Making a Leap of Faith In Today’s Business World

“Your success ceiling is your ability to be okay when the world around you is not.” -Annie

When is it time to take a leap of faith with your business? How do we know when it is time to stop trying to fix everything, and take a leap of faith in a new direction?

In this motivational episode, host Annie Hyman Pratt uses vivid metaphors to discuss taking leaps of faith during challenging times in order to discover new opportunities and exceed your perceived success ceiling. She emphasizes maintaining resilience and an “I’m okay” attitude to make it through struggles and come out stronger on the other side.

Key Points

• When facing challenges, we often feel stuck and don’t know if there are better options. But we have to take a “leap of faith” and move forward even when the outcome is uncertain.
• The leap of faith requires trusting that you will be okay, and having faith things will work out even if you can’t see the full picture.
• On the other side of the leap is discovery – you find new opportunities, skills, confidence and abundance when you make it through uncertain times.
• To take the leap, you must build your resilience and ability to be okay even when you don’t have control. This “success ceiling” is key.
• People who achieve great success in business, sports, arts, etc have all taken leaps, faced hardships, and discovered more of their potential. Their challenges shaped their success.
• The opportunity lies in getting through the struggle, not avoiding it. The discovery and growth is on the other side.

Related Resources

Leadership Skills: Self-Leadership
Leadership Development Articles: Why Innovation is Important for Business Success | Leadership in Times of Uncertainty
Downloadable Leadership Tool: The CCORE Empowerment Process

Auto-Generated Transcript – unedited version

Making a Leap of Faith In Today’s Business World

This is Leadership is Calling, a podcast that brings you leadership and business tips anchored in the people part. I’m Annie Hyman Pratt, CEO and founder of Leading Edge Teams.

All right, so this is us standing over here and we’re on this Shore over here and this has been a nice place to live. It’s been fine okay but now we have like a fire at our back and it’s sort of getting worse and it’s getting closer and we don’t know we don’t even know that there’s this island over here actually I probably shouldn’t have even drawn it first we don’t know that there’s an island there. We don’t, we don’t know that there’s something better. Okay and we don’t know if we jump In this River if we’ll survive. We don’t know but what do we know exactly? We know can’t stay here literally can’t stay here, we have to move and so this leap, this is the leap of faith when people say take a leap of faith this is the leap of faith and the leap is when we’re here what are we what are we thinking? We are thinking “I’m okay,”

Literally “I’m okay.” “I know how to swim probably be all right actually I jumped with some other people we’re all you know we’re all gonna help each other swim.” “We don’t you know we don’t really know how this is all gonna turn out but we have faith that in the end it’s going to all be okay” and because of that at this moment right now “I’m okay I’m okay I can handle this” and that is that’s all that we’re going for that’s all that we’re going for because when we can hold this place of “I’m okay” and all of us are doing that then it’s like “oh wait I actually do see this island” then what we get on this Shore is Discovery. This is where um when I learned it at USM they were talking about addiction actually and that um and that when you know that people are trying to get away from the fire of addiction and that what they’re going for is recovery but the thing is is that that’s not really what they’re going for because they don’t they don’t know what’s on the other side they aren’t recovered what they’re going to get is a bunch of Discovery but they have to take this leap of faith first and to take this leap of faith it’s kind of crazy for human beings because so much of us stay here and we’re like “well I can’t leave there because probably it’ll be worse” right so we stay and we we literally you know get we get burned out burned up sort of metaphorically burned and instead what we what we need to do is to get ourselves to that place of like “well dang it I didn’t know why this was all gonna happen this way and now is the time that my best best alternative really the only one that makes any sense is to take a leap of faith in I’m going to be okay” and then when we’re okay and especially when we get together with others our vocal that are okay we discover stuff we discover a new way maybe it takes some time. Anybody here walking dead fans or used to be or ever watched Walking Dead okay so I I I am in the early days anyways I love that show um because just because for me I know “I’m a panicker I would be a walking dead person like on day one” but my husband would not he he’d be he’d be eternally okay with all these zombies running around you know and and and because he would be okay he’d be the one that like the actors on the show that would find you know the safe prison to be get away from the dead people they would discover stuff together.

