51

Newton’s first law of motion, the law of inertia, tells us that a body at rest will remain at rest and a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Inertia is defined as the property of an object to resist changes in its state of motion. We, too, are subject to the laws of inertia. We, too, are bodies at rest or in motion. And inertia inhibits our ability to take risks because it resists our ability to change. Risk-taking is about starting something new or stopping something we’ve grown comfortable with. In the human law of inertia, risk-taking is the force that shoves us out of our routine or comfort zone. To risk means to change, and because risk-taking causes the usual discomfort that accompanies change, inertia—the cozy comfort of the status quo—is often a more attractive choice. To overcome its debilitating effects, and to help ready yourself for the risk, Right Risk-takers need to learn to defy inertia.

Risk-taking as a Vehicle of Change

Through risk-taking we move beyond the comfort of our current condition and overcome inertia. Sometimes this movement is taken through physical action, such as leaving the safety of the ground to scale the face of El Capitan. Other times the movement entails more of a cerebral shift, converting to a new political or religious belief system, for example. Whether physical or intellectual, risk is a vehicle that moves us from where we are to where we want to be, and you simply can’t get from here to there without movement. As a general rule, the greater the distance between your current reality (here) and the destination to which the risk will carry you (there), the more substantial the risk. And the hard truth is, the bigger the gap between here and there, the more energy, discomfort, and sacrifice will be required to overcome inertia and take the risk. Risk-taking is hard work.

As the path of change, risk-taking is the hard way out of our current circumstances, the way of initiative. Unfortunately, there is an inverse relationship between initiative and enormity. Thus, the more daunting the risk, the harder it is to muster up the energy to face the challenge, and the easier it is to opt out. We feel dwarfed by the risk’s bigness and we think we simply don’t have the physical or intellectual wherewithal for the undertaking. For example, many people have shied away from starting their own business not because of the financial commitment, but because they were convinced that the volume of paperwork would be too vexing.

52

While turning away from the hard work of a large risk is understandable, turning away from small risks makes less sense. In these instances, the reluctance to risk is a function of habit—the behavioral expression of inertia. I see this a lot in my executive coaching practice, where even the smallest risks (in the form of behavioral change) are often met with resistance. For example, I once coached a highly successful, but plateaued, senior executive who, to the annoyance of both his wife and his employees, meticulously planned every waking moment of his life. He knew his rigidity was becoming more than a barrier to career progress, it was hampering his ability to enjoy life as well. More than one person had told him he needed to “lighten up.” After he related all the ways in which his overly structured behavior was blocking his personal and professional growth, we began brainstorming how he could increase the amount of spontaneity in his life. Seeing the need to start slow, I made a simple suggestion that on the weekends he begin taking off his wristwatch so that he could allow himself to be unrestricted by time and could begin experimenting with living less rigidly. Meeting my suggestion with a mixture of shock and characteristic rigidity, he replied, “Good God, I could never do that!”

Laziness

It is easy to mistake behavioral inertia with laziness. But laziness isn’t about avoiding change, it is about avoiding effort. Ben Franklin called laziness “needless ease,” and others have referred to it as resting before you’re tired. Laziness is different from inertia. Whereas inertia is about resisting changes to our circumstances, laziness is about willful neglect. The plateaued executive wasn’t being lazy in resisting the idea of spending a watch-less weekend, he was protecting the status quo of his current condition; he was being habitual.

53

While laziness and inertia are different, some similarities blur the distinctions between them. Both are concerned with the preservation of the status quo (inertia sits on its habit, laziness sits on the couch). Both resist discomfort. And both respond negatively to risk — inertia resisting the changes that risk will bring, laziness avoiding the effort risk will require. Perhaps the best way to distinguish between the two is to consider how each is overcome. Overcoming inertia requires getting off your habit. Overcoming laziness requires getting off your ass. And both are overcome by taking a risk.

Workaholism: Laziness in Action

Some of the laziest people I know are workaholics. I mean real, honest-to-goodness, 18-hour day, working on the weekend, dang-I-missed-the-kids-soccer-game-again workaholics. I’ve worked with a lot of them in my executive coaching practice. The telltale sign of overwork always indicates to me that the workaholic is being lazy about some part of his or her life. Workaholism is a deceptive form of self-avoidance, of escapism. Some people use work as an excuse to avoid a loveless marriage, others to escape unhappiness with themselves, and some use their job roles as a substitute for an authentic identity. But in each case, the workaholic is using an overabundance of effort in one part of his life while depriving another part that may need it more. In this way, workaholism is about self-neglect.

The neglectfulness of workaholism comes at a price. I have worked with dedicated workers who, other than work, had no real life at all. People whose hard work had paid off in the form of multimillion-dollar salaries, but whose lives were entirely unenviable. People with huge houses, but empty homes. People on their third marriages, with a wake of ruined relationships behind them. People who, aside from their job title, had no identity at all. People who, in real ways, had exchanged portions of their soul for career success. People who, sadly and ironically, make the fatal mistake of spending their whole life . . . making a living.

54

The saddest thing about workaholics is that nearly all of them have a secret dream that they’ve squelched. Most often, the dream has nothing to do with their work skill but has everything to do with their passion. I worked with an IT professional who spent absurd hours stringing together lines of software code when his real desire was to do missionary work. He honestly believed that if he just worked hard enough, he would be able to afford to take the risk of living out his passions. But as he churned and churned in a passionless career, his dreams languished. Workaholism brings about the saddest form of personal neglect: dream deprivation.

