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As they exited the aqua-theater, one of the most frequent compliments the audience gave us divers was that we “made it look easy.” While easy may have been the result, the word doesn’t adequately account for all the rehearsing and fine tuning needed to make the show appear that way. The diving show was extremely well choreographed. Though the audience didn’t know it, each dive, each moment on stage, and each bow of gratitude for the audience’s applause, was exhaustively rehearsed. Even our smiles were rehearsed! With our index finger, we’d swipe off the saliva from our top teeth, and tuck the upper lip against the whites of our teeth. From the audience it looked like we were smiling, but if you were on the stage with us you’d swear that we had had our top lips removed.

To further enhance the easy look of our performance, both the divers and the announcer regimentally followed a tightly defined script. Scripting was especially important during the comedy portion of the show because we had to dupe the audience for the comedy routine to work. This vaudevillian trickery involved the announcer, one diver as a “straightman,” and another diver planted as an unruly audience member. Here is how the setup was choreographed:

Getting 2000 audience members to sit still is no easy task. The announcer’s sober demeanor was critical to captivating the audience’s attention and to creating a sense of believability. Once a hush fell over the unsuspecting audience, the diver would slowly begin his forward approach. Just as he began to hurtle into the air, our plant would blurt out from the middle of the audience, “Hey Jerry, come quick! One of them divers is gonna do a screaming belly whomper!” With that the startled audience would angrily redirect their attention to the audacious derelict. The angrier the audience was, the better the announcer and straightman had set up the comedy routine. More than one comedian got doused with a super-sized cola from an angry patron.

The routine would culminate with the comedian elbowing his way up onto the stage to challenge the straightman to a diving contest. By the time the audience realized they had been duped, they were fully enjoying the ensuing antics. The key to this deception was that it had to seem real. The script was written so as to pull the unwitting audience into the scene so that when they realized the playful deception, they would have fun. Deviating from the script left you in danger of making the audience feel foolish or made fun of. The routine was written so that they felt as if they were in on the joke, not the joke’s butt end. To ensure this outcome, as the show’s captains, we constantly had to remind our rookie divers to “stick to the script.”

Not all high divers were allowed to do the comedy act. And of the ones who were, the best comedians were those who would use the script as a broad framework versus canon law. But a diver could only reach this comedic maturity after performing hundreds of shows as a script loyalist. The first evidence that the diver was maturing as a comedian would be when he would follow the script verbatim but perform it as different characters, each plausibly resembling an actual audience member. One show he might perform the script as a Brooklyn cabby, the next as a nerd, or redneck, or effeminate hairdresser from the local salon. Later, the comedian might try a new facial gesture or tweak a line to discover untapped regions of the audience’s funny bone.

With our most seasoned comedians, the routine resembled improvisational theater and was performed with spirited spontaneity. In these instances the script was a point of departure, a launching pad the comedian would use to reach higher levels of comedic communion with the audience. In other words, how the script was used became a barometer of the diver’s maturation as a professional. During a diver’s first two or three seasons sticking to the script allowed the diver to gain the confidence and experience to take on greater comedic risk later in their careers. Whereas strict adherence to the script was needed to direct a rookie’s every move, the more seasoned professional would use it as a baseline, sometimes deviating from it, other times allowing themselves to be directed by it. For the rookie, the script brought standardization and consistency, for the veteran it was a springboard to innovation and experimentation.

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Parental Scripting: Echoes From the Past

Our diving-show script provides a useful model for modifying the scripts in our own lives, particularly when it comes to risk. Consciously or unconsciously, unseen scripts direct each of us. By sticking to our scripts, we make life appear predictable and controllable, and therefore safe. This is true regardless of how outdated, or even how unhealthy, our scripts are. A young boy’s parents, for example, may compare him to his high-achieving brother. In loving tones, they may say seemingly innocuous things like, “Why don’t you go out for the football team like Bobby? Look how successful it has made him.” The subtle message construed by the younger sibling is that Bobby is successful and he is not. Even more subtle is the message that the parents want the younger child to be like the older brother, that he is inadequate the way he is, and that he is “less than.”

Recognize that in this example there is a huge disconnect between the parent’s intent (for the child to be more) and the child’s interpretation (that he is less). As the child carries the script into adulthood, and the script nestles itself deeper into his psyche, he begins playing the “less than” role according to script. The older son goes to a prestigious university, the younger to a local community college. The older launches a successful career, the younger can’t hold a steady job. The older is responsible, conscientious, and healthy. The younger is unreliable, selfish, and personally neglectful. Following the family scripts, the older son has become more than his parents had hoped for while the younger has been a constant disappointment. An entrenched “less than” script can even lead to such things as substance abuse, financial woes, a string of failed relationships, and anything else you’d expect from people who are “lesser off.”

