Embrace the Unknown

'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'?is one of my favorite films. In the film, Walter Mitty (Ben Stiller) is like most of us. He dreams of achieving big things, but his reality is the opposite – a ‘normal’ guy who struggles to win the girl of his dreams and finds it hard to recall anything that he has done noteworthy in his life. However, when faced with a real-life test, he goes on and achieves and exceeds everything he could have dreamed of.

I found one quote from the film very inspiring. Walter Mitty’s colleague and the film's heroine says,?'Life is about courage and going into the unknown'.?Courage is often portrayed as ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances doing things beyond what they are capable of. A mother fighting a snake or leopard to save her son/daughter or a small boy jumping into fire to save his friends comes to as WhatsApp forwards exemplifying courage. But most of us will never face these situations to see whether we can be just as courageous. However,?we all face daily opportunities to be bold.

Speaking confidently to a customer and presenting our thoughts, taking a sales call, answering questions on pricing slides in a proposal to the prospect, handling production code changes, challenging a decision made by someone that we think can be better, learning a new skill, exploring unknown terrain, setting fitness goals, all involve courage and most of us accept and do it as part of our living our lives.?

Courage does not have an off or on switch.?All of us are courageous; we simply have different levels of risk that we are prepared to take. So, next time when we are confronted with a situation?where the best action to take makes us feel uncomfortable, rather than seeing it as an outlier event, let us recognize it as a point on the line between those risks that we are happy to take and those that we are not.?And then step into the unknown.