When Richard and I were still in our corporate jobs we had the good fortune of attending a full day training with the great management expert and author, Tom Peters.
After the day ended and the several hundred attendees began filing out of the ballroom, Richard grabbed me and walked me to the front of the room. “This is what it’s going to look like!” he said excitedly climbing the stairs onto the stage. I hovered nearby, hoping no one noticed what we were doing.
We were dreaming of launching our speaking and training business and he was leading the way. Literally.
“Come on, get up here” he urged. I walked over to the stairs and carefully up to the stage where just a few minutes earlier, Tom Peters had been shouting at us about the power of trying stuff and failing. Richard said, “I want you to see what it feels like being up here. This will be us someday!”
I glanced around. No one was paying any attention to us and yet even standing on the stage made me immediately self-conscious and honestly, terrified. I looked out at the sea of round tables. Half empty water glasses. Abandoned pens. Candy wrappers.
“Oh yeah sure,” I mumbled moving slowly back towards the stairs to come down.
My unspoken thought was, this is what it’s going to look like for you, not for me.
Once we did launch our business I was content being behind the scenes doing the sales, marketing and everything else but speaking.
It was very sweet that Richard believed in me when I did not. It helped. But nothing really changed until I did two things:
1) STOP. I realized I had to give up the story I had embraced for so long that I could never be a speaker. How? I stopped repeating it (“I’m so terrified of speaking!”) out loud like a mantra to anyone who’d listen. I was letting one event from the past dictate everything about my future.
2) START. I focused on what I wanted to create and I started doing it. I spoke everywhere and anywhere that I could. I had become so passionate about the ‘Go for No’ message that the pain of not sharing it became worse than the pain I’d need to go through to become a good speaker. I was finally willing to let myself be bad so I could get good. We were teaching people to "fail their way to success" and I was able to live it!
What I've learned is, belief is magical. It’s amazing how at one time in your life you can believe one thing and later, you can believe something entirely different.
Does that mean belief can be created? I think it does. And if you can believe it, you can do it. I definitely believe that!