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My words shouldn’t be interpreted as an indictment of parental scripting. Scripting is an essential form of behavioral conditioning that during our formative years is critical to both our survival and acceptance into the human community. Scripts provide needed parameters for children by acting as mental safety rails that regulate behavior and decision-making. By telling children “don’t swim after eating,” “don’t play with matches,” “don’t talk to strangers,” and “don’t get too close to the edge,” we teach them the value of safety and cautiousness. But we also teach them to fear taking risks.

Because of their habit-forming influence on human behavior, and because habits restrict our freedom by letting us choose only what is known or familiar, scripts can be a potent form of risk inhibition. That is not to say that a person living a scripted life takes no risks, but that scripts inhibit one of life’s most important risks, the risk of freely deciding your own identity, of living a life of your own design.

The problem with scripts is that over time they form mental grooves that channel all our thoughts and actions, directing them like lemmings toward the same outcomes. Over time we simply become more elaborate versions of our earlier selves. The good child progresses into a “goodie two shoes,” who becomes a pretentious teenager, who becomes a sanctimonious choir director incapable of facing his or her imperfections, who becomes a shriveled up old prune who— following the “good child” script—never risked enjoying the decadent pleasure of an occasional surrender to all of life’s wonderful bad. When we are simply the sum of all our yesterdays, our todays lose the joy of spontaneity and experimentation. Life itself becomes a destiny of predetermined outcomes over which we have relinquished control. Entrenched scripts ultimately lead to cognitive imprisonment—a life void of free choices.

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As we mature into adulthood, our scripts may not keep pace with the demands of an adult life. When our behaviors and decisions are dictated by outdated scripts, we become puppets to the past, responding like well-behaved children to complex situations that require a higher degree of maturity and a lower degree of restraint. A more useful and beneficial approach would be to mimic the diving comedians by doing improvisational riffs on our core risk scripts.

Build On Your Risk Scripts

A lot has been written in self-help literature about the need to rewrite outdated or unhealthy scripts. While in principle I agree that re-scripting is important, in practice it is extremely difficult to do. Short of intense psychotherapy or a cataclysmic life-changing event (which often precedes therapy), I think that a full re-scripting is next to impossible. However, I do believe that, as in the diving show, our basic scripts can be used as a springboard to higher levels of risk aptitude and personal maturity. Rather than rewrite our scripts entirely, we would be better served to build on our scripts and use them as a source of identity renewal, a starting point on which our identities can mature and progress.

For example, the rock star Madonna is often admired for her ability to “reinvent” herself. But in my opinion, her various identities (boy toy, material girl, erotica vixen, Kabbalah soul woman, etc.) all basically stem from the same script, a script that says, namely, I am valuable and lovable to the extent that people want me. Her greatness isn’t a function of her ability to re-script herself as much as it is her willingness to use her foundational script as a source of identity exploration. If she were to convert her need to get attention into a need to give attention, say becoming an aid worker in Somalia, then I would believe that a full re-scripting and identity conversion had taken place.

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Identifying the scripts that drive your behavior and understanding how they inhibit you is a critical step in readying yourself for your big risk. Though the basic scripts that people follow are virtually limitless, below are some of the more common ones that I’ve run across in my executive coaching practice. Keep in mind that when people seek me out for coaching, it is often because they have gotten “stuck” and are searching for ways to get moving again. Thus the nine scripts offered here are limiting scripts, that is, scripts that keep you from progressing toward your risk.

Nine Limiting Scripts

“I am not enough”

Consequences

• Consumptive need for self-improvement to compensate for feelings of inadequacy
• Gnawing sense of dissatisfaction and discontent
• Self-berating, perfectionistic
• Constantly proving him/herself to self and others
• Hyper-ambitious

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of self-acceptance
• Risk of settling down
• Risk of embracing feelings of incompleteness.

