Audacity — The Beautiful Nerve to Try

What's the boldest thing you've ever done — the move that surprised even you with its nerve? And what would you have missed if you hadn't made it?

That move was audacity. And there's a very good case that the world needs far more of it.

Audacity means a willingness to take bold risks; rude or presumptuous boldness. It comes from the Latin audax — daring, bold — from audere, to dare. The audacious person dares. Not blindly, not recklessly, but with the particular courage of someone who has looked at the odds, felt the fear, and moved anyway.

Notice that the definition has two parts: bold risk-taking and presumptuous boldness. These are interestingly different. The first is heroic. The second is transgressive — slightly. The audacious move is the one that presumes a little more than you've strictly been given permission for. The job application for the role you're not quite qualified for. The question you ask the person you've always admired but never approached. The creative proposal that goes further than what was asked for. The audacity is in the presumption: the acting-as-if.

Acting as if is powerful. Acting as if you belong in the room often results in belonging in the room. Acting as if the idea is worth pursuing often produces a response that confirms it. Audacity has a self-fulfilling quality — the confidence it projects frequently generates the outcome it was betting on.

Of course, audacity can also produce spectacular failure. And that's fine. The audacious failure — the one you attempted because you dared, not because you were certain — is almost always more instructive and more interesting than the safe success. You learn more from the reach that came up short than from the grasp that never stretched.

What's worth examining is why we restrain audacity so readily. Usually it's fear — of looking foolish, of being told no, of overstepping and embarrassing ourselves. The cost of a failed audacious attempt is usually much lower than we imagine. And the cost of never attempting it — of always staying in the lane of what's certain and permitted — is usually much higher than we account for.

Audacity is not arrogance. It's not entitlement. It's the willingness to believe that the attempt is worth making, even before you know the outcome.

Here's your question: What's one audacious move you've been holding back on — and what's the actual worst thing that would happen if you made it and it didn't work?