confidence is fickle. Bravado is relatively easy to conjure and project. Real courage is trickier. Logic is an empowering agent. Identify core advantages. Size, strength, intellect are tangible attributes. Find advantages and create a battleground based on those characteristics. Logic has to make sense. It does not have to be accurate. Create logical structures to trick opponents into seeing obstacles that you wish to impose as the winner. Convince enemies that giants are waiting to kill them. They never have to know the giants are only windmills.

Victory ultimately relies on tactics. Whether deception or brute force create advantages, winners still must execute their plan. A combatant can psyche himself up to start, but eventually in the heat of battle, he must believe in his advantages. The enemy within who is a secret coward, must build a belief structure that has confidence in their attributes. Superior execution, according to a plan, becomes the dominant weapon once fear has been placed in the opponent and the winner performs with precision.

Is it emotion or logic? Both provide advantages in overcoming adversity. Master deploying one or the other… or both. Use tools, like obedience and faith, to remove internal obstacles, then focus on explicit goals. Whether the combat is a physical conflict, or a personal best performance, bring both a logically structured plan and an inspired mindset to the battle. Create a plan and execute. Personal success depends on it. Individual victory requires it. Defeat the internal adversary. Then, march over external enemies’ decaying carcasses. Write the epic story of your resounding conquest. Then, dominate your next challenge with confidence, experience and success.

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter and Beyond

They’re Following Me

Consequences for children are the dreadful results they endure following bad decisions. The consequences may be spending time in their room without any electronic devices. Or, they may have to endure hard labor like loading the dish washer, or scrubbing the bathroom. However, what happens when a naughty parent exercises bad decisions? Worse yet, what happens to the adult when no evidence exists of their destructive decisions. The guilt from the crime exists and it has places to hide. Or, does it?

New Location
Poor behavior can be masked, covered, cleaned, even pardoned. But, it does not truly go away until it is released. While a child has authority figures that are positioned to dispense punishment, the authority figure can often conveniently pardon themselves without pain. Grown-up problems can be secretly masked with addictive substances, or intellectually justified with twisted logic. They can be compartmentalized by blaming extraordinary pressures, or unfair expectations. Unfortunately, the new psychological location for the problem does not really move the problem. The problem’s location is not the issue. It follows the perpetrator everywhere. Resolving guilt associated with the issue is the only available relief. Grown-up problems cannot be sent to their rooms. And, they definitely cannot be swept under the rug.

New Attitude
Promises to change behaviors regularly fall short. Internal promises to do better is merely a larger, well-organized trunk to hide the problem unsuccessfully. Relief only comes with a new attitude. Furthermore, the new attitude needs new behaviors to accompany it. Many grown-up missteps are addressed with therapy, or accountability. A new attitude targeting specific priorities and decisions are the only path to true relief. Whether the attitude now highlights forgiveness, regret, or rehabilitation, the change must occur at the point of individual decision. Grown-up problems are often hard to forgive; they are often harder to forget. But, new attitudes leading to better behaviors demonstrate pathways to problem ownership. Problems ranging from blatant lying to infidelity to substance abuse accompany incredibly deep wounds. But, an improved attitude coinciding with life-affirming behaviors uproot destructive problems from a bad location to an open environment. Then, they can be exposed, addressed and ultimately defeated.

Moving grown-up issues to a new location does not achieve resolution. They follow you. Only addressing the problem from an emotional level leads to resolution. Even without a conscience weighing down the individual following harmful decisions, the resultant cover-up comes with significant gravity. Nevertheless, a changed mind, or a new attitude, creates a mindset where genuine reform can happen. Then, healing has a chance. Better choices and behaviors reflect the next step. The process requires much more than surviving the night without video games or a smart phone. But, the longevity and productivity associated with emotional health lasts much longer. A new attitude resulting in better behavior clearly sets the example for genuine rehabilitation, particularly when a child chooses to break family rules. Furthermore, the corrected attitude happens earlier, as opposed to the problem growing into the next generation.

