If you don’t take risks, you’ll never have anything you haven’t already got. It’s like cleaning out closets. Until you make room for new things, you’re stuck with what you’ve got.    Barbara Osach 

Carol Leavitt moved to St. George, Utah, from Salt Lake City to follow her husband who took a new job in the rural community where he grew up. Carol left behind her job as director of organizational development for Fidelity Investment Mutual Funds and a twenty-year network of friends and business contacts.

She says, “I had just created a course on Work Life Balance and I wanted to walk the talk which took me from six figures in Salt Lake City to zero in St. George. I gave myself permission to start my own consulting business. It was challenging. I knew no one. I looked in the paper and serendipitously found a women’s organization, National Women at Work. I went and introduced myself as corporate trainer. I got a few nibbles and became more aggressive. I would walk into the business office of a company and say, ‘This is your lucky day. I am here to help your organization.’”

To give ourselves permission to step out of our safety zone that boxes us in requires curiosity and sometimes, as in Carol’s case, necessity. Transitions are a good time to ask, “What am I really made of? Can I do it?” When successful women look at decision making as a function of satisfying their curiosity, they direct their thoughts to include broader, more intellectual, and objective view points instead of narrow, purely emotional reasoning. Curiosity makes us feel alive, energized, challenged.

Carol gave herself permission to take the risk, and to have fun with it. Wildly successful women realize that every risk comes with both an upside and a downside. Focusing on the downside leads straight to fear, while concentrating on the upside creates a mindset that tolerates risk and the tough decisions that accompany it.

What makes people good risk takers? They know that risk is part responsibility and part opportunity. They combine outlook, information, and intuition in a way that helps them succeed in all kinds of situations—especially during transitional periods in their lives and careers.

Questions to ask ourselves to give us permission to take risks with confidence:

·                Determine, if not now, when?

·                Practice unlimited thinking

·                Consider long term effects of risking or not

·                Be willing to start at bottom, but think big

·                Plan, act, and evaluate

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Besides writing and speaking on topics relating to women in business, entrepreneurship and success, Pam, collaborating with her husband, wrote Under the Carmel Valley Sun: An Adventure in Remodeling, Relationships and Red Wine. Check it out at www.underthecarmelvalleysun.com.