#46 - Plan A or Plan B?
“Your success depends on the risks you take.
Your survival depends on the risks you avoid.”
- James Clear
Hello,
When we consider a career transition, lucky are those who have a safe fallback plan. It’s great insurance that can give peace of mind. Isn’t it strange then that we sometimes stick to the fallback plan as our Plan A, while the dream remains always just a dream? Why do we mistake Plan B for Plan A? One recent consultation got me thinking about it and in this edition, I have collected a few ideas about risk and fear that may help if you find yourself in a similar situation.
The Encounter
In one of my recent volunteering My Career Map consultations, I met a wonderful lady working on her career options for her return to France. The first option was zero-risk and consisted of getting back to exactly what she had been doing before becoming a “trailing spouse” in Singapore. The second option was the project of her dreams. Though it would involve more effort and uncertainty, this project would be an ultimate expression of everything she knows and loves about her craft, including new skills she developed over the past few years in Singapore. And she visualised this project in such detail that I was mesmerized. Then, what surprised and puzzled me is that she considered the first option as her Plan A, and the second as her Plan B, and not the other way around. Having a fallback plan ready is a wonderful idea and sometimes even a luxury, so when we have it, why go for it instead of going full steam to develop a project of our dreams?
Two Types of Risks
Following the quote that opened this edition, I think it's interesting to distinguish between two types of risks.
Type I risks are the risks to avoid, so that we can survive - physically/ emotionally/ financially/ reputationally, etc. These are "bad risks" and when we manage them, we are avoiding a danger.
Type II risks are the risks to take, so as to explore how we can thrive. These are "good risks". Taking them means we face unpleasant consequences due to the uncertainty that exists whenever we explore any new opportunity but it’s not about survival.
Yes, many situations and decisions may present both types of risk. My question is, why, when we have protection from "bad risks", aren’t we taking more of "good risks"?
I have two hypotheses about it.
First, we sometimes mistake "good risks" for "bad risks", perceiving danger where there is simply uncertainty.
Second, even if we know there is no danger, there are other powerful forces and fears keep us where we are. What are these forces?
Below are a few thoughts and ideas around both hypotheses.
Mistaking uncertainty for danger
Most our professional projects or aspirations do not involve existential danger. But sometimes our fears are so strong as if our life were at stake.
The fear of public speaking: Calm your inner meerkat
Fear of public speaking is a classical example. It's one of those irrational fears that some people perceive as stronger than the fear of death. What are the mechanisms that drive this fear? And, most importantly, how to overcome this fear? Drawing from his experience in improvisation, Nabla Leviste shows us how to find calm in stressful situations. If you are a French speaker, please watch this video in its entirety. If not, here is a quick recap.
A great illustration of our fears of speaking in public is meerkat - it dresses up at the slightest sign of danger.
This imaginary animal is our internal talk that dictates our fight-flight response:
flight: "make yourself invisible",
fight: either against yourself: "be perfect, control everything; or against others: "take up all the space, undermine others to look better in comparison"
Two tools can help us win against "the meerkat in our heads" that come from improvisation
realize that danger is not the risk (understood as a possibility that unexpected things happen).
cut-off the negative self-talk by being intensely in the present: look at others, in the eye; breathe; fail - gracefully.
- Immediate Creativity: Importance to Relax, a TED Talk by Nabla LEVISTE
trying fails, awareness cures. Permission to fail leads to success
I have found another very useful framework while preparing for an amateur end-of-year piano concert. I was freaking out so much about playing in public that I searched for a cure and found interesting approach in the book "The Inner Game of Music"
"Our performance of any task depends as much on the extent to which we interfere with our abilities as it does on those abilities themselves. This can be expressed as a formula:
P=p-i.
In this equation, P refers to Performance, which we define as the result you achieve. Similarly, p stands for potential, defined as your innate ability - what you are naturally capable of. And i means interference - your capacity to get in your own way.
Most people try to improve their performance (P) by increasing their potential (p) through practicing and learning new skills.
The Inner Game approach, on the other hand, is to reduce interference (i) at the same time that potential (p) is being trained - and the result is that our actual performance comes closer to our true potential (...)