 
By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

The Next Best Idea

Great leaders do not have exclusive rights to great ideas! Mediocre leaders definitely do not, regardless how much they believe they do. In making decisions, request ideas with the expectation of exploring them. The purpose is to create an environment of creative problem solving, not placating contributors. Every idea is not good, nor salvageable. But, the right process increases perspectives and ideas for circulation. Progress despises ninth place trophies. Monday’s idea may be dumb, but Wednesday’s idea may be game changing. But the group never gets Wednesday’s idea, if Monday’s ideas are choked. Avoid embracing the second best idea. But, the next idea may be the best for organizational growth.

Trust the Process
Encourage contributions. Leadership conveys authority, not ultimate intelligence. Evaluate and digest each suggestion. Celebrate creativity and input. Effective brainstorming accepts all ideas before a vetting process starts. In many circumstances, time does not permit the acceptance of all ideas. However, by creating the environment where encouraged ideas surface, more ideas emerge under any time constraint because of trust in the process. More ideas, more diverse opinions result in more opportunities for an optimal solution.

Leaders belittling inferior contributions effectively choke future contributions. Not discouraging the idea is vastly different from endorsing inferior input. Accepting and evaluating assorted contributions need to be part of the organizational culture. Contributors with seemingly dumb suggestions often facilitate discussions that challenge assumptions. The possibility clearly existed, but fear of challenging established protocols most likely stifled it. Open processes generate unconventional ideas that lead to innovation. Allow the group to benefit from new ideas.

Reward the Result
Leaders have authority which typically involves making decisions. Weak organizations fixate on making motions and casting votes. Sometimes protocol dictates that process to prevent abuses of power. Other times organizations default to that position to pretend to value all contributions. Still other times, organizations default to mediocrity by cowering behind fairness. But, effective leadership makes decisions! Part of the decision making process is rewarding contributions. Ideally, the expectation becomes that the best executed opportunities will deliver the best results. Give the organization the opportunities to execute the best ideas. Encourage ideas with clear and conspicuous rewards based on open input.

Requesting more input enables more innovation. Many problems result from old assumptions leading to poor performance. Poor performance can be avoided by growing a culture that actively welcomes and rewards the best ideas. Seek the best paths to the most favorable results. Assuming that the leader has all the answers is a recipe for disaster. Leaders make errors. They subscribe to poor theories. Sometimes they genuinely believe lies, then innocently spread them. Consequently, test seemingly bad ideas to unlock potentially valuable insight. Cultivate different perspectives. A different set of assumptions and experiences may result in unexpected value.

Ultimately, leaders who genuinely ask for contributions get them. Dealing with suggestions honestly, respectfully, and authentically creates an environment where suggestions have a chance to contribute to the greater good. All ideas are welcome. They may be discarded. They may be lousy. But, they are welcome. Seek the value in the bad ideas. Challenge assumptions. Leaders may have more authority. They do not have exclusivity to accuracy. Solicit ideas. Be open to new insights. The proposed solution may be lousy. But the next, best idea, that surfaces because the group believed in the process, may be the most valuable of all!

 
By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

Escape From Your Comfort Orbit

It is sickening how professional speakers pathetically encourage people that they can have success by “moving beyond your comfort zone.” These commentators are entitled to their limited world view. But extraordinary achievement requires an extraterrestrial grasp of reality. “Escape Your Comfort Orbit” suggests a greater effort and much greater results! But, what is a “Comfort Orbit” and how can someone escape it?

Create A Stronger Force
Any zone, including a comfort zone, is a place marked by boundaries. Rules forbid leaving the perimeter. An orbit literally has boundaries that are defined by gravitational force that restricts escaping. Still, a zone reflects limited territory in the sense that the area is clearly defined. Beyond the boundaries anyone who escapes can be relatively easily retrieved. But, upon escaping an orbit, the stars await. Success requires more than resisting this force. The ambitious adventurer must completely escape it.

