Go Fly A Kite!

Are you a keen kite flyer? Perhaps you are a fisherman, ornithologist or a gardener? No? How about skeet-shooting, quad-bike riding, knitting, surfing or photographing post boxes? Still not? Well, it’s time you tried something new and possibly exotic, just for the experience. Take up scuba diving or just go and watch football in the rough pub your mother warned you about. Take up meditation or attend a cooking course. Visit an art exhibition, technical expo or a book launch. Do something that you would not normally dream of doing – I dare you.

What’s my point? Simply, this: If you only do the things you normally do, you are not likely to meet any different people. And if you don’t meet any different people, how are you going to expand the network of people you mix with or do business with?

It’s quite normal to want to mix with the people who make us feel ‘at home’. Nobody feels comfortable when they are in a different environment, amongst strange people. Most of us avoid that experience. It is quite normal for us to seek out the kinds of people we can relate to and feel good with, people we can easily talk to. We avoid being around aliens. This is why people who have planned for years to leave the country (any country – it’s the same experience anywhere) go halfway across the world and come back really quickly, sometimes in a few weeks or months. They are happy to lose the investment and happier yet to be ‘home’, wherever that may be. Odd, even bizarre we say when we see people back from Britain, Australia or Canada, people who moaned about their country and now swear it’s the “best place on earth.”

The thing is, that sort of behaviour – sticking to the ‘safe’, the ‘known’ and the ‘local’ – is for people who will wonder why their life or the market seems finite, difficult to grow. They will never experience the excitement of the different, exotic and sometimes really strange people and ideas you meet in the back roads, far-off towns and foreign cities. They are unlikely to count presidents, traditional leaders or captains of industry and people from all walks of life among their friends or their networks.

If on the other hand you are a person who wants or needs to meet more people, to expand the circle of your acquaintances and grow your business, do something different. Go to a different place or event, reach out and talk to strangers, make new friends or contacts. Experience a different sport or industry, meet the different people who do that for fun or for a living. Venture beyond your comfort zone. Take up hang-gliding, movie-making, trout fishing or darts… or go fly a kite!

Copyright Roger Knowles August 2008