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.

In milliseconds we decide the other person’s basic intention. We quickly judge friend or foe.

“Is he for me or against me? Am I safe with her?”

When we don’t feel safe we get defensive, we don’t listen, we don’t take risks, we don’t open ourselves to change.

To grow, choose people you know are for you. It’s your responsibility to protect yourself and your aspirations from people who respond with fear, criticism, or negativity.

And pay it forward. Go out of your way to show and say that you are for the people you are working with.

First you dream about the thing you will build, the impassioned work you will do, the mark you will make. Then comes a moment when you have a choice: launch it, or veer off, loop back, and keep dreaming.

Crossing that line into launch commit is terrifying. Fear amps up as the line approaches, and hits full panic shortly after.

Multiple past successes will not let you skip the fear. Thorough preparation (a good idea) won’t get you a fear pass. Neither will being really smart, likable, financially ready, and otherwise cleared for takeoff by all rational accounts.

I talk to people almost every day who have all those things, and the fear surrounding launch commit is still intensely real. Fear is an integral part of doing things that matter.

I only know two ways to keep the fear at bay. Live a smaller life than you dream of, or stare the fear right in the eye and hit the launch button. Stand in the gale force fear for a while. Succeed, fall flat, or muddle through. And discover that behind all the stomach-churning special effects, fear’s got nothing.

photo credit: pobre.ch

If you connect only with people you see a strategic reason to connect with, you’ll miss out. It’s impossible and unnecessary to know what you might get out of a new connection.

Add all kinds of people to your circle of relationships. Show up and connect with curiosity and generosity. Trust that mutual benefit will emerge in delightful and unpredictable ways. It will, and connecting this way will enrich your life.

Personal growth happens in relationships. Period.

Your relationships are a mirror — the only way to see yourself accurately.

They check and clarify your thinking.

They give you energy and courage to do hard and scary things.

The most growth-promoting relationships are unconditionally pro-you, and openly truthful.

Get connected. Isolation is the greatest enemy of your growth.