Where Do You Want To Be Successful?

Yesterday I heard the most beautiful question from YouTuber Nathaniel Drew, "Where do you want to be successful?" We live within cultural scripts that dictate what is acceptable behavior. For example, stay in your lane, work 40 hours a week, retire at 67, get married, and have kids.

The cultural scripts have evolved over centuries, perhaps over thousands of years, the scripts have become ingrained into our DNA. When you step outside the cultural scripts, something interesting happens -- fear.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote, "Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

So you retreat to the safety of the cultural scripts. But is safety your goal?

If you look back through history and the moments that changed the World, safety is not the word I would use. I would use — courage, uncertainty, and even innovation.

It was innovation that allowed Alexander Gram Bell to invent the light bulb.

It was uncertainty that allowed Barack Obama to run for president and win.

It was courage that allowed the first responders to run into the World Trade Center as it burned on 9/11.

Why did these individuals not follow the cultural scripts? Perhaps they asked themselves, "Where do you what to be successful?" And regardless of the cultural scripts and the paralysis fears — their need to convert retreat into advances was greater.

So I leave you with the question, "You can live in the safety of the cultural scripts or ask yourself where do you what to be successful?"