Today is August 8 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you take a risk to change your life?”
People who navigate the chaos understand the necessity of taking risks. Inky Johnson, who played football at the University of Tennessee was going to be an NFL draft pick.
Sadly, Inky, suffered a career-ending injury on a tackle against Air Force on September 9, 2006.
A routine tackle turned into a life-threatening injury, and nothing has been normal for Inky ever since.
Not with a paralyzed right arm. Not with daily pain. Not with constant physical challenges. After a great deal of rehabilitation, Inky realized he would never play football again.
His dream of playing professional in the NFL came to an end. You might think his injury would have destroyed his motivation and crushed his spirit. He is the survivor of an underprivileged past and a refugee of poverty and violence. He could be described as a success story stained by tragedy.
But if you look deeper, you’ll discover something else. You’ll see a man believes in taking risks. With little money in his pocket, he took the book that he published and drove up to Chicago to personally hand it to Oprah Winfrey. He found Oprah walking on the street with her bodyguard and asked her if she could give him a minute of her time. Oprah stopped and listed to Inky’s story. She took a picture with Inky and accepted her book.
After he started to walk away Oprah’s security guard came over to Inky and told him that she never stops for anyone. At that moment, Inky knew that something special was going on. Soon thereafter Inky started his career as a motivational speaker.
As he said, “I took a risk that changed my life."
Inky’s story is similar to the belief that “life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.”
This quote originated from British child psychologist John Bowlby. In his 1988 publication A Secure Base, Bowlby wrote that “life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.”
David Brooks of The New York Times used Bowlby’s quote in a September 24, 2012 editorial. The quote also found its way into the television show Blue Bloods when Tom Selleck’s character Frank Reagan used it in a conversation with his daughter.
This ‘secure base’ approach to life is similar to the belief by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert “Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
How often do you create a regular and orderly life, or a secure base, so that you can go on daring adventures and be original in your work?