Sometimes It’s Okay To Listen To The Voices In Your Head
I’ve coached a lot of people over the years and it’s been my joy to celebrate victories with them and my sadness to share their pain. Most of the painful experiences entrepreneurs have can all be tied to one central thing. Please indulge me in reading this short story by Tom Tripp and I think you’ll see what I’m talking about. (Emphasis is mine.)
The Winter 1991 issue of the University of Pacific Review offers a chilling description of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster:
There were two electrical engineers in the control rooms that night, and the best thing that could be said for what they were doing is they were “playing around” with the machine. They were performing what the Soviets later described as an unauthorized experiment. They were trying to see how long a turbine would “freewheel” when they took the power off it.
Now taking the power off that kind of a nuclear reactor is a difficult, dangerous thing to do because these reactors are very unstable in their lower ranges. In order to get the reactor down to that kind of power, where they could perform the test they were interested in performing, they had to manually override six separate computer-driven alarm systems. One by one the computers would come up and say, “Stop! Dangerous! Go no further!” And one by one, rather than shutting off the experiment, they shut off the alarms and kept going. You know the results: nuclear fallout that was recorded all around the world, as the largest industrial accident ever to occur in the world.
Business Application: Your Gut Is Right
The reason this story speaks to me is because I had the pleasure of meeting the “children of Chernobyl” in Australia in the early 90′s.
The other reason it speaks to me is because I’ve made the mistake of not listening to internal alarm bells. Have you ever turned down the volume of the cautionary voices in your mind?
It’s time to start giving your gut/intuition some credit. Prevent the heartache of one day saying, ”Something told me not to do business with that person.” or “I had a feeling that was not going to be a good investment.” There is a reason for those inexplicable feelings you have. Listen to them an do what they say.
Shut the front door! There are more posts like this? Yes!
About Alicia Arenas
