Imagine, for a moment, that you’re hungry. Your tummy is growling, a headache is galloping toward you, your mood is having more ups and downs than a carnival roller coaster, and the idea of eating is eclipsing all other thoughts.

Imagine, for a moment, that you race into the kitchen, throw open the fridge and devour it’s contents. Indiscriminately you pull food from the cabinets, open cans, pull apart boxes and stuff food into your ravenous body. Forty-five minutes later you are finished; stuffed and bloated, but with little recall as to what you ate or how it tasted. You may be full, but you’re  certainly not satisfied.

Now imagine, for a moment, that it’s another day and you have the identical growl-y, headache-y, emotionally chaotic hunger. Instead of a embarking on a thoughtless binge, however, you stop and ask yourself four of the most important words in any language.

What do I want?

Instead of heading out to the kitchen you stop, go within and ask yourself that life-enhancing question:

What do I want? Your body immediately tells you that it wants a big fresh salad with lots of vegetables, and a piece of salmon on the side. Don’t forget the iced tea!

Only then do you go to the kitchen, carrying with you a vision for what you want, and a specific plan for how to get it. Once you’ve eaten your meal, you feel nourished, satisfied, fulfilled. While the hunger is gone, what has taken it’s place is the knowledge that you made every effort to give yourself what you needed; what would bring you joy and happiness as well as good health. Great job!

Consider this:

When it comes to your career, your relationships, your finances, and your health is your life very busy but unsatisfying, or is it fulfilling and richly rewarding?

When it comes to your life, are you living by default, taking what comes your way, what’s available and convenient, or are you an active and conscious participant in strategically planning how you want it to look and feel?

Are you meandering through your life without direction? Do you have a vision, an understanding of your life purpose and how you’re going to achieve it?

Are you leading your life or are you following it around?

Do you tell yourself that you could have whatever you wanted, if only you knew what that was?

The count in accountable is this:

If you don’t ask yourself what you want, you can count on not getting it. If you don’t stop and ask yourself where you’re headed and why you’re headed there, then your chance of your chances of getting where you want to go are zero, nada, zilch. End of story.

Live your purpose. Love your life.

Nancy

Actually, I’ve done so many humiliating things that it’s hard to keep track of them all. But this doozy tops the humiliate-her chart!

My main motive for sharing the single most humiliating experience of my entire professional
career is this…

Having already completely and publicly mortified myself, I might as well make certain it wasn’t a wasted experience.  If, by sharing this with you, I could save you an equal measure of humiliation, then it would be worth airing a bit of dirty laundry.

(Before reading on, go get a tissue—You’ll either be laughing or crying by the end of this page.)

Here’s what happened:

In the early 90s, I moved to the northwest from New York City.  Having abysmally failed to strategically plan this move, it wasn’t long before I’d run out of time, money, and ideas to launch my career.

I was—to put it delicately—EAGER TO GET BUSINESS!

Okay, so I was probably desperate the day I AGREED TO DO SOMETHING I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS DOING—speak to a group of 100 women about trends in the fishing industry.

Yes, the fishing industry.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking, “Wait a New York minute… Nancy doesn’t

talk about the fishing industry. Nancy doesn’t know anything about fish. Nancy talks about empowerment, courage, leadership, life purpose and impact,” – well you would be exactly right!

Therein lay the problem.

I might also mention that this presentation was to be given gratis, for free, zilch, nada, zero moolah. I was promised it would be great exposure.

The exposure I got, however, was not the kind that I could use to my advantage. (You’ll see why shortly.)

A few weeks from the scheduled event, I forced myself to find out everything I could about fish and the fishing industry (the only thing I already knew was how to cook it and eat it.)

What’s more…I also had to learn about public speaking because I’d only recently added keynotes to my repertoire of talents.

My lack of experience on the platform had me rushing off to the library to learn how to tell a good joke or two from the podium.

Stop laughing.

Books in hand, I kinda sorta slapped a presentation together and on The Day, headed over to the venue, a local seafood restaurant. I dragged along my then-boyfriend so that he could video the entire production for what was to be my debut demo tape (ignorance is indeed blissful and, no, I never mustered up the guts to even watch it).

I am slapping my forehead as I recount this.

So there I was, just minutes before my keynote, when I realized in a flash of blinding brilliance, that I had no idea what the @%&%X* I was doing there—and that, in just a moment or two, 100 other people would be wondering as well.

In that moment I HATED my life. I hated me. I hated my new career. I hated public speaking. I especially hated fish.

I confess that as I stood in the restroom (sweat pouring down my armpits and pooling at the waistband of my skirt as my knees loudly knocked together), I calculated what it would take for me to run out of the door and throw myself in front of a speeding truck without incurring permanent body damage.

Showtime:
I approached the podium robotically—sweat still pouring, knees still knocking—and gave my speech. During Q & A—an inebriated man wandered in off the street. I was too nervous to notice that he didn’t belong there, and I actually answered his incoherent question.

Nobody makes this stuff up.

That night I returned home and drank my weight in wine.

