Growing up, my father often told me “The world doesn’t owe you a living!” He had a fairly tragic childhood and had to work unbelievably hard to make his way through life. So, I understood how this saying applied to him but I did not see the relevance of it to my life. Until one day, I did. Then I truly appreciated him preparing me for the realities of life.
I took his point and transformed it into a more positive and aspirational one that has served me well for decades - “The only thing between me and success is hard work.” This works for me because it motivates me AND it cuts through all the clutter to reveal the path to success – hard work.
Another truth my father imparted was that many of our fellow citizens here on earth face barriers so insurmountable that no amount of taking responsibility or working hard would be enough to overcome them. He instilled in me compassion for the less fortunate and urged me to support them to the best of my capacity as I made my way through life. I’ll expand on this in future blogs.
Let’s examine this natural human tendency to outsource failure.
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Decades ago, during the darkest chapter of my life, I experienced career loss, bankruptcy, addiction and depression. I gotta tell ya, I had no shortage of people to blame for my condition so I blamed and blamed until I was neck deep in denial and deflection. While this blame protected me from reality, it did absolutely nothing to address my massive problems.
One day a random homeless person on the streets of Chicago accosted me, seething through his rotted teeth and matted beard that I “didn’t have it all that bad.” His words hit me like a freight train and I was instantly awash in the shame of my denial and deflection, breaking down right there on the sidewalk.
My entire outlook was re-set with the realization that “I didn’t have it all that bad.” I, and only I, had the capacity and thus the responsibility to re-build my life. Were the people I blamed gonna help me re-build? Nope. Were they even responsible for my downfall in the first place? Nope. Taking a clear-eyed stock of my situation, it became apparent the greatest barrier I faced in moving my life forward was, well…….me.
Re-building my life wasn’t easy. It was many long years of brutally difficult work. But, there was one upside. The lessons I learned and the techniques I developed to work through my difficulties have served me well in my pursuit of the good life ever since. Even now, writing this blog as a part of launching my public speaking career, I’m driven by the mantra I adopted decades ago that the only thing between me and success is hard work. There are a lot of barriers to succeed as a speaker, but I’m not one of them.
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Earlier this year I met the most inspiring person I’ve met in a long, long time – best-selling author and prolific public speaker Sam Demma. I’m not sure anyone speaks more frequently than Sam does as last year he spoke at 180 events! And, for the past five years he has averaged 100-150 events per year!
When he agreed to meet and help me launch my speaking career, I was ready with all my questions lined up. At the very top of that list was the question of who his agent was. Who worked so tirelessly to book him so much? I asked, he smiled and answered, “Me.” Obviously, he misinterpreted the question so I countered “No, who books all your gigs?” Again, his response was “Me!”
He laughed at my jaw dropping to the floor and explained that no one would book him when he started out because he was still in high school! (editor’s note – Sam is now 24 years old!). So, he addressed that pretty significant barrier by, you guessed it, taking the responsibility to do it himself.
For years he placed 20 cold calls every single weekday to high schools asking to speak to the person that could book him. Imagine the explaining required on a cold call and the follow-up required just to get someone/anyone on the line who would be even remotely patient enough to listen to you, let alone book you. Sam was (and still is) relentless and my jaw is still on the floor!
As a teenager, Sam could have blamed his age or the speaking bureaus as barriers to his aspirations but he didn’t because he understood the greatest barrier to his success as a speaker was himself.
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I am a big fan of the book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by palliative care giver Bronnie Ware. She documented that the most common regret of the dying looking back on their lives was that people wished they had the courage to live the life true to themselves and not the life others expected of them.
The folks she interviewed in palliative care did not take responsibility for their own lives. They waited for someone to give them permission, but tragically, that someone never came. They did not realize that the permission to live the life we want, to achieve our goals and pursue our dreams comes from only one place – ourselves.
There are many barriers to living the life you want. The first and most important one to tackle is the barrier of you.