Doing the same old things will achieve nothing new and these days, with markets in turmoil and companies giving so much power to fear, it is essential that we don't give up.  Don't remain happy with the status-quo.  Do something different.  If you aren't doing something new, then what's holding you back? 

The answer lies in one word, "fear".  Fear doesn't necessarily mean that terror-filled feeling that you are about to be killed or hurt in some way.  Fear can manifest itself in many ways and resistance to change, resistance to trying something new is solid evidence that fear exists.  Fear that whatever you choose might not work.  Fear that if you fail, your boss will be unhappy and you'll be "punished" in some way.  One of my colleagues has an excellent way of looking at fear - it's an acronym for "Future Events Aren't Real".  If you think about it, you can't fear what's already happened to you.  It's just another experience that you probably judge as good, bad, something to be avoided in the future, something to try again or otherwise.  For example, if you feared flying and then took a plane ride you might realize that it's not so bad after all and the next time you have the opportunity to fly you won't be so fearful.  You can only fear what you haven't already experienced - the stuff that will happen in the future.

When you look to the future you can only guess or postulate what might occur.  You can't know with certainty what will happen.  So, if you are holding back because of what you postulate might happen, you are giving power to your fear.  And in truth the very things you are fearing may not happen at all.  In fact, the experience might be quite beneficial.  You won't know until you try it out. 

Being fearful of failure or the consequences that come from failure is most certainly going to result in failure.  If you have a situation that you must change and you do nothing you'll certainly end up in trouble.  Fear that stops you from making changes will result in failure.  If you act and fail, at least you've made the effort and changed the circumstances, opening the door to other possible choices / solutions.  Very early in my career a naval admiral told me that he'd rather have one junior officer who made 100 decisions and got 99 of them wrong than to have a hundred junior officers who wouldn't make a single decision.  That one junior officer who wasn't afraid to act made a difference and progress.  Those other junior officers were little more than oxygen thieves. 

So why not resolve to do something different in 2009?  If you don't know where to start you could always give us a call.  That's a positive step in the direction of choosing excellence - perhaps it's a small step, but as Confucius said, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".  When will you take your first step?