Have you walked on the wild side lately?

When was the last time that you did something that scared you and forced you to grow? For me that occurred last week. I had a TV interview and although it as only 2 1/2 minutes it couldn't end soon enough!



“You gain strength, courage, and
confidence by every experience in which
you really stop to look fear in the face . . .

Do the thing you think you cannot do.”

~ Eleanor Roosevelt


My colleagues and I were putting on a local speaking event focused on New Year’s Resolutions and one of our news stations was interested in getting the word out to our community.

In one hand was a great opportunity and in the other hand was an overwhelming feeling of fear. If I wanted to realize the opportunity, I had to say yes to something that scared me.

As you can imagine, I thought about making an excuse, (otherwise known as a reason), as to why I wasn't available. I knew this wasn't the right approach; however the temptation was still there. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to justify our actions when we're afraid? The more I thought about it, I realized there was only one right choice and that choice would require me to face my fear and show up.

That doesn't mean the fear went away, it was still alive and well. It meant that I was making the decision to move through the fear. It wasn't easy. It was risky. I even wondered - what if I fail. To overcome the desire to bail, I focused on what I wanted to achieve and went to work. When our dreams and desires are greater than our fear it provides us the courage to take action and face our fears.

I began preparing for the event by getting my thoughts in order and creating my talking points. I reviewed my notes. Then I focused on the reason for the opportunity, which was to help others. So I focused on helping others, I took a deep breath and got through the interview. And guess what? It wasn't as bad as I had feared after all!

So the next time you’ve got an opportunity in front of you, don’t let fear get in the way of walking through the door – even if it’s the door to the TV studio!

Do you have your ducks all in a row?

Do you find yourself saying no to an opportunity because you aren’t perfect? Let me ask you another question, who do you know that is perfect? Some of the most successful people I know didn’t have their ducks all in a row before saying yes to an opportunity. What do you do when you don’t have all your ducks in a row? Do you cut yourself short and decline the opportunity to contribute? Or do you step out of your comfort zone and risk moving forward?

It’s natural to have doubts in your ability to tackle a new challenge for the first time. Often we want more time to continue preparing and perfecting. We don’t feel we are ready and we resist because we don’t want to fail. We don’t want to make a mistake. This was exactly the case for my colleague and me as we experienced our first speaking engagement. We’d completed our research and collaborated to create our presentations. We studied, did dry run’s and asked for feedback. We wrote and re-wrote and did more dry run’s. We were so focused that we begun to rehearse our presentations in our sleep. And even so, we still wished we had more time to prepare and perfect our presentations.

We finally told ourselves that it was time to deliver. We reassured ourselves that we had done all we could to deliver with professionalism and style. And you know what? That’s exactly what we did. We stopped thinking about ourselves and our needs. Instead we focused on the reason we wanted to speak in the first place, to help others.

“When I dare to be powerful to use my strengths
in the service of my mission (vision) then it becomes less
and less important whether I am afraid.”
~ Audre Lorde

And here’s the best part. Because we were willing to step out of our comfort zone and risk the chance of failing, we grew in our confidence and helped others as well. The presentations went really well. There were parts of the presentation that were right on and parts where there’s room for improvement. It wasn’t perfect, however, it was good enough to really inspire some people. People laughed and some even cried. We were overjoyed with the response we received. Many people thanked us, often with tears in their eyes and some even asked us to be their mentor. Was it easy? No. But it sure was worth the reward!