So you've heard me talk about risk taking and what type of risk taker are you.
Are you the risk taker that makes well informed decisions?
Are you the one who never makes any decisions?
Are you making decisions which are constantly tripping you up?
I mentioned in that in the video on how to manage red flags. So today's video is around understanding what that means and how to develop your intuition so you can be aware of red flags, act on them, protect yourself and open up new opportunities by thinking differently.
What Is A Red Flag?
A red flag is when you are working on something, and it can be in your business, it can be a job, or it could be a relationship, it doesn't really matter what it is. And you get this nagging feeling that something's off, it might just like a little fleeting glimpse, a thought, or a feeling more often a feeling that something's not quite right. And yet you plough ahead, regardless, because maybe you don't have time. Or maybe you're so attached to the outcome of what you're trying to do that any thought that this is not going according to plan is just going to derail you and you just don't want to go down that path. So you go ahead regardless. So that's what I mean by a red flag, a feeling a nagging feeling that something is off, your intuition is firing, and you're not going to listen to it.
Risk Increases When You Don't Develop Your Intuition
That's very unhealthy. Because what happens is, we then walk into into traps, we don't allow ourselves the time and space to give energy to something which can, if we don't resolve will harm us. These are red flags, or you might call them something else. You might call them alarm bells or warning signals. And I'll give you an example. I was talking to one of my clients recently, who had, who was a very successful entrepreneur, she had done several business before and she was going to this new venture.
And things were not working out according to plan, things were off, she had an issue with her business partner that she was working with and she just felt that things weren't really lining up to where she wanted to go. But she was so attached to the success of the outcome of this business venture that even though she felt deep in her soul that things were not going according to plan, she still wanted to go ahead and I was talking to her all the way through this journey. And I said, you know, how do you feel about this, you know, instinctively that this is wrong, you know that if you follow this journey, this is going to be wrong? Why do you want to keep going down that path? And the answer the time is that she just wanted to see this venture through, it was so important, she had invested so much energy, time and money around it, she just wanted to see what happened. And ultimately, she carried on. And within maybe six months, she decided to walk away from that and took that as a life lesson that she just couldn't remove herself earlier, because of the attachment to the outcome that she was hoping to get.
Exploring Two Types of Red Flags
The outcome was just so important. It was so big, it was so significant that maybe she could resolve all of these things, and it will be okay. And sure enough, it wasn't but she learned from that lesson. So this is why it's incredibly important.
So there are the tips for today there are two different types of warning bells, alarm signals, and red flags:
Everyday Fears - there is one which is probably a fear of past event, it could be you are thinking of a new relationship, it could be a new business opportunity, it could be a new job promotion, something else. And you just get this feeling that if I carry on doing this, there's a there's a fear of something else is going happen. And it's generally it could be that, you know, the last time you went down this path, you tripped up and you made a mistake. But you've forgotten that you actually learned and progressed from that. And actually, you're not the same person that you are when you made that mistake. But there's still a fear of doing that. So that little alarm bell, that intuition pops up and think, Oh God, if I do this, I'm gonna get hurt again. That's one that we can safely manage. Because we understand that that's a fear of a memory of a past event, which has not yet happened, and is not going to happen if we change our thinking and we change our behaviour. So that one's an easy one to manage, provided you develop the awareness around where the fear is coming from, but it's pretty normal. These are things which might happen to us every single day of the week, you know, if I'm crossing the road or driving a car, or a phone call comes in and you just feel that this is this is this is not great. And then you unpack that realising it's just my own perception of that and the person talking to me is absolutely fine. But the last time this happened, I was I wasn't in a good space or I didn't like the outcome. So that surfaces again. You are a different person now, you have learned how to develop a growth mindset for work and life.
Critical Warnings - This is the one you really need to pay attention to as it is the red flag that you cannot resolve. However much time and space you give it, it's simply staying there. This is the red flag that if you don't resolve it will be your undoing will derail you, maybe not today, maybe not next month, but it might do in three or six months time. And I've had plenty of clients that I've worked with who come to me because this has already happened. And then we have to change their course of behaviour. It's rather like looking at data. And you can say, well, if I look at these five different pieces of data, if you're a business owner, you understand things like metrics, if you're a corporate professional you and understand things like KPIs and metrics, now you can look at all the data in the world to solve the problem, you want to get to your outcome, get to the mind be a single piece of data that you're ignoring, simply because that data informs you that the other five aren't working. Or you can look at it from another perspective. It's like all of this data tells me one thing, but still, I need to go and explore something else, I need to go and look at another set of data or look at it differently. Because I get the feeling that something is off. If you don't do that, inevitably, it will not end well. You have to remove the linear way of thinking by tapping into high performance and expanding your options.
So that's my tip for today. Do not do not ever ignore the red flag one which is the critical one which you cannot resolve you must get to a stage where you can resolve it or you have to address it and addressing it means there's a problem we have to deal with. We have to pause the venture, we have to stop what we're doing until we've sorted out if we can't resolve it, that's the end of that.