The following day, I called the client who had invited me to speak. In the most undiplomatic rant, she shared her thoughts about my presentation, my total absence of industry knowledge and…in a nut shell, IT SUCKED.

None of what she said is fit to print.

(BTW- To this day, I cannot drive past that restaurant without my stomach flipping over.)

TRUE CONFESSION….
What mistakes did I make? How did I set myself up to fail? Why did I accept an opportunity that didn’t belong to me—that guaranteed I’d disappoint myself?

1.    I WAS DISCONNECTED FROM MYSELF- I lacked self-awareness so I didn’t know what I wanted or, if I did, how to get it.

2.    I DIDN’T KNOW MY LIFE PURPOSE—which meant that instead of leading my life, I was following it around.

3.    I WAS SCARED- I let the prospect of money seduce me out of integrity with myself. Fear does that to us, if we let it.

4.    I WAS INAUTHENTIC, AN IMPOSTER—I pretended I knew things I didn’t know, I acted as though I had it all together when I didn’t, and I was living someone else’s   life, not my own.

All of which made me MISERABLE!

What did I LEARN? More than I have time to write on this page, or that you have time to read.

But here are the BIG THREE YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST KNOW so that you don’t make the same mistakes I did.

1. NEVER, ever, ever, agree to do anything incongruent with your life purpose, for any reason or for any amount of money.

Know what your purpose is, and never stray from it. PERIOD. End of sentence.

2. Be fully ENGAGED and present in your life. It will increase your self-confidence and self-trust, both of which are required to live a life of authenticity while empowering others to do the same.

3. Being fully accountable for your life means being able to articulate your PERSONAL BRAND and, as a result, your gifts and talent: Both necessary ingredients to have IMPACT and make a PERSONALLY MEANINGFUL DIFFERENCE in the world.

Why am I telling you all this?

Why am I confessing to something you otherwise would never have known about?  Why am I willing to expose my life’s greatest gaffe?

Because even though I did, YOU DON’T HAVE TO MAKE THESE MISTAKES!

I spent 15 years researching and examining why I did what I did, and why tens of thousands of you do the same exact thing.

Once I squeezed every bit of practical wisdom out of this experience (and many others like it), I developed an extraordinary adventure to help women and men just like you to avoid the ongoing disappointment of failing to turn your potential into performance.

Click here to find out more about how to turn YOUR POTENTIAL INTO PERFORMANCE…..

Me: “Hey, how’re you doing today?”

Him: “Great. Just great. I woke up today and, boy, does that beat the hell out of the alternative.” LOL.

This was a recurrent conversation I had over many years with a mentor of mine, Ross Anderson. Hearing his words never failed to get my attention. Every single time I’d think to myself, “Gee, he’s absolutely right, since the alternative is death.”

Some ten years after I first met him, our conversations abruptly stopped. ALS greedily stole his life and, ever since, I’ve felt gypped of the friend, mentor and confidant he’d become.

Ross had it right—no matter what happens today, no matter the scope of your problems, the fear in your mind, the pain in your heart—you woke up today. Which means you still have at least one more day to make things right, and to get more of what you want.

You might desire more love, a promotion, a better relationship, inner peace, joy, a new car, life fulfillment, a new career, more money or increased happiness. The ‘it’ doesn’t matter—that you want to change it does.

You have one more day….

One more day to do something about the things in your life that aren’t working as well as you’d like. One more day to celebrate the glorious things you’ve already accomplished. One more day to learn to love and accept yourself exactly as you are. One more day to turn your potential into performance.

One more day…….

How will you spend it? What choices will you make? On what will you focus? Whom will you forgive? How will you love?

That’s all. And it’s everything.

Live your purpose. Love your life.

Nancy

Here comes some tough love:

You are never, ever, ever, going to fit in! And that is “a cause for celebration, not an apology”. You will never make anyone completely happy: that is not your job, it is theirs. Therefore, the only person who can absolutely, positively, be happy with who you are, with what you do, with every itty-bitty delicious detail about you, will be YOU!! You might as well start now.

Think, for a moment, about fitting in. Into what? It’s a mold, a perception that someone else or some group of someone elses decided was appropriate for you. Do you know these people? Have you spent time with these people? Do you respect these people? Do want to emulate these people? Just what I thought. No, no, no, and no. And you care about their opinion why? Oh, for approval! You may want to rethink that.

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she realizes that the choice for how she will live the rest of her years is entirely dependent upon her personal vision and preferences. You have arrived at that time in your life.

Fitting in requires that we get small, that we compromise, that we become less authentic, less genuine than we are. Fitting in implies that we change some aspect(s) of who we worked so hard to reveal, so that others won’t feel uncomfortable comparing themselves to us (and feel diminished by the comparison). And if we do know these people, and they want us to shrink to fit in, then we must ask ourselves if these are really the kind of friends we should have anyway.