“They will like me if I am pretty/handsome”

Consequences

• Preoccupation with outward appearances
• Interpersonally shallow, narcissistic, self-preoccupied
• Worth determined by physical attractiveness
• Slave to fashion

Inhibited Risks

• Risks that threaten one’s image or appearance
• Risk of accepting one’s ugliness
• Risk of forming deep relationships based on interior attractiveness

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“The more I produce, the more valuable I am”

Consequences

• Preoccupation with doing, busybody behavior
• Unable to relax, time regimented, and often ill-at-ease
• Lacks spontaneity
• Draws personal worth based on the volume of work accomplished

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of inaction, of being versus doing

“If I have more than you, I’ll be better than you”

Consequences

• Preoccupation with material wealth
• Financial value and personal value equated
• Possessive, stingy, and often elitist

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of generosity, of giving versus getting
• Risk of judging people according to character versus compensation
• Risk of acknowledging one’s inferiority
• Risk of humility

“I must always be in control”

Consequences

• Hyper-focus on risk mitigation and catching mistakes
• Lives in constant fear of chaos
• Dominating of others, bossy, dogmatic
• Personal rigidity and lack of spontaneity
• Joyless

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of giving up control and living unattached to outcomes
• Risk of following other people’s lead.

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“You can’t trust anyone; people always let you down”

Consequences

• Unrealistically low expectations of others
• Suspicious, questions the motives of others
• Gravitation toward situations that validate their distrust
• Emotionally distant, frigid, and unable to form lasting relationships
• Lonely

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of putting down emotional guard, chancing rejection
• Risk of obligations associated with deep friendships
• Risk of intimacy, closeness, and commitment.

“They will like me if I am nice
(even if I secretly dislike them)”

Consequences

• People pleasing or pandering behavior
• Insincere, inauthentic, and disingenuous
• Self-resentful. Satisfies the needs of others at the expense of meeting one’s own needs and wants
• Can become petty and spiteful

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of displeasing others by asserting one’s true opinion
• Risk of meeting one’s own needs first
• Risk of authenticity, of being one’s true self

“I am damaged goods”

Consequences

• Victim mentality, prone to blaming others for one’s lot in life
• Resentful of other people’s happiness or success
• Self-doubting, self-pitying, and self-sabotaging
• Deep feelings of being misfit, motto: “No one understands me.”

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Inhibited Risks

• Risk of assuming personal responsibility for one’s own station in life.
• Risk of intimacy, closeness, and commitment.

“I am unlovable”

Consequences

• Deep feelings of low self-worth and/or self-loathing
• Successive failed relationships
• Bitter and resentful

Inhibited Risks

• Risk of self-acceptance
• Risk of assuming the obligations and responsibilities of personal fidelity (i.e., self-love).

The Power of Personal Mantras

As part of getting ready for a risk, it is important to keep your scripts from limiting your progress. Though a complete scriptural rewrite may not be possible without extensive soul-searching, working with my coachees has taught me that it is possible to influence them. One way to do this is to pick a personal mantra.

To illustrate how this works, consider the case of Jon, one of my coachees. Jon’s actions were directed by the script I see most often in coaching executives, the “I am not enough” script. In Jon’s instance, his “not enough” script compelled him to take on huge volumes of work in the hopes of getting promoted to the senior ranks (which he equated with “enough”). I am not talking about going the extra mile, I am talking about taking business calls at the dinner table, working till 2 AM, starting again at 6 AM, working weekends, skipping vacations, etc. Yet for all his hard work, Jon couldn’t get promoted. He was like a hot air balloon with a giant hole in the top; try as he might, he could only get so high. The senior executives viewed him as overly eager, which they interpreted not as a wealth of ambition but as a lack of confidence. He was too available, too accessible, and too intense. What would happen, they wondered, if promoting him actually worsened the problem?

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After talking about all the ways his “not enough” script had permeated every area of Jon’s life—from his constant sense of dissatisfaction to his inability to sit still—he decided to risk assuming a whole new set of behaviors. Instead of rabidly pursuing getting promoted, he decided that he would be better served to focus on developing his confidence. I asked Jon what he would look like if he were “enough.” He blurted out reflexively, “I’d stop giving such a shit.” After a good laugh, he got more serious. “It is hard to even imagine what ‘enough’ would look like. I feel so unfinished. But since you asked, I guess when I walked into a room, I’d look calm and confident.” After a brief pause he added, “Like a Cheshire cat after mating season!”

Jon decided that he would adopt “calm confidence” as his mantra. Every time he felt himself starting to get all wigged out, he’d take a deep breath and think his magic words. Since Jon had allowed himself to essentially become a 24-hour service station, he also had to learn to set new boundaries, backing up his newfound words with specific actions: no calls during dinner, no 18-hour days, and no skipping vacations.

After a few fits and starts, Jon began noticing real changes, not just in himself, but in how people responded to him. It was odd—the calmer he was in the presence of others, the calmer others became. Moreover, he was now better able to assert his boundaries when people infringed on his time, which built his confidence. We both knew that Jon was making progress when, after an intense business meeting with an upset client, Jon’s boss commented, “Thank God you were there, Jon. You were the calmest person in the room.”