Trying fails, awareness cures. Fritz Perls, the father of Gestalt psychology, coined the somewhat paradoxical phrase "trying fails, awareness cures" to make the point that the harder we try, the more confused things often become, and the remedy for "trying too hard" is to be found in simple awareness (...) When we doubt ourselves in a given situation, whether the count comes from within ourselves or was instilled in us by others, we generally respond by "trying harder" - with the result that we tense up and play less well than we might (...) Whenever you're playing or singing music and you notice you're in a trying state, stop trying, and focus your awareness on a single element of your movement at a time (...)
Permission to fail leads to success. Our challenge is to imagine that we always have a second chance - to give ourselves a permission to fail. Give yourself the serious job of getting it wrong, until your concern for getting right goes away. You'll probably find that when you stop trying, you start to succeed. The reason is simple. You have released yourself from the fear of failure and are now able to focus your attention one hundred percent on making music."
The Inner Game of Music, by Barry Green with W. Timothy Gallwey
“help” is the hardest word
Another example of fear that makes us mistake "good risks" for "bad risks" is our fear of asking for help.
"What's the bravest thing you've ever said? - Help."
Forces that keep us away from taking "good risks"
Now, to the forces that prevent us from taking "good risks" even when we have cleared out all existential risks. It's about out resistance and fear to change. Anthony De Mello expresses it concisely in "The Awareness" and Steven Pressfield develops it powerfully in "The War of Art".
Relief, Not Cure
"Most people tell you they want to get out of kindergarten, but don't believe them. Don't believe them! All they want you to do is mend their broken toys. "Give me back my wife. Give me back my job. Give me back my money. Give me back my reputation, my success." This is what they want; they want their toys replaced. That's all. Even the best psychologist will tell you, that people don't really want to be cured. What they want is relief; a cure is painful. Waking up is unpleasant, you know."
- Anthony De Mello, "Awareness: Conversations with the Masters"
The Mother of All Fears
"Resistance feeds on fear. We experience Resistance as fear. But fear of what?
Fear of the consequences of following our hearts. Fear of bankruptcy, fear of poverty, fear of insolvency. Fear of groveling when we try to make it on our own, and of groveling when we give up and come crawling back to where we started. Fear of being selfish, of being rotten wives or disloyal husbands; fear of failing to support our families, of sacrificing their dreams for ours. fear of betraying our race, our 'hood, our homies. DEar of failure. Fear of being ridiculous. Fear of throwing away the education, the training, the preparation that those we love have sacrificed so much for, that we ourselves have worked out butts off for. Fear of launching into the void, of hurtling too far out there; fear of passing some point of no return, beyond which we cannot recant, cannot reverse, cannot rescind, but must live with this cocked-up choice for the rest of our lives. Fear of madness. Fear of insanity. Fer of death.
These are serious. But they're not the real fear. Not the Master Fear, the Mother of All fears that's so close to us that even when we verbalise it we don't believe it.
Fear That We Will Succeed.
That we can access the powers we secretly know we possess.
That we can become the person we sense in our hearts we truly are.
This is the most terrifying prospect a human being can face, because it ejects him at one go (he imagines) from all the tribal inclusions his psyche is wired for and has been for fifteen million years.
We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. we fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it's true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.
We know that if we embrace our ideals, we must prove worthy of them. And that scares the hell out of us. What will become of us? We will lose our friends and family, who will no longer recognise us. We will wind up alone, in the cold void of starry space, with nothing and no one to hold on to.
Of course this is exactly what happens. But here's the trick. We wind up in space, but not alone. Instead, we are tapped into an unquenchable, indepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they're better friends, truer friends. And we're better and truer to them.
Do you believe me?"
The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
Today's Playlist
"Тебе нема сьогодні" (You Are Not Here Today) by the Ukrainian singer Ivan Dorn: about the terrible fear of losing your loved ones. I've been hearing this song countless times since the war started.
"Dimanche Soir" (Sunday Evening) by Grand Corps Malade from his album “Plan B”: when there is no need for Plan B.
Stay healthy, don’t mistake your Plan A for Plan B, avoid "bad risks", take good ones,
Arina
Image: Noah Näf on Unsplash