Suffice it to say that the moment we are required to ‘fit in’ we will be asked to forfeit some precious part of ourselves that we have spent most of our lives cultivating. We are asked to do this so that other people aren’t inconvenienced into expanding their views of themselves and their world. We are asked to do this so that other people don’t have to revamp their perspective. We are asked to do this because, for the most part, people are unmotivated to grow and relinquish their outdated expectations.

Anyone who wants to change us so they are more comfortable, aren’t comfortable with themselves which means that the minute you change, they’ll want you to change again. Exhausting! Repeat after me: Bye. Bye.
*This is reprinted from Nancy’s new book, Impact! What Every Woman Needs to Know to Go From Invisible to Invincible.

There are a multitude of reasons we fail to turn our brilliant ideas, our intellectual capital into actionable items and bottom line results.

The two biggies are, predictably, fear (90%) and timing (10%). Everyone experiences fear. “Getting It Done” people have the identical fears as the “Talking it to Death” folks. And the quantity of fear doesn’t vary much between the groups either.

I know, I know, all of us have met people who claim to be fearless. My industry is saturated with them. There are dozens of books on the shelves declaring ‘live a fearless life’, ‘have fear no more’, ‘banish fear from your life once and for all’.” Yadda, yadda, yadda & blah, blah, blah!

If someone tells you they don’t have any fear, they are lying to the both of you.

These books were written by people who drank the ‘If I say it positively enough any fool will believe me’ Cool Aid. It is not only impossible to banish fear from your life it is undesirable as well. Doing so, as though that were actually possible, would be akin to taking the batteries out of the smoke detectors in your home.

Fear is an indicator of one of two things: Either there’s a bear running you up a tree in the woods, or you’re experimenting with the stuff you’re made of, with your courage quotient. Regarding the former, congratulations that you’re alive to read this. In the latter, congratulations that you’re willing to pursue your purpose and passion even though you might suffer elevated blood pressure now and again.

Here’s the deal: If you’re alive then, by all means, live!

Fear is part of your path not separate from it.

Probably one of the beliefs most destructive to living your purpose, to finding your passion, to giving yourself permission to have real impact, is that having fear indicates something is wrong. No, no, no, no. That is absolutely NOT the case.

If you’re on purpose you’re going to have fear. As a matter of fact, you can’t be on purpose without it. Why? Because fear is your body’s cue that you’re living large, shifting gears, out of your comfort zone, in your learning zone and, for a change, experiencing a bit of exhilaration. Did you know that your body experiences fear and excitement almost identically? True. Elevated heart beat, sweaty palms, shallow rapid breathing, and dry mouth to name a few.

If you’re committed to living a full, rich, impactful life, things aren’t going to be peaceful, centered and light all the time—you can expect to encounter some fear. Learn to enjoy it or, at the very least, appreciate its function in your life.

Yes, we can all benefit from a positive outlook; yes, we can learn to manage our fears; yes, we can even learn to use our fears productively. But that’s a far different story than the one saying that you shouldn’t have any fear.

Today would be a great day to give up the idea, once and for all, that courageous, powerful, invincible people lack the fear gene. Discarding that thought will make your life infinitely better.

If the question is:

Where have you been, Nancy?

Then the answer is:

“Cibernating” (as in hibernating in cyberspace).

For all of you who’ve wondered where I disappeared to the past three weeks (yikes!) I want to first thank you for missing me. I missed you too. Next, I want to respectfully request that you reframe from contacting the blog police. I know, I know, those of us who are serious about growing our businesses must consistently blog (and consistent is more often than every 3 weeks). So let me explain where I’ve been—and it was not on a romantic 5 star vacation with the man of my dreams. More on that later.

It’s really quite simple or, at least on paper, it was supposed to be.

Situation: My first book, Impact! was published last month by John Wiley.

Challenge: I was several months late in getting my new website up and running.

Solution: Hire a web designer.

Challenge: It was mid-holiday when I decided to do something about it.

Bottom Line: Do it myself.

Stop laughing.

As I’ve said before, I am what I refer to as a computer klutz (aka: social media klutz, cyber challenged, technically spastic and computer compromised). My gifts are people related. End of story. For that I make no apology.

So what inspired me to take on the mother of all things frustrating—building my own site? Fear. Yup. As frightened as I was (kindly notice the past tense) to snuggle up with html, I was more scared to have spent a zillion years writing a book no one would read because they’d never hear about it.

I’m on the other side of it now. Sorta. I describe the experience like this: I’m cold. I turn to my friend and tell her I’m going to get a sweater—I’ll be right back. Three weeks later, I emerge from my closet having learned how to knit.

I’d like to say this: to every web site designer, graphic designer, computer programmer, seo specialist, etc. with whom I have ever worked, if only for the briefest of time—I apologize. I apologize for underestimating the skill it takes to create a site that looks effortless (just like a keynote that, to the unknowing audience, feels like a casual, but flawless, conversation.) I apologize for thinking, if not saying, that you over-charged me—that x, y & z could never have taken 3 hours (it probably took you 5). I ask forgiveness for my ignorance and invite you to double your rates next time we work together (I am only half kidding).

I don’t care that I was building a WordPress site, one that I could ‘content manage’ myself