You’ve decided to live expansively. Be prepared for what happens next.
We talk about dreaming big, being brave with our lives, and (re)defining success for ourselves. But what happens after? After you create a big, bold vision of your unleashed life? What happens then? A lot.
On January 1, 2023, I published Going ‘All-In’ with a $21,000 Investment...in Myself, where I wrote about my decision to go all-in on myself as a keynote speaker. I’d taken inventory of my gifts, listened to the desires of my heart, and decided to invest in my future self.
The idea sounds dreamy, bold, brave.
And it was, but here’s the thing about investing in a version of yourself that isn’t here yet…you still have to become her, and that, my friends, is the real work.
This week, almost 9 months from the day I wrote that piece, I went to Portland to record the content for what will become my speaker sizzle reel (what gets sent to event organizers and shared with agencies who are looking for speakers). These 9 months, which I am just realizing as I write this is the same duration of pregnancy, were tough. Here are the three things I learned along the way…
Wrestling against yourself only causes tension and emotional exhaustion.
I have always been an intuitive speaker. When I take the stage, it’s almost as if something in me opens up, and the words come out. There’s no script, no lines that I’ve rehearsed over and over. It’s just me opening myself up, as natural as a flower blooms or a bird sings. It’s who I am. The times I’ve written a speech, are the times I’ve felt less like myself. So when Chris, who has worked with tons of speakers and who knows the industry I’m trying to break into said that I needed to have a script, I agreed. (Just writing that sentence has me shaking my head–I know better now.) He shared how scripts were useful and even gave me an outline of a script to follow. And that’s where we stalled. I couldn’t do it, and rather than speaking up for and honoring myself, I deferred to “the expert.”
So often when we are doing something new, going into a different field, adding a new offering in our business, or simply learning a new skill, we dismiss or disregard all that we know about ourselves and what works for us, and instead defer to the expert. Because surely they must know more or better than we do; they have more experience. And while this isn’t a knock on Chris or any other expert, the lesson I learned here is no matter what new thing you are trying, no matter what you are learning, or creating, you are the expert on you.
Of the 9 months Chris and I worked together, six of those months were spent wrestling with myself, trying to fit myself into the mold of a typical keynote speaker. I procrastinated. I ghosted Chris. And eventually, I came clean about why things hadn’t been moving forward. I was torn between what was expected of me and how I work best. Four months ago, I sent him a recorded video sharing my thoughts, and in the spirit of living out loud and sharing all of the parts of the journey–even the parts no one talks about, here’s the video I sent:
