BRAND RISK AND THE ADVENTURE OF ADVANCEMENT
These days, who’s not fearful?
Things feel uncomfortably out of control,
challenging events are happening.
Talking to some, this could be an exemplar expression for last year.
Then too, speaking with others, it could’ve been a year or two back—
others, other times, other uncertainties.
Still, change happens—it’s the one thing we have as an immanent condition of life, work.
Everything changes—
everything is about change.
I have been talking with someone—a client—
about the notion of fear, finding fear. Seeking that space of fearfulness and risk.
He said that some of the ideas we offered scared him. He liked that. It took him away from his place of comfort. It could be described as the space of exposure, of possible danger in the abstractness of a business context—“what’s in control, what’s not in control—you make a plan and it will last for how long..? But still it is the place of newness–of opening.
This pace of change-making, it’s an adrenalized place of energy, hyped-up—it’s exuberant and thrilling.
It’s fast as you go—make it happen. And I like to work around this place, this fear-full place.
It is the point of living, in which every day could be the brink of danger—that is the edge of living—large. And I like being here—but there are variants on the idea of fearfulness. There are layers—ways of depth—in seeing this.
B E I N G
H E R E.
And being honest, I need to be clear, reverential. Seek reverie in it. And if I enter this place of risk, of exposure, I have to be watchful for the enrichment—what do I get from it. I have to hope that there is an enriching in the being, of this place. The space of fear. The place of risk.
As now I am moving ahead being mindful of the risk, the danger, the gut-wrenching feelings of fear. And being open to the calmness of letting it come, reside, working with it, inside it, then watching the change pass—yet integrating the exposing, living in the edge.
I believe that there are components, layers of the place of fear fullness—of going there. But approaching this as something that any of us need to consider; we can’t go there merely for the rare risk of walking to the edge of the firepit; we need to go, to watch—sense: to be sentient—and learn what can be gathered.
What do I take away from this exposure?
Likely, a heightened consciousness. You’ve been there, come out, learned more.
And shall continue with, through, and inside that transitioning.
Climb. Climb higher.
Still higher.
Climb up, out,
through.
There’s risk, but then the view is better.
And we will reflect this in our strategy, our design, our brands.
Look for exposure, for opening, with or without fear, with or without danger. And leave it to the moment—that discovering. Leave it to the instance. The instant. The moment. Achieving momentum and flowing on.
And flowing through it.
Beyond finding fear is the idea of finding serenity—in fear. Which is courage. Which is heart—the brave heart.
So when you are frightened, in this space—it is okay to feel it, get into it. Live it, live through it—walk through the shadows—back into the blinding light.
And linking the two. And keep moving—from the wavering shadows of the fear fullness—from the valley of the dark, into the renewed space of the luminous and the awakened.
Seek exhilaration. Wake up.
We’re thinking that this place of fear is the place of opening all the channels—it’s the space of exposure. Laying oneself open to this “opportunity”, this portal, is the step from ignorance to learning, from absence to insight.
A D
V E N T U R E
Hold this for a while. Keep listening. And go there, to see what we can learn.
Tim Girvin | Old Queen Anne > Strategic Magic
Principal, Founder and Chief Creative Officer,
GIRVIN | Strategic Branding & Design |
www.girvin.com
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