Beyond the orbit’s restriction, freedom and adventure reign. Orbital forces are strong. But, resistance is not futile. Exerting exceptional energy leads to breaking free. The first scientists to launch a rocket to the moon had to learn to use Earth’s rotation and gravitational forces to help generate enough speed to escape the Earth’s orbital pull. Extraordinary achievement demands unique and creative solutions. Escaping social, personal, and professional boundaries require solutions with similar imagination. Seek additional solutions to launch your dream if the first one fails. Escaping the orbit is hard work. It is worth it!

Soar Beyond Constraints
Upon breaking the gravitational pull, progress benefits from suddenly lighter burdens. The force that allowed you to escape, is now unburdened, and effortlessly propels toward greater distances. It is simple physics. With the same mindset that escaped greatness-inhibiting burdens, identify and attain new heights. The weight that held you back is no longer a factor. All acquired knowledge and experiences are free to empower a new trajectory.

Embrace the new trajectory. Without the reality of gravity’s tug, prior constraints no longer apply. Continue to soar. Education, background, past mistakes have less authority in the new frontier than most people realize. Open your mind to dream bigger. Gather your tools. Learn the knowledge. Acquire the skills. Achieve your greatest ambitions. Mediocrity, like gravitational pull, only matters in close proximity to familiar terrain. In unchartered space, prior constraints no longer apply.

ULTIMATELY, the freedom to reach greater achievements does not mean they can be recklessly pursued. Specifically, be WISE to use the tools to launch a significant escape:
Work – Make the effort with an expectation of results.
Iterate – Try, fail and try again.
Service – Help someone; you may even create an ally.
Experiment – You were stuck in the orbit based on your prior habits; Get new habits.
Upon escaping your comfort orbit, success is available. But first, get started. Then, be WISE. From that point, create your own limits to pursue!

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

Accountability To What?

A herd of majestic buffalo rumble across the prairie creating a deafening roar. The ground literally shakes as they hurry in loosely orchestrated chaos. Upon reaching a cliff each one races beyond the edge and crashes into the rocks below. The insanity of the thundering group is catastrophic. At least, the group reached their tragic demise together. Buffalo herds, like traditional organizational structure, are built on blind loyalty to the larger group. Their success assumes higher collective intelligence. Sometimes, groups are wrong. People get hurt. Who was in charge?

Improving Performance
Leaders are established to help groups achieve specific results. Considering that such groups are collections of individuals seeking a common purpose or goal, leadership provides a structure facilitating that achievement. Particularly with time-sensitive goals, everyone running faster is a reasonable tactic. But, what about the individual? Is there contribution valued? Or, are they expected to be a component of some unknown, or loosely defined, plan?

Optimally, a group that unites for a specific goal features contributing members. By accessing more individual input, the group potentially benefits from increased output. A good plan is necessary. Additionally, it requires a leader taking responsibility for execution. By getting individuals to improve their input with better contributions, leaders coordinate and enhance results. In the absence of a leader, too often one emerges who will accept responsibility and the glory. But, does this truly meet the members’ of the body individual needs? Who is accountable?

Changing Behavior
Actually, leadership’s challenge is meeting the individual needs of the members of the body. The old saying, “If you want to be a leader, grab the baton and get in front of the parade.”, is both witty and frightening. Declaring a leader in the absence of one, does not mean the group’s needs are prioritized nor met. It definitely does not mean that individuals’ needs are prioritized and met. Yes, the leadership box is checked. Now, the herd is prepared to be led off the cliff, instead of randomly charging off it.

New and improved behavior requires individual accountability. To get behavior to change, every member must find individual benefit. When real leadership is applied effectively, processes and opportunities exist to develop individuals within the group’s framework. The body does not need four well developed arms to maximize performance. It needs two functional arms and two functional legs to perform in accordance with the established design. Sustainable results happen when individual components develop in alignment with the group’s success.

