Ep 84: Courageous Codes: 3 Childhood Traits That Create Success
EPISODE 84
Riding Without Training Wheels
Ever wondered how to channel your inner child's fearlessness into your professional life?
Buckle up for a road trip that's as unpredictable as the path to social entrepreneurship.
I promise, by the end of our journey, you'll discover the three secret traits that the most successful social entrepreneurs swear by. As we navigate the twists and turns in search of hidden antique gems, I share personal stories from my own adventures in leadership, highlighting the power of curiosity, the strength found in discomfort, and the boldness of embracing risk—just like a child learning to ride a bike without training wheels.
Along the way, we'll unpack how these traits bolster resilience and are the cornerstones of taking calculated risks that propel us forward. Drawing upon the uninhibited spirit we admire in children and the wisdom of seasoned leaders, this podcast is your invitation to inject a sense of exploration and daring into your mission-driven work. Remember, your own reflections and insights are the heartbeat of our community, so let's keep the conversation going. Share your takeaways, join the dialogue on social media, or drop us a review—we thrive on the energy you bring to the table.
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Resources mentioned:
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TRANSCRIPT:
Christina 00:02
Welcome to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast for nonprofit leaders, mission-driven creatives and social entrepreneurs. Get ready to stop dreaming and start doing. Here, ideas become action. We prioritize purpose and profit. You ready, let's go. You're about to listen to an episode recorded in my car.
00:23
So I went antiquing this weekend and on the way there I recorded this episode for you and I had to share it. Not ideal audio, but decent. So if you hear some sounds in the background, that's what we've got today. But we're digging into the three traits that I think are so important to skyrocket your success. And I don't mean that in like a big, broad marketing way. I actually mean that in a truly what separates the leaders, the marketers and the fundraisers the most successful ones from the ones who feel depleted, who feel like they're always trying, who feel like they haven't cracked the code. It's these three traits. Okay, enjoy.
So today I want to talk about this idea of children from age zero, so from like day one, newborn baby to. I think every, everybody is different. Every child is different, but I'm going to say somewhere around middle school, so like puberty era, this dropping off, but children have to be very, very high on the chart of a couple of different characteristics and then having these characteristics completely drop off and how people who are very similar to children, adults who are similar to children there's not as many of them, right who are high in these qualities, these personality traits, have so much more success. I'm going to define success here as the just achieving the thing they want, achieving the dreams. So success could be getting the thing they want. It could be impact, it could be revenue, it could be whatever they get the thing they want. It can be both, by the way, when they are high on these qualities.
02:17
So the first quality is curiosity. Think about it my son I don't think he's come up for air today, it's a Saturday, I'm recording this. So many questions, so many questions. He's almost nine. So many questions, so many observations, so many everythings. And that is just a level of curiosity that adults don't. It may be there but they don't access, right, they just sort of shut it down. You know, it's like why, the whys of the world? Right, we stop being curious, okay. So curiosity is one.
Think about how curious kids are. Think about how curious toddlers are. Their entire essence is curiosity, right, what's in there? How does this work? What happens if I do this right? What happens if I tip this bowl over? Cats? Cats are curious. They do the exact same thing. Okay, curiosity. Another one.
03:15
I'm trying this to feel uncomfortable. This just popped in my head, like think about children in diapers, a full diaper, very uncomfortable, but boy do they get used to that feeling. Right, because sometimes there's a lapse between when a caretaker knows that diapers full, when a caretaker is able to find a spot to change that diaper and they have to be willing to if that's a physical discomfort that they get really good at feeling. There's another one the willingness to feel uncomfortable in trying new things, and that's really the essence of what I want to talk about today Is their willingness to feel uncomfortable in the act of just being curious, learning and adapting, like they are so willing to be uncomfortable. And so you can think about it. As you know, a baby, baby, you can think about it as toddlerhood. I think about it even into elementary age, which you know my kids are, which is like they're just like, huh, I guess I'm just going to figure this out. Huh, I guess I'm about to go. I mean, I think about all the situations my kids have been in where everything was new. I don't have a friend here, I don't actually know how this school day is going to go, this camp's going to go, this, whatever, but here we go and what, what's on the other side of that? For sure Some nerves, I would, you know, I would expect for sure some like wobbliness there, so that willingness to feel uncomfortable and then see if you can guess the last one that I want to talk about.
So we said curiosity, and I'm actually picturing this as a what would that be? A line, a line chart, like a graph, where the age of the person it starts very, very high. They have a very high tolerance for a desire to be curious, to be uncomfortable, tolerance, okay. And then into the twenties, I think, people are still curious in general. They still have a lot of that dreamy curiosity, right?
05:29
Some willingness to be uncomfortable, and it really drops off, I think, for a lot of people in their thirties, forties, fifties and beyond. Right, because that is when you're like no, I mean, this is what I've got, this is who I am, this is how it is right, I'm very comfortable with this life, this schedule, this framework, this everything, right, even people who, if you think about it, you're like we take one vacation a year. Right, I'm somebody who takes one vacation a year, I'm somebody who takes five vacations a year. Whatever your flavor is, you sort of identify as that person and that's that period full stop. So think about that, all right. So we had curiosity. We had curiosity, a willingness to feel uncomfortable, and then what would be the next one?
The next one is what I'm gonna say is your risk and failure tolerance, so we can talk about them together, your risk and failure tolerance. So, if you think about children, their risk tolerance is really, really high. When my daughter was not three, but close to that, one weekend she was like I'm figuring out how to ride a bike and she was dead set on it, like a bike without training wheels, because that's what her brother had. And her risk tolerance was so high because all she did was start and stop, start and stop, start and fall, start and fall. So what is a fall? A fall is a fail, right, and her failure tolerance was so high, she was so willing to just get back on. And she's done this again now, where this year very like just relentless is the word relentlessly committed to not only mastering the monkey bars, mastering, like all of these different party tricks. Right, I gotta go frontwards, I gotta go backwards, I gotta skip a side, I gotta flip upside down, I gotta do them from the sides, and the first few months, one of her, one of the days she was working on it, she'll go to the playground and that will be all she does.