It is important to note that Jon’s mantra didn’t “cure” his feelings of being incomplete. How could it? All of us are works in progress. And though his “not enough” script was limiting—particularly to his career—it also served him in some way. It was too closely tied to his ambition to want to discard entirely. Rather, his “calm confidence” mantra offset his feelings of inadequacy, and in this sense made him “enough.” By regulating his internal condition through the use of a personal mantra, and by focusing on building his confidence, Jon started to demonstrate the self-assurance that is critical at the senior levels. Thus he has a much more realistic chance of getting promoted now than when he was taking on voluminous amounts of work.

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Mantras as Risk Advancers

In readying for our risk, the benefit of a personal mantra is that it helps boost our courage, allowing us to take risks we might otherwise avoid. For example, when I started in my role as an executive coach at Accenture, a prestigious management and technology consulting company, I was so afraid of coaching the company partners that I actually considered forgoing the opportunity. Prior to moving into the role, I was a middle manager and had reported to a few of these execs, so I knew personally how intimidating and level-conscious a few of them could be. Knowing that most of them were older than I only added to my anxiety. Yet, my success as a coach (and their progress as coachees) would be contingent upon my ability to give them unvarnished feedback. Unless I could develop a stronger backbone, I would be utterly useless to them. Coaching is all about demonstrating and instilling courage. What kind of role model would I be if I were a wimpy coach?

About the time I was to move into the role, I came across a poem by Mahatma Gandhi titled Resolution. One line in particular resonated with me, “I shall not fear anyone on earth.” Until reading the poem, I had always assumed that Gandhi had been fearless in affecting such transformational change. It caught my attention because I knew that for Gandhi to declare this as a resolution for his future, he must have experienced fear of others in his past.

A few days later I happened to watch a documentary on Martin Luther King, Jr. Living in Atlanta, King is one of my heroes, and I never miss a chance to learn about his life. It turns out King was a great admirer of Gandhi and even had a picture of him hanging over the archway to his dining room. King had patterned his principles of nonviolence and passive resistance after Gandhi’s. In his last speech, delivered the night before he was assassinated, King talks of the promised land and says, prophetically, that he may not get there with us. Then, as if he were speaking directly to me, he says, “Tonight I am fearing no man.” Once again I was struck with the fact that for King to have made a special point that he was fearing no man on that night must have meant that he feared men on other occasions.

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It was somehow liberating for me to know that the fearful feelings I had about coaching the company bosses were very similar to the ones experienced by King and Gandhi during their struggles against the ruling authorities. Feeling part of a noble lineage, I borrowed the words of both men to come up with a mantra of my own: “I will fear no man.” That simple mantra helped me get ready for taking on the new job by stiffening my backbone during those intense moments when I found myself feeling intimidated by my coachees’ position or age. My mantra helped me coach more assertively, which, in turn, built my credibility and earned the executives’ respect as well.

Keep it Simple

For a personal mantra to be effective, it has to be exquisitely simple, certainly no more than a sentence long. Also, your mantra should compensate for whatever risk-limiting scripts you are operating under at a specific moment in time. Thus don’t feel obliged to keep your mantra any longer than is useful to you. Here are some mantras that I’ve found useful in helping my coachees risk more confidently:

No risk, no reward

Let go Focus!

No boundaries

Know boundaries

Get over yourself!

Insist on yourself!

Personal fidelity

Stay in the moment

It’s all good

One day at a time

Carpe Diem

Follow your bliss

Keep the faith

Trust God

The word mantra derives from two Sanskrit words; manas (“totality of mind”) and trai (“to set free from”). Thus the literal translation is “to set free from the mind.” Verbal or mental repetition of the mantra is a powerful technique to help you get ready for your risk because it frees you from your more debilitating scripts. As you move closer to your risk, however, you may wish to elaborate on your mantra by doing such things as writing a personal mission statement, or drafting your own “declaration of independence” to explain your philosophies about life (writing this book, for example, is a declaration about my own beliefs). In other words, over time, you may be able to slowly craft new, healthier, scripts to live by.

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Putting Principle 3 Into Practice

• When facing a big risk, what do you tell yourself with your internal “self-talk”?
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• Of the nine basic scripts provided in this chapter, which ones, if any, resonate with you? Is there a different script that you seem to follow? If so, try to define it in one sentence.
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• Once you have identified your basic limiting script, pick a simple catch phrase (i.e., personal mantra) to offset its effect on you.
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• What types of life changes must you put in place to support your mantra? For example, if your mantra is “personal fidelity,” what types of things can you do to demonstrate being faithful to yourself? How will you start recognizing, acknowledging, and honoring your own needs?
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