Playing it safe means not taking chances or risks.  It means not making changes.  It means not taking a true leadership role in your life or career.  It means standing still.  And it means never knowing ‘what could have been’ or reaching one’s true happiness. 

Most people of great success didn’t get there by playing it safe.  Can you truly find happiness by playing it safe or do you only find stale contentment? 

It’s imporatant to encourage ourselves, our clients, our family and our friends to be courageous and make changes, take control and move forward. 

We should ask:

• What would make me happy?
• What steps would it take to get there?
• What will happen if I don’t take those steps?  Or, what WON’T happen if I don’t take those steps?
• If I just play it safe, where will I be in 6 months, 1 year, 3 years?  The same place I am now?

I think it’s important to include those keywords "if I just play it safe" when we’re encouraging one, or ourselves, to go for happiness.  There seems to be something motivating about that phrase.

Playing it safe doesn’t build one’s self-esteem.  It doesn’t allow a person to realize their true capabilities or to really put their "drive" in high gear.  It’s a place of complacency, of cruise-control.  Living on cruise-control gives you no chance to really experience your travel.  

If you roll down the windows and enjoy the wind, crank up the radio, feel the bumps and potholes, and control everything about your journey you can really appreciate and navigate your path.  Taking the wheel puts your destination in your control rather than just arriving wherever it takes you.

Even though we can’t control everything that happens in life, we can ultimately control our happiness by asking ourselves "now that this has happened, what is it that will make me happy?", and daring ourselves to not play it safe so that we can navigate our way to to the place we want to be.

What are your views when it comes to "playing it safe" and happiness?  Is there a particular approach you use?  Do you have any stories or successes about how not playing it safe gave way to happiness or how playing it safe gave way to just settling?

Karen J. for Professional-Coaches.com

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1. Life gives us "gifts" in the form of opportunities to have experiences.
2. Coaching provides the opportunity to get feedback from these experiences – this is achieved by questioning and clarifying.
3. Further probing and questioning creates insights and common themes which lead to the learner reflecting on the experiences, the action that was taken and the consequences of this action.
4. From these insights and personal discoveries, conclusions are drawn that, if sufficiently powerful, can relate back to other current or past situations.
5. The valuable lessons learned from this exercise are then applied to future situations in the form of experiments.
6. From these experiments, experiences are provided as well as further opportunities to learn more and the cycle goes around again.

Being a Coach you will find, Kolb’s learning cycle becomes so much more effective when approached from a coaching perspective. Are you a ‘Coach’? Are you a business personal or professional coach? we would like to hear from you, write us at admin [at] contemporaryva [dot] com Professional-Coaches.com

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