Too many people trick themselves into believing that being busy equates with personal progress. But a person can be furiously active and entirely stuck. This is what I define as the paradoxical condition of paralysis in motion. Like someone running in place, paralysis in motion is an active, but ultimately progress-free, and even regressive, condition. Paralysis in motion is inertia in action, and falling victim to it means we are going nowhere fast.

Defying Inertia

Right Risk-taking requires being alert to the effects of inertia in all its active and inactive forms. Our really big risks, and most especially our Right Risks, require inertia-defying exertion. They require pulling up the roots of our habits, putting down the television remote, and springing into action. How? Here are a few things that you can do to defy inertia:

• Anchor Your Risk To Your Passion: It is easier to move into action when we enjoy what we’re doing. When the risks you take are anchored to the things you feel most passionate about, you have much more energy and vigor. So ask yourself, “What am I most passionate about?”

55

• Play a New Station . . . WIIDR: Most people have seen the acronym WIIFM, which stands for What’s In It For Me? But overcoming inertia requires more than the pull of self-interest. It requires the push of personal accountability. Risk-takers need to tune in to a new station WIIDR, or What If I Don’t Risk? Very often when we focus on this question, we realize that not taking a risk is, in fact, a risk! It’s the risk of regression.
• Feed Your Dreams: Risk-taking is the main way we convert our dreams to reality. No risks, no dreams. Feeding your dream helps you give it gravity, pulling you away from the effects of inertia. Say, like one of my former coachees, you’re a senior finance executive, but your dream is to open a shoe store. Instead of listing all the reasons why the risk is unfeasible, conduct some due diligence. Study the industry, go visit a bunch of shoe stores, talk to store owners, join associations, visit with the Small Business Administration, etc. The more you nourish your dreams, the more feasible and real they get. After a while, you’ll become so mentally involved in your new world that your physical world will catch up with you. Before you know it, you’ll be slapping shoes on stinky feet!
• Visualize: Visualization is a mental rehearsal, and it is just as important, if not more so, than rehearsals of a physical nature. The reason is that you rarely (if ever) will have a perfect physical practice, but a visualized rehearsal can be done flawlessly. Fill your mental imagery with as much multisensory detail as possible. In getting ready for a major diving competition, for example, I would picture myself walking on the pool deck and smelling the chlorine; I’d feel the rough sandpaper finish of the diving board under my feet; I’d hear the spray of the water jets pelting the water; and I’d see the aqua-colored diving board and the blue water beyond. Then I would rehearse each dive in slow motion, performing each one with perfection. Your risk images, too, must be as vivid as possible in order for you to begin shifting your risk dreams from pure fantasy to tangible reality.

56

• Get a Coach: The main value a coach brings is forethought. Coaches should be able to see the future. The coach’s forethought encompasses both farsightedness and shortsightedness—a good coach continuously upholds your ultimate risk destination while simultaneously shining a light on the next step you need to take to sustain your momentum. Along with holding you accountable to your potential, the coach’s job is to help you overcome inertia by transporting you from where you are to where you are going. Indeed, the word coach still retains its original definition as a carriage (as in coach and carriage) that takes people from one place to another.
• Do Your Lead-Ups: Lead-ups are mini-rehearsals that physically simulate the risk you want to take. Divers, for example, often rehearse new dives on the trampoline. The idea is to help the body build “muscle memory” so that when they attempt the dive “for real,” their body will remember what to do. A risk-culminating moment is like the opening night of a Broadway play: When the curtain opens you’ll want to make sure that you’ve had multiple dress rehearsals. The more lead-ups you do, the more confident you’ll be and the less likely you’ll freak out during the actual risk performance. Lead-ups help us overcome inertia by breaking the risk down in to smaller, more achievable, chunks. Examples of lead-ups include running smaller distances before a marathon, practicing a speech in front of a mirror, role playing with a mentor about how to handle an interpersonal confrontation.
• Create Desperation: Sometimes the best thing you can do to overcome inertia is to inject your life with a little desperation. This is the “sink or swim” approach where you plunge ahead, consequences be damned. Desperation stirs things up and forces you to do what is necessary to survive. Quitting one’s job before having secured another is a good example.
• Get Comfortable with the Uncomfortable: Defying inertia requires moving beyond our comfort zone. Most feelings of discomfort result from loss of control. Since you won’t be able to control all the outcomes after taking your big risk, it is a good idea to learn how to deal with this uncomfortable feeling. Here’s a fun idea for losing control in a controlled way. After agreeing on a stop signal (such as the right to cry “uncle”), lie back on the floor and let your significant other tickle you for longer and longer durations.

57

Are You Contending?

An old maxim says the best way to be nothing is to do nothing. A lot of people prefer bragging how they could have been a contender to actually contending. For some, there is a strange comfort in knowing that they could have even though they didn’t. While asserting your potential is much easier than actually living up to it, living in the shadow of your unused potential can be a dreadful burden. Both inertia and laziness leave scars of safety. Many a bar stool has been warmed by the seat of a man whose most taunting recollections are of the risks he didn’t take.

Putting Principle 2 Into Practice

• Is your big risk about starting something new or ending something you’ve grown comfortable with? How might the effects of inertia be impacting your risk?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• How far is the gap between where you want to get to and where you are? How enormous is this risk?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• Based on your answer, how much energy will be required to take your risk?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• How has laziness or busyness impacted your risk? In what ways have you been neglectful of your dreams?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• Refer to the suggestions for defying inertia. How is the risk anchored to your passion?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• How do you plan to “feed the dream”?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• Have you visualized the outcomes yet?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• Who can help coach you through your risk?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• What “lead-up” rehearsals do you need to do?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• In what way is this risk an act of desperation?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________
  
  
• What small things can you do to increase your comfort with discomfort?
  ____________________________________________________
  ____________________________________________________