Stepping off the roof

This is a blog entry for anyone who is in business or sports who wants to move themselves forward in their careers.  I am going to highlight one of the most important personal attributes that you need to cultivate in order to be success in your career.

I’m going to highlight this attribute by citing the example of Peter Petrelli, a fictional character in the television show Heroes. Now I suspect many of you will have seen this show however, for those of you haven’t or for those of you who have forgotten the very beginning of the show, let me describe the situation…

Peter Petrelli was a man who was having dreams, visions even, of being able to fly. These visions became more and more real until finally Peter made his way to the top of an apartment block and, standing on the edge of the roof, he paused, clearly deliberating over the dilemma of having enough faith in his visions to risk everything or to playing it safe.

After what seems like an eternity of deliberation he steps off the roof…

Now for two reasons I’m not going to say what happens next to peter – first I’m not going to spoil such an excellent show for you if you haven’t seen it and secondly what happens to Peter isn’t relevant to this blog!

What is relevant is the faith that Peter had in what would happen next. He believed he had the ability to fly, he had faith that he was special and that he could do incredible things.

For you to have a serious chance to develop your career you have to have faith in yourself. You have to have faith that you can learn what you need to learn to take the next step. You have to have faith that you have the ability to grow as a person to face the challenges that promotion would bring.

If you lack faith in yourself you will not seek out opportunities because you will not believe yourself capable of dealing with them. Other people will recognise this hesitation in you and not trust you with new opportunities or new challenges.

Study great, successful men and woman in sports, politics or business and you will find that they all had faith in themselves. A few modern examples include Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Pele, Margaret Thatcher, Sir Alan Sugar, Sir Richard Branson… and the list goes on.

Indeed it has been my experience, and it is certainly my belief, that all truly successful people had faith in their abilities long before anyone else did. Their faith made other people believe in them. Their faith created opportunities they were able to utilise to further their careers.

My suggestion to you then is this:

Think hard about how much faith you have in your innate abilities and learn to cultivate and grow that faith daily through positive actions.

Until next time;

Stephen

Stephen Hart

Active Evolution

Evolution

~ a process in which something passes by degrees to a more advanced or mature stage

I’m a big fan of the show Heroes (good acting, complicated plotting and great cliff hangers how could I not like it?) and one of the central themes is evolution. In the show certain people manifest new physical abilities for humans, literally evolution in action. It got me thinking about us biologically normal people and whether we could evolve and develop.

As you can imagine I believe the answer to be a resounding yes. The thing is you have to make it happen. You have to take command of the present to ordain the future. Let’s say for sake of argument that you are not the person that you dreamed about being when you were younger or even last week! What can you do about that? Well frankly whatever you want to do about it.

You can chose to accept your (self determined) shortcomings or you can chose to grow and evolve into something closer to the person you wanted to be.

I can give you the guarantee that if you chose not to pursue your dreams and ideals then you will not reach them. I can also guarantee that if you do pursue them then you will get closer. You will become more of what you want to be. In short you will evolve into the next version of yourself. And I’d love to see that happen.

So let me end with a question: Peter Petrelli in the first episode of Heroes stood on a roof edge and had the faith in himself to step off (he believed he could fly). What, (metaphorical) roof edge do you have the faith to step off?

Until next time;

Stephen

Stephen Hart