Essentially, the leader needs to equip group members to develop fully. The group members need to be equipped to fulfil their individual goals. Sounds like a lot of selfishness in the name of the team. However, individual self-interest is not selfishness. And anyone who claims that it is, secretly is unhappy that they do not have the group’s blind loyalty. Improving performance is easy. Changing behavior is hard. All members must contribute toward accountability to align behaviors. Otherwise, the result is ineffective leaders who essentially join the group in running off the nearest cliff.

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

Prepare to Win, Perform to Win

“We’re talking about practice. Not a game!… We’re talking about practice.” Hard core professional basketball fans still love quoting Allen Iverson’s practice rant from 2002. Iverson was making a point about the importance of performing even at the risk of minimizing preparation. Despite being an exceptionally unique and productive performer, history argues that he may have benefited from better practice habits. Unsurprisingly, in other competitive arenas, like business or entertainment, that truth regularly faces performers. Yes, we are talking about practice!

Preparation
Preparation for superior performance is not a singular act. Musicians practice regularly regardless of immediate performance obligations. Likewise, highly accomplished business professionals routinely identify opportunities for additional training in their areas of expertise. In fact, over-achieving professionals, will take time to train others in order to sharpen their own mastery. The preparation involved in their presentations promotes peak performance. The process clarifies their best thinking so that they can effectively provide maximum value to their audience and marketplace.

School children learn that practice makes perfect. Athletic coaches are fond of saying, “Perfect practice make perfect.” The truth about preparation regardless of the field, is that it is a necessary part of the process toward excellence. The more repetition endured in preparation, the better prepared the competitor will be to maximize their performance when the stakes are highest. Undoubtedly, talent provides several advantages. Yet, skill can be developed and improved. Preparing to perform is a skill that in turn enhances skill. This two-step tactic delivers superior results.

Performance
So, what happens when it is time to perform? And, how important is experience? Simply put, more experience produces better performance. When stakes are highest, no professional performer really wants to be searching for a solution. More practice, more preparation, and more learning activities eventually result in better equipped opportunities for superior performance. “If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.”

Skills and knowledge necessary for peak performance have typically already been explored. Perhaps a coach is available to share their experience in managing potential situations. Perhaps the repetition of intentional and intense practice included multiple scenarios expected to occur in competition. Successful sales professionals consistently rehearse and refine their pitch so that they can effortlessly overcome objections and conquer competitors. “Fortune favors the prepared mind.”, according Louis Pasteur. Take the time to prepare in your area of expertise so that your knowledge and discipline are engaged to propel you to targeted success.

The benefit of practice is that the prepared mind secures the advantage. In any competitive endeavor, the competition most likely expects to win, also. The nature of competition demands outperforming an opponent. Practice provides the edge. Structured and disciplined practice provides a bigger edge. Regardless, of the field, winning through competition produces rewards. Generate more sales, score more points, raise more money, discover a cure faster, save more souls. Winning is not an event; it is a process. Target the results. Prepare to win. Perform to win. Embrace the rewards.

 
By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond

Building Relationship Is For Them

 

Who doesn’t want to be loved? Some people seem to attract strangers who are willing to share their life stories. Whether they have an empathetic ear or a trusting face, these lucky listeners have people approach them with personal details. The best of these folks embrace their abundant relationship trait. Patience is often a common characteristic. An electric smile emerges as a sure sign in other cases. Nevertheless, recently two friends laughed over really good coffee about how they manage the unusual attraction of people who willingly over-share.

Music
Friend One is a musician who has a full dose of the relationship trait. As a working musician, he finds himself in assorted halls, theaters, and churches where he encounters diverse fans. Invariably, after a set, fans and listeners are inclined to pull up a chair to share. Friend One believes his highly evolved ear makes him a gifted listener.

