Grounded Audacity

Last week I wrote about being irrationally confident . In retrospect, I failed to mention one important detail: the practice works best for people who are not ego-driven. If you are normally humble, then an occasional bout of irrational confidence can be highly useful... but if your ego is too big, then you routinely will be overestimating your abilities.

Another way to describe the ideal way to be is: practice grounded audacity.

This means to have a bold and daring belief in yourself without being blinded by ego. It's about recognizing your own potential and acting on it, even when it seems irrational to others... but doing it with a sense of humility and awareness.

Let's work out how such a mindset unfolds...

• Accurate Self-Awareness: You benefit greatly from a factual assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. Unlike ego-driven confidence, grounded audacity is built on a realistic assessment of your capabilities.
• Resilient Optimism: You are willing—sometimes eager—to pursue ambitious goals, even in the face of adversity or previous failures. This differs from being delusional, as it's based on a rational assessment of your capabilities combined with your firm (perhaps purpose-driven) resolve to succeed.
• Focused Intention: This is as close to a superpower as humans get. It's a far greater than normal ability to focus intensely on your goals and vision. This is such a life-changing skill that I've created a course that teaches it .
• Humility in Success: You get extra points, and a better life, when you maintain humility and gratitude even in the midst of success. It's about striving for greatness without losing sight of one's origins and the contributions of others.
• Willingness to Learn and Adapt: Purely ego-driven individuals often make the fatal mistake of thinking 100% of their success is because of their "extraordinary" gifts; they are slow to recognize when they are wrong. It pays to be open to new information and feedback and to adapt accordingly. In other words, pivot when you need to pivot.
• Treasure the Journey: Understand that a rich life comes from treasuring every step of your journey, rather than arriving at the outcome you imagined. Even with focused intention, you cannot control the world itself. Sometimes the outcomes are different than you expected.

Grounded audacity is a balance between bold confidence and an accurate understanding of your abilities and circumstances. You can be extraordinarily confident in your pursuit of goals, while still being aware of your own limitations and the reality of the situation. Simple example: when I applied to Wharton's MBA program with a 2.4 undergraduate GPA, I knew it was a very long shot, but I had what seemed like a very compelling backstory:

• Academically, I was an underachiever in college, but during those years I worked 20-40 hours per week at the university's 2,000-seat concert hall and rose to being one of two student crew chiefs managing the team backstage.
• In my five years since college, I helped raise $7.5 million for public television and won two national PBS awards for innovation.
• I focused my application on the ways in which I would contribute to the Wharton community and bring a different, valuable perspective.

In other words, grounded audacity led me to pursue an "irrational" goal with a strategy that had the potential to actually work.

I'd love to hear your reactions to this concept and any personal experiences you've had that might help others to grasp what I'm trying to communicate today.

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