Technology and transportation have brought global competition to every skill, process, and product. It’s hard to be more precise than a robot, or more efficient than a computer. It’s hard to compete with cheap-labor countries, even for skilled work. Being good at something a million other people (or machines) do more cheaply, is not a recipe for a good time.

Smarter, faster, cheaper is hard (but not impossible) to win.

There’s another way to stand out from the crowd. When you create something new, lead something that might fail, go public with your message, interact with vulnerability — when you do scary things you give yourself an enormous advantage

There are many fantastic opportunities whose price of entry is the unusual willingness to be afraid and go forward anyway.

P.S. I aim to practice what I preach. My latest scary thing is workshop speaking at conferences. I’m kicking that off with three sessions at the National Worship Leader Conference next week.

When what you’re getting is not what you want, you feel friction. You might spend a lot of energy coping with that. Maybe you know how to calm yourself down, manage your frustration, and keep the apple cart from upsetting.

What if you stop coping and do these three things?

1) Get to clarity on what you want. Talk to someone. Write it out. No matter how big, scary, or unlikely it is.

2) If what you want violates the laws of physics, the laws of the land, or requires change in a person who does not want to change: Let go of wanting the impossible. Accept that you cannot make it happen. This is really sad, and it leads to moving on.

3) For anything else you want, take the energy you spent coping and put it into actions to make change.

All of these are scarier and more difficult than coping. The thing is, if you just cope today you’ll have to keep coping with your conflict for indefinite tomorrows. If you let go and/or make change today, your conflict will be resolved.

When an employee comes to you with a problem, it’s natural to think “How can I solve this problem?”

You can be an impactful leader by asking these instead:

What system improvements will prevent this problem in the future?

How do I want to influence my relationship with the person in this?

How do I want to advance the development of the person through this?

As for the immediate problem, ask the employee “What options do you see and which do you recommend?”

It’s natural to focus on the risks of launching and leading. It’s human, and fitting, to feel fear about what could go wrong when you step out to live and work the way you really want to.

There’s another risk that’s not as easy to feel. It’s the risk of coming to the end of your life having used just a fraction of your potential. That would be nothing short of tragic.

In the last month I’ve had many coaching conversations with clients and potential clients. I am truly grateful these fantastic human beings are walking this earth and applying their talents to doing work that matters.

And all of them have buckets of potential they haven’t tapped yet. As they are stepping up and making changes that stretch them and require them to draw on that potential, they feel the fear and the weight of doing bigger things.

They’re doing bigger things anyway, and that is nothing short of thrilling.

When you want a different career, a higher level of business success, a big change in your life and work, you might feel a tense and adrenaline-charged choice between A) taking a risky flying leap or B) staying miserably stuck.

Option C is almost always a better choice. Take a step. There’s no chasm to dramatically leap between where you are and where you want to be. Just an uneven landscape to navigate through over time.

Your brain imagines the chasm and creates the false choice between stuckness and flying leaps because it’s wired to keep you from leaving the illusory safety of the status quo.

Launch by taking a step. It’s far less risky (not less scary) than status quo and the flying leap, and far more likely to get you there.