Here Be Dragons!!!!

When early cartographers were constructing maps and reached the outer edge of the parchment, they placed a warning...“Here Be Dragons”. For most explorers this was a sign to turn back. For the courageous few, it was a signal that the journey had just begun. So how do you respond when you reach the edge of your parchment and have to confront your dragons? Does your focus narrow or fracture; does your pulse quicken or race; do you feel excitement or fear; do you take the shot or pass the ball? All new discoveries, opportunities and achievements are found once you cross over from what is known...to what is unknown, from what is comfortable, to what is uncomfortable...from the perceived safety of the harbor to the apparent danger of the open sea. I use the word “perceived” because ships anchored at harbor actually degrade and fall into disrepair far more rapidly than those at sea...and isn’t that what ships were built for?

List your 3 most significant achievements.

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Now list the risks you took, the ‘Dragons’ you had to overcome and the comforts you had to forego to achieve those successes.

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Now look at today’s challenges...are they really any different than those you listed above? Might the principles you applied and the actions you took, work as well today?

At the edge of danger lies opportunity

The Chinese ideograph for crisis has been viewed historically as the sublime combination of danger and opportunity. This inflection point is often the demarcation between success and failure, between fulfillment and frustration. If you think back over your own life or study the lives of extraordinary men and women throughout history, you will find that their greatest periods of personal growth and development always occurred in the midst of crisis. You see, it’s how you respond to crisis and adversity, which forges your character, and it is your character which ultimately authors your destiny.

Character is forged confronting and conquering adversity

Franklin Roosevelt:

Boasting no fewer than 12 Mayflower descendants, touring Europe 8 times before the age of 16, educated by private tutors prior to attending the prestigious Groton School and then on to Harvard; no American president ever came from a more patrician background. How did a man like this forge such an extraordinary connection with the ordinary, common and disenfranchised American? How did someone from such an elevated and insular status, develop the requisite empathy and resolve to fight a two front war against both poverty and the axis powers? In August, 1921, while FDR was vacationing at his family's summer home in New Brunswick, Roosevelt refreshed himself with a swim in the icy waters of the bay. That evening he was overcome by a chill and a stab of pain. The next morning his legs failed him when he tried to stand up, and within 24 hours he was paralyzed from the waist down. This extraordinary crisis and Roosevelt’s heroic battle to recover both his health and life (beautifully captured in the HBO film Warm Springs) forged a remarkable combination of strength and compassion that he had never before displayed. Without this ‘tragic’ event and the character it forged, Roosevelt might have become a mere footnote in the in the pages of history.

Winston Churchill:

After decades of military, journalistic and political success, Churchill’s missteps (reinstituting the gold standard as Chancellor of the Exchequer accelerating a severe economic downturn being one of many) finally found him...following surgery... in his words,

“Without office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix." Rather than retiring to the life of an author and country gentleman Churchill spent the next decade from 1929-1939 thinking, writing and speaking about the menace that was soon to become Nazi Germany. He became that ‘voice in the wilderness’; ridiculed, derided and belittled by a nation that had just fought “the war to end all wars” and had no interest or appetite to either prepare for, or much less engage in another one. It was during this time that his resolve was tested and his character was truly forged. He would need both, when in 1939 he led a small island nation against a hostile continent and the most courageous battle of the 20th century was joined; the famed “Battle of Britain”.

In summary:

Whether your are dragons today are real or existential, there is always an historical, biographical or philosophical/spiritual key (and sometimes all 3, as illustrated above), to help you unlock the opportunity that lies just beyond your current horizon. Through diligent study, collaboration, forbearance and reflection the opportunity will always present. It will be up to you to spot it and ultimately seize it.