He receives their input by listening intently. Too often, people do not really want someone to solve their problems; they want someone to listen to them. They equate listening with caring. Because Friend One listens well, his audience believes he cares well. Consequently, they share well and in turn, experience relationship. Friend One’s gift is establishing connectivity with people who need it. The music is simply a vehicle.

Lecture
Friend Two on the other hand, is a lecturer. Whether teaching, presenting, or consulting, he dispenses knowledge for listeners to apply. Establishing rapport is a skill he has developed over time. But in order to personalize information, he has to understand his audience in as much detail as possible. His primary skill is questioning.

Great lecturers do not necessarily create knowledge. But realize that knowledge is more readily available now than at any time in history. A great lecturer personalizes the knowledge. They present information in ways that multiple individuals in the audience want to receive it. Consequently, asking the right questions, while sharing information to ensure understanding, is an exceptionally valuable attribute. And, as the audience responds, either by individual or as a crowd, the connection becomes more firmly established. And, whether the bold learners address him during Q & A, or the extremely bold learners approach as he packs his materials to leave, Friend Two reinforces connection by exchanging more information individually.

Fundamentally, connecting with people happens at an emotional level. President Theodore Roosevelt stated, “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” The conversation is just the foundation. The listening and connecting is where the value happens. Relationship is the foundation of human and commercial value. Would you buy your morning coffee from someone if you do not believe it is going to be good (or at least dark & hot)? Whether the power comes from listening or questioning, it is the personalized dialogue that expresses caring. And caring is the foundation of relationship.

So, in building relationship, how do you express caring? When are you most receptive to connecting?

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter & Beyond

Yellow Means You Can Do It

Never has running a yellow light been so hazardous! As more people migrate to Tennessee for the great cost of living, good quality of life, and beautiful changes of seasons, they all bring their native driving habits. Particularly, Californians who move to Tennessee have to adjust to a dramatically different driving culture. Tennessee’s driving culture sees yellow lights as a warning that the light will turn red, so let’s stop. In the hustle, bustle and unfathomable traffic of California, their drivers interpret yellow traffic lights to mean to go faster: “You can do it!” Same traffic light, but different cultures, results in multiple collisions.

Can Do Attitude
Regardless of which culture is right, the resulting accident is bad. But, the crashing of the two cultures still intersect at a common understanding. The yellow light literally means caution, but a pervading attitude is “you can do it.” People relocate for a better life, regardless of any number of factors that ultimately drive the decision. That sense of optimism generates hope and opportunity. By setting goals, the mindset assumes a perspective that a better existence results from achieving the stated goal. Whether it is a healthier lifestyle, a better career, or educational accomplishments, acknowledging that “you can do it”, is an essential first step. Naysayers and failure are often around the corner. All the same, see the caution, then go for it anyway!

Still Pay Attention
Despite the decision to seize opportunity, the yellow light still means caution. Risk remains. Not every entrepreneurial venture is a roaring success. Some ideas never take flight. Effective planning helps mitigate some risks. Better information and creative alternatives provide options to the original plan. Inner confidence contributes an even heightened priority because people who want to squash progress and achievement everywhere. Sometimes they are part of the journey. The line between being concerned for someone and selfishly wanting to hold them back is often indistinguishable. Be wise. Be alert. Be courageous.

Yellow lights are not a license to speed, nor permission to enter a congested intersection, regardless of what Californians say. But, they are right when they believe that the caution signal means “You can do it.” Find an intersection. Life is full of crossroads. Drive through it. Don’t let your old ways, prevent you or anyone else from advancing. Recognize the risk. Perform the necessary internal calculations. Then, seize the moment. Take the chance. Set an ambitious goal. Accomplish it. Or, fail at it. But either way, take the experience, then speed to the next intersection. The road leads to more opportunities. Recognize the caution. Then, proceed to get somewhere new. You can do it!

By Glenn W Hunter
Principal of Hunter And Beyond