A while back, when I decided to change the core concept of my show — from Speak Without Fear to Encouragement for Your Life—I felt it was more in line with my heart’s desire to be an encouragement to others. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am still a 100% believer that your ability to speak and be heard is your best avenue to climb the ladder for personal and professional success, and I will always encourage you to develop your speaking ability because it truly is the one thing you can do to change your life. However, as I […]
Don’t Stop Dreaming Just Because You Had a Nightmare
Don’t Stop Dreaming Just Because You Had a Nightmare! There is nothing so sad in life as someone who has given up on their dreams because of a nightmare someone put them through at some point in their life, and the damage seems to have doused their future for the rest of their life. Due to the lingering pain or agony of memories or the visual reminder of the scars that people carry, many good people choose to just drift along for the rest of their lives. They just plod along, remembering, retelling, and reliving their past instead of putting […]
Optimism Is a Happiness Magnet
I saw the quote from Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton that said, “Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.” Now, I will say the opposite is also true: if you are a negative, ‘the world is against me’ type of person. Guess what? If that’s how you are, the world will be against you. Why? Because you are making it hard to be around you. Yes, you are causing the few people who can abide you to look for other options for dinner, movies, or a day at […]
Change Your Life
For fun, this week, I used Google and asked, “How to change your life,” and lo and behold, you would not believe all the options that are just waiting for you and me to sign up and get going. Most of them had a multi-point plan for us to get going, and others just laid it on the line for what we should and shouldn’t be doing to change our lives. After reading through the multiple lists of options, I had to laugh because, although they all promised success in 429 easy steps, the fact is that none of it […]
Don’t Give Up…Unless You Should
Don’t Give Up…Unless You Should – probably not the headline you were seeking. If you’re like me, you’ve often heard the phrase our parents repeated: “never, never, never, give up,” Quoting the great Winston Churchill. Well, although that sounds nice and good, the reality is sometimes you need to give up and find something else, do something else, or be something else, especially when the direction you’re going in is going nowhere. The damage you are causing will last a lifetime if you don’t stop. So, not to be disrespectful to my elders, let me rephrase that quote to say, […]
The Emotion of Greed
Greed This is the last part in my series on Emotions That Are Causing You Great Harm, and I am going to finish with one emotion that is as dangerous as the one I started with. If you remember, the first one was anger, because it is a cancer on your soul and does great damage to others. So, I want to talk about one more emotion that can wreck your life: greed. And that’s my theme for today. Let me do a quick rundown on the emotions I’ve spoken about in this series. I began the series with anger, […]
I Don’t Know a Single Successful Person
I don’t know a single successful person who leaves their shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot. I freely admit that I am probably in the 2% of people who love to go grocery shopping. I always have a list, but I also like to wander the aisles to see what else is new in the market. It’s not that I have to buy anything; I’m just fascinated by packaging, current must-have mineral waters, acai berry teas, and live lobsters in the tank with the little rubber bands on their finger-crushing claws. I tend to shop everywhere because […]
Don’t Hold on to Grudges
Don’t hold on to grudges; it only hurts you have been thinking about a few clients I work with and have come to realize that there is one thing that seems to hold many of them back from becoming amazing rock-star speakers. That one thing is an old hurt from someone in their past who is now irrelevant and who told them they were awful speakers and to keep quiet. Now, I don’t know what the teacher or another adult said, but to a young person, what they heard was, “Don’t open your mouth again.” And here we are years […]
The Past is a Place of Reference
The Past is a Place of Reference, Not a Place of Residence I had a client tell me about a family situation that happened while she was in high school: due to unforeseen circumstances and the economy, her family had to file for bankruptcy, and in the blink of an eye, their lives changed. Although that would be traumatic for any young person, this young lady’s parents held the family together, vowing to rebuild and continuing to provide for their kids to the best of their ability. Instead of allowing that experience to define this amazing young woman’s future, she […]