07:35
Right, ended up in the emergency room because I'm like did you just break your rest? Did you break your rest? She had a fall and it was like uncertain. We had to get her x-ray. She ended up spraying it and she ended up in a little kid's splint for a few days and the minute she was out of that splint she was back on the monkey bars like, think about that, bananas, we're relentless, relentless. Now, if that exact same thing happened to an adult, how would we handle it? And you could say a sport or you could say not, it doesn't matter, but how would we handle it? What would the average 40 year old person do if they were like in the ER and not to say sweepingly, every adult would just give up and everybody would just say that's it. But I want to say that the tolerance for failure, especially repeated failure, is much lower for the average 30 something, 40 something, 50 something, 60 something. You start to really make those fails, make those falls mean something significant about you and mean something significant about your ability to achieve the thing that you're after. It's like the bruise lasts longer and then the bruise of falling tells you is evidence to you that it wasn't even possible in the first place. And isn't that the biggest lie.
I was listening to an interview with Dan Polota, who has a documentary out called Uncharitable, which is it's fascinating. He has a book. Go watch his Ted Talk. If you don't know who it is, google Dan Polota, ted Talk. And I was listening to an interview with him and the host asked him basically you've had so much success, can you tell us about a setback which seems like just an obvious kind of question to ask like hey, think about it. You're at the top of your game. You're at the top of your game, bill Gates. You're at the top of your game, rbg. You're at the top of your game. Oprah Sarah Blakely, can you tell us about a setback? It seems so easy for you now, right, and his answer was so good.
10:03
He said it was like three minutes of uninterrupted talking where he just listed all of his fails in his career and it was long, you guys. It was long and by the end of it I was like holy shit, this man has failed. And this man has been relentless relentless at chasing his dreams, relentless at being curious, relentless at getting back up, relentless with being uncomfortable. And when I talk about risk, he's been a relentless risk taker. I used to perceive risk as like risky and financials, or risky like you know, risky in investing, or risky in jumping out of an airplane, like that kind of risk. And that is not the kind of risk I want to talk about for us in social impact. I'm talking about that risk, that willingness to do it different than it was done before.
So he listed all of the times he even just, you know, to get on the stage at TEDx, all of the things that happened in advance to that, his business that didn't work out, his business that had to close, the people who disagreed with him, all of the pushback he got in the nonprofit sector when he talked about how we need to change the entire overhead model, like all of these pieces, all of the pieces of people saying, no, we don't agree, no, you're wrong, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. All of the setbacks. And I was like, oh, that's so good. What an interesting answer. Because even the way the question was raised was like tell us about one time you failed, basically. And he was like here's three dozen right, and it was such a good reminder. It was such a good reminder and I'm like, oh, here it is again, his.
12:01
He maps on the exact type of person, some of the traits that create change, that create success, that create a ton of funding for your organization. He has curiosity, he has a willingness to feel uncomfortable, he has a willingness to fail and not make it mean something catastrophic about him, right, about his personality, about himself. Such a good reminder. So let's talk about how you can develop that skill set, because that's the other piece is. I don't want you to take today and be like, okay, well, I just am not someone who dot, dot, dot, right, I'm in the 90% of adults who are kind of cozy and comfortable and really want to avoid some of these failings you're talking about and some of these fails and some of these you know pieces you're talking about. Okay, and you can change at any time and you can cultivate a muscle to build these traits in you.
I was on a podcast recently and the host asked me basically, so do your clients who have an entrepreneurial spirit? Are they kind of more successful in the work you do? In the work they do? Basically Because they're scrappier right, they're more willing to be nimble, they're more willing to be forward thinking? And what I said was yes, and that is a muscle you can build, that's a muscle you can cultivate. It's not a problem. If that's not a muscle that currently exists or that muscle is a little small, we can work on that. That's what we're doing in the club. That is what we're doing in the purpose and profit club.
13:41
You get to say this is what I want and we get to say, all right, let's go. Here's the roadmap. Where do you need the guidance and support to do that and get the help from me to get there right? So some people may say, christina, I'm a dreamer, I'm curious. I promise I've still got that. I'm holding this vision for our organization, for our mission. I can see it. I can see it and we haven't gotten there yet. So you may be fine there.
And it may be the piece about feeling uncomfortable right and a willingness to really step into that right. Or it may be the piece on handling failure, or it may be the piece on being more risk taking, right. A risk is that the word Taking more risks. Let's say that way that you want to start working out, that you want to start building upon. So think about it.
14:35
If you are around any children in your life, watch them this week, this month and watch how much they fall physically, mentally, spiritually, like all of it. Watch how willing Not only do they get bumps and bruises and things like that, but watch how much they pronounce things wrong, say the wrong sentence structure, raise their hand, don't know the answer, get it wrong, not follow directions, ask questions, all of you know, try and make new friends and don't make new friends. And do you know like, watch how much their life is the complete opposite of an adult's, of a like cozy, comfortable adult's life. Who isn't doing that? And then I want you to watch the parallel of somebody you admire, a mentor, a thought leader, a community leader, a celebrity, anyone you admire, author. You pick and ask yourself, ooh, where do they land on this list? How are they high on some of these personality features, on some of these, what is the word attributes like children are, and where am I willing to channel a little bit more of that in myself?
15:58
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