Danger! Danger! High Voltage!!!

Dreams can be dangerous things... if you don't have ambitions & dreams then life is simple, stable & satisfying.

However, by even daring to dream, life completely changes. If you have an ambition but don't realise it, then it leaves the potential to be unsatisfied in life - to feel you've been cheated out of something that you never had anyway...

Having an ambition, means that you will at some point have to make a choice between the simple life and the life where you can achieve your ambition. And that choice is not a free choice, as there are costs involved in that choice, mainly risk.

And that risk is multifaceted in my experience... I first of all have some financial risk, in that I may lose money in the project, and I may loose my safe & secure job. But its only money (what's £30k over a lifetime!!! Answer - its £30k!) and I can make a living at some point by doing something, and I hope that even if this fails my experiences through this will allow me to be more attractive in the labour market place.

Secondly, and quite high up there, is the fear of failure and the resulting loss of pride & face. This is a bit more difficult to mitigate, and is intrinsically linked to ambition. There is an interesting link between pride, vulnerability and ambition. Vulnerability is something we all want to avoid, but with ambition there comes a time where you have to be vulnerable, and to be frank if its not scary enough is it really an ambition. To quote a female colleague... "if its comfortable, its not big enough!". To succeed we need to be vulnerable and accept we are vulnerable and to take the risk on. Its a bit like soldiers fighting in the front line - I watched a programme the other day about soldiers trapped in a firefight in a house in Iraq, and when the relief came they couldn't find the right house, so the trapped patrol leader jumped out of the house and ran down the street (filled with shooting militia!!!!) to signal the drivers of the armoured personnel carriers where the house was. When asked later why he did that, he said something along the lines that he felt he was dead anyway, and that the only way out was to risk it... Now that's making yourself vulnerable! But it was worth the risk as all his patrol escaped unharmed.

The other risk is that I am used to working in a wider group in a corporate lifestyle. I will have to forgo the benefit of being in a collective where I can hide from the storm, pass the buck, prevaricate and celebrate other people's achievements as my own (not that I need to do that, since I am so good, obviously!). And for awhile I will be on my own. I will not be having lunch with close colleagues everyday. I will not be chewing the fat. I will not be moaning about senior leaders in the business and the craziness of their ideas. I will be the leader of my own destiny, and its my crazy idea!!! I risk social exclusion from a group I am very close to...

But at the end of it, this risk or danger is all in the mind. By staying put there is a danger in that too. There is a risk of not having ambition can lead to becoming complacent, and facing the same risks, or in actual fact, a bigger danger than if I had ambition. Lets take the example of the turkeys at Christmas - for their whole life they have a simple life in that they get fed, run around a farm (lets assume they are free range!), and are offered security from any prowling foxes or other predators. But what if the turkey had an ambition to run off the farm and live a life less ordinary... it would give up regular safety, food and friends but be more or less master of its own destiny. Now we all know what happens to farmed turkeys - they get suddenly & without warning, culled for our festive dinner! But what about the turkey with ambition - it might have been gobbled up by the fox or it might have died of starvation, but it might have just escaped the danger and achieved its ambition...

So, all in all, I need to put myself in danger! Its the only way I will be in danger of making a change in my life and living the life I want...