So what we want is for us to be internally okay and I know this is all this all might sound a little bit um uh what philosophical today or something but what I want you to know is it’s not this is this is your success ceiling is your ability to be okay when the world around you is not because there are going to be times that you don’t have control over things you just don’t there’s going to be a lot of times you do and by the way that is how all of us us how all especially High Achievers get addicted to producing results we get addicted to it it’s like it feels so good to do something have it turn out great and we start to buy into this um illusion this fallacy of and it will always go like that that there’s always another decision I could make that will be as successful if not more successful than the last and that’s not true especially in the short run but if we can get this leap of faith going what we get out of this is this experience will bring us even more abundance in learning in new opportunities in a whole increased level of self-confidence because we survived this there is a huge gift in this you get to a whole new level.

Think of people who are super successful at sports or arts or whatnot none of them haven’t been through some crazy hard times terrible injuries some athletes and performers have been through years of horrible depression that they come out of and then achieve again right they’ve been through some really really hard hard hard times and all of them will tell you “I would not be at the success level I am today if I hadn’t gotten through that” and that’s the ceiling you know I remember being USM and having them say that like you know the chat challenge is the opportunity and I’m kind of like feeling like “opportunity for what opportunity to drown like an opportunity to burn up opportunity to just feel terrible” and what I didn’t know is no actually the opportunity is getting through the struggle because of this you don’t discover stuff here you don’t the discovery is not a a useful one you discover that “if I stay here I get burned” that’s not that doesn’t do anything for your future. Hey Annie “It’s hard to jump when you think you can put out the fire with that right decision.”

Oh yes no that’s the therein lies the rub or whatever there’s the rub there is the challenge and the only way that you are going to get to the place of like “I can jump” that this is the moment where I know putting out that fire is not going to work is if you keep this if you keep yourself leadership intact because that’s the place where you’re like “I’m okay” which is the better decision giving given everything I know but if you can’t hold that place inside yourself you will be spraying at the flames in a panic can’t think at all so this is a time it’s a really hard time where I know that all of you are going to have this amazing opportunity to develop amazing opportunity to get all of these new skills new new confidence new sense of secure self that this is waiting for you this is the opportunity the last 10 years actually is kind of like there have been another decision you could make that would make you more successful or a lot of the times there was it kind of happened but and that’s not not the best time to to grow that’s not the real growth sure you grow yes you grow but this is where you actually smash your own success ceiling because you have a ceiling it’s kind of like or you have a you have a box or something it’s kind of like you are stuck in this box until you can get you know enough inner strength to do the sleep of Faith because you can trust in “I’m okay” and “we’re going to get through this together” so that you land here and then when you land here you’re like “oh my gosh I’m so glad all this happened” I’m kind of fascinated with um people that uh human beings that go through extreme tragedies like um losing limbs like becoming paralyzed like um uh you know getting lost in the forest for weeks weeks or something I don’t know there’s this woman who um fell out of a plane she fell over ten thousand feet strapped in her chair and she survived and then she had to hike out of the Andes forest in South America for six days she freaking survived it like “who can survive that” you know so anyhow.

Okay so these people because they get here it’s shocking how many of them are glad that it happened glad that an accident happened glad that they fell out of a plate because they survived something that now they know “the meaning of life” now they know are the value of life I guess I should say that now they have this sense of themselves in the world that is completely transformed so we don’t want you to have to fall out of a plane to get that that’s not what we want but what we want is for all of you to have the experience of this leap of “okay this I’m definitely okay” so that you have this experience of like “oh my gosh I’m actually glad all that happened I’m so much better off and so are those around me.”

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