Eliminate Your Safety Net

The Guide to Extraordinary Living - Part 4

The entire auditorium is holding it's breath. The only lights are shining almost too brightly on one figure, suspended high in the air between two poles. He takes a step. Another. Then he shifts, his body just slightly out of balance. The entire crowd has a sharp intake of breath. The tight-rope walker tries to move forward, but his previous missed step left him out of position. He attempts to correct, but ends up over-calculating and his arms fly out, wheeling helplessly as he totters over and falls.

The crowd watches in disbelief, every heart stopped.

Then the lights come up, and we see him land safely in the tightly-stretched safety net. He bounces a few times, then picks himself up and heads over to the base of the pole for another try. The Ringleader announces that he will be okay – but wait! What's this? The tight-rope walker is demanding that they lower the safety net. He animatedly speaks with the stage hands, who look to the Ringleader for permission.

Suddenly the net falls to the ground. The tight-rope walker has cut the net down! And he's climbing back up the pole. The stage hands are waving their arms, shouting at him not to do it, but he's ignoring them. Finally one stage hand starts climbing up to bring him back down, but he's too late. The tight-rope walker is already on the platform. Now he's stepping out. He's halfway across. He looks down.

He realizes there's no safety net.

He looks scared. He looks to both platforms, but they're both the same distance away from him. He hesitates one more split second, then a steely resolve comes over him. He turns to go forward, his face set like stone. He takes a step. Another. Then he shifts, his body just slightly out of balance. No one in the crowd is even daring to breathe. The stage hands are all being perfectly still.

He takes another step, again, slightly out of position. He attempts to correct. His arms flail.

But somehow he stays upright. He moves forward again, awkwardly, but with each step he takes he gains more balance back. He's walking easily now. He's going to make it! Finally, he steps onto the platform.

The crowd, remembering to breathe, erupts into cheers.

The fourth part of living an extraordinary life is the simplest to explain, but the hardest to actually do. It doesn't require lots of planning or foresight, it doesn't take a long time or demand lots of help. It just takes a lot of courage. The fourth step is simple: Eliminate your safety net.

If you've been tracking with this guide, you've learned that life is not about you, to dream like everything is possible (because it is), and finally to take some action that will get you closer to your dream.

So now you're on your way. You've hopefully taken some sort of action to start making your dream a reality, and your life has lost some of the dullness. It may even be downright exciting – I hope it is! But there's a trap waiting for you. It may catch you tomorrow, it may be a year from now, but it will catch you unless you do something about it first. The trap is your safety net.

What is your safety net? Your safety net is that thing that you have in the back of your mind that says “Hey, I'm off to a good start. Things are even looking positive. But even if my dream doesn't work out, I always have __________.” It could be a standing job offer, or a skill that you know will get you some work, or a rich relative, or a trust fund that will pay for you to go to school forever. Whatever it is, it's something that you know, something that's comfortable, something that's safe and warm and dull.

How in the world could that be a trap?

It's a trap because as soon as things get difficult or lose their dreamy quality, when the honeymoon wears off and you realize that dreaming is a lot of hard work, the safety net starts to look really easy. I mean really, really easy. Like falling off a log easy. So on one hand you have what feels like a complex task that will require a ton of work for very little immediate reward, and on the other hand you have a defined task that requires very little effort and has a pay check at the end of the week.

Which would you choose?

It's amazing how much the dull gray reality of mediocrity can look so appealing from the outside. But that is not the path for you – for us. We are the select few who want more. We are the elite who demand that life be full and beautiful. We are the extraordinary.

The only way to silence the siren call of the safety net is to eliminate it completely. Make sure it's not an option. Sometimes this requires action, like shredding your resume, or selling your tools, or moving to a completely different place. Other times it is simply a decision that has to be made – not once, but every day.

This is the part that takes the most courage. You don't get to know if your dream will work out before you let go of the part of your life that you know does work (even if you are completely bored and slowly dying in it). It requires a leap of faith. Courage isn't fearlessness, courage is action in spite of fear. In other words, even if you might pee your pants, you're still going for it.

Once your safety net is gone, it forces the best out of you. If there is no Plan B, then you get really creative Plan A. You see new ways of doing things that might not have been there before. You focus. When its do or die, you'll amaze yourself at what you can do. In a word: anything.

And once you've amazed yourself at what you can do, you get to help other people amaze themselves at what they can do, which is the next and final part of the Guide.

Do you have a safety net? Where do you find courage? Respond to this post with a comment of your own!