This week I had the good fortune to screen National Geographic’s 2011 documentary, The Last Lions. It is one of the most life-like, brutally honest look at the natural world I have ever seen.

The story is as crushing as it is remarkable. Stunningly filmed, a true departure for National Geographic, and in such a way as to inspire a dream-filled night of the struggles, fears, and triumphs that happen in the natural world every day.

Instead of a film review though, there is a central theme that I’d like to talk about, a theme that controls the entire story of The Last Lions. Growth.

In short, a lioness, while facing unbelievable odds, invents a new way of hunting never before documented in natural history. She is a single mother, practically starving and quickly running out of options. She embraces her identity as a huntress and leads a (former enemy) pride into her inventive strategy to hunt Cape Buffalo in deep water.

One moment she is the victim of unimaginable forces, the next, through explosive growth, she becomes a leader and trailblazer.

The hybrid of this subject & The Last Lions may seem like a stretch, comparing the design industry to the fate of cats in Africa, but stay put, I think we have something to talk about here.

If you live in a talent hot bed or are the productive black sheep in your community, you know what growth looks like. You can see it in others, and can pinpoint when you’ve had seasons of explosive growth. But it’s difficult to call out what brings on those times where you just grew like an invasive mold in perfect conditions. Here are three areas that seem to be the underlying foundations in the people I’ve seen growing lately:

1. Make yourself barf

To grow, thrive, and try to build something, often times we have to embrace a frightening void. Place some faith into nothingness. Take on work that makes us want to vomit. But let’s consider the alternative in embracing the secure (or what appears to be secure). It only takes a few years on Earth to learn that nothing is secure. We also know that many things are stagnant. Like a pool of brackish water, we can stay stagnant, and maintain the course of comfort. It is a valid path. But this path does not encourage growth.

I’m writing this for myself as well as for you; take the path of growth, despite the risk of failure. If we’ve established that failure is the secret to success, why are we not taking more risk? Are we pushing ourselves towards work that scares us? Work that is nauseatingly exciting and intimidating? If there seems to be no option for this around us, let’s create it. Use the internet to inject yourself into the important and the scary.

2. Be an expert

So often our solutions are directly in front of us. If we are to sell ourselves as problem solvers, we must first be experts at seeing and hearing.

If we’ve had the gumption to embrace the scary and couple that with keen observation and listening skills, we aren’t actually taking that much risk. We have the tools, as designers, to listen and see details that others often miss. That is why we are in business, to see and to solve. If we go into a situation riddled with risk with these tools, we are already at an advantage, thus diminishing risk. Fail harder, but with the tools to win. Or, as the lioness, take on a Cape Buffalo that may crush you, but do so with enormous claws and teeth. There is no substitute for knowing your field of work inside and out.

3. Stop competing, start inventing

David Brooks recently wrote a very important article called The Creative Monopoly, that underscores this idea. Often times competitiveness can hold us back from true creativity and problem solving. If we are cornered and outbid by our industry, we should not spend our energy competing. We should spend our energy inventing new ways of thinking. New ways of seeing, and ultimately new ways of being. It is our legacy. If lions are inventing new ways of hunting, certainly we can use the vast array of tools at our disposal to find answers to problems we don’t even know we have yet.

This is growth, defined, isn’t it?

The realm of greatness lives where our work is thrillingly empowering (or nausea-inducing), our expert observation and critical thinking is focused, and our inventiveness is nourished, either internally or externally.

If we find ourselves in the comfort track of stagnation, what will we do? We will likely stay there until we frustrate ourselves right out of the backwater. Jump into the raging river with both feet, crocodiles be damned, chasing after a Cape Buffalo. If we look behind us, like the lioness, we probably won’t be alone.

If you’ve got an iron stomach, I recommend watching The Last Lions. If you want to learn how to increase your talent, then start reading The Talent Code.