Charging Through Life

When Bruce Wayne was a young boy, his father taught him many important lessons. When a hurt and frighten little boy had fallen down a dark and scary well, his strong hero of a Dad asked the question,

Why do we fall Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.

 But that lesson comes with a little bit of pain as well as a little bit of embarrassment - probably the most difficult of any wounds to heal.

I've been making some pretty bold statements lately in my little blog. I've had some pretty big dreams and pretty big plans. I've argued with myself over what to do and tried hard to keep going down my own yellow brick road, acknowledging that it's a difficult path that's not easily taken. But these dreams and plans for myself have mostly been just that: dreams. And yesterday I was snapped back into reality when my business partner pulled the plug on his own idea.

There were too many risks involved for him to take and the core idea had been morphed and polluted into something completely different than it started out as. Could it get back on track? Absolutely. Do I still believe in the business? Sure. But without the assumption of risk and a willingness to try, you can never hope to succeed.

I had found myself doing a lot of work and spending a lot of time on business exercises outside of my expertise. Always the over zealous team player, I was happy to be involved in things like writing a formal business plan - I was eager to learn that new skill. But I was the only one spending a lot of time on these exercises. The majority stakeholder didn't want to learn or try. Nor was the lawyer partner, with his 10% stake in the company, available to give input on the project. It is a small example of the overall issue: taking risk.

The risk I took was in the dream itself. I saw a future for myself that was full of success and excitement rightfully earned through creativity and hard work. In business you are taught the art of 'risk management,' or the process of limiting your losses. While my heart was busy dreaming up possibilities for my future, a good risk management practice would have been for me to check in with what my gut was telling me was really going on around me. Nobody was truly prepared to do the hard work necessary to move forward.

In the end I don't see the past few month's effort as a waste or failure, however I do know enough to cut my losses before things get worse. I learned a couple of new skills and had to work out some creative problems. But the biggest accomplishment I achieved was in learning to take risk on bold new ventures but also to manage that risk. Those skills will certainly come in handy on the next project where I will lead with my heart while checking in every once-in-a-while with my gut.

So today I have fallen. I am embarrassed by my big dreams and bold statements. Yet without them I would be left with nothing today. So I must lovingly gather my dreams and statements back up off the ground, regroup, and pick myself back up as I have learned to do so many times before.