Have you ever gone out on a high dive board and taken the plunge?

This post is dedicated to the kid in all of us. Not only do I hope it will get you to reflect on some of your "great" childhood memories (who couldn't use a good thought right about now?) but that it also gets you thinking about how we all need to take chances, risks and dive right into life.

Summer is fast approaching and many of us will be visiting our local swimming pools to beat the summer heat and hopefully it will allow us to interact with many people from our communities. After a recent visit back home to Boston to see my parents, This conversation got me thinking about my summers as a kid and the time we spent at the beach/pool area where we grew up.

Have you ever gone out onto a high dive board? I did as a kid ~ I was fearless back then (won't do it today though!) But what I can remember from my experience is climbing the steps with great determination and looking around thinking this is so great - I'm going to jump in and have everyone look at me because of my amazing "Olympic" dive. I enthusiastically climb to the top and... I freeze. It's much higher than it looked from down below.

Kids are coming up behind me waiting for their turn so there's no turning back now - the only way down is to take my dive. I figured it must be safe - people before me went down without injury. Closing my eyes, praying that I don't hit the water with a huge belly flop or worse - I plunge towards the water. Within seconds I'm in the water and my next thought is swim as fast as I can to the side of the pool ~ to get in line to take another dive.

Every new endeavor we get involved in is just like that feeling of jumping from the high dive board. We are often initially filled with excitement and a strong desire to do something only to have fear and concern creep in that we're not going to be able to do it and do it successfully. Maybe it's making those cold calls to prospects or former clients we haven't spoken to in a very long time or attending a meeting in our community, maybe public speaking. It could be learning a new marketing tool or trying to grasp SEO strategies that don't make sense to us when it seems to come so easily to our colleagues.

The feelings or thoughts of not doing something successfully keeps us locked in the same routine and perhaps not growing from challenging ourselves. I'm sure you've heard it before - we often learn more from our mistakes and failures. Why can't we remember that when it comes to taking on something new?

Once we take that plunge we realize that by having the courage to not only climb that ladder but to take the actual plunge helps us to grow and truly experience things out of our comfort zones. We let go.

We are in fact capable of much more than we ever give ourselves credit for or more than we ever realized. All too often we limit ourselves either by what we've heard from others or based on what we have experienced so far in life. We get into a comfort zone that doesn't allow us to keep learning and experience something new ~ maybe something we didn't know we'd be really good at.

Do you know anyone that doesn't want to plunge into something new? Are you one of those people? Are you someone that only looks straight ahead and doesn't look to the right or left or up and down?

I encourage you today to look within yourself and discover your own high dive board.

What are you excited about in your life - both personally and professionally?

Are there things or people in your way, keeping you from taking the plunge?

Instead of having the thought "I'm not going to be able to do this" why not think "I can do this, I know people who can help me get to where I want to be" - trust yourself and surround yourself with people you trust to not only take you to the high dive board but to jump off it to enjoy all the possibilities that await you.

Perhaps it comes down to seeing our world as if we were still children.

Are you willing to take the plunge into something new?

What is paralyzing you right now from looking at "new things" with a sense of wonder vs. fear?

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Ready to take your marketing to new levels? ~ Anne Marie Malfi ~ Malfi Marketing Solutions ~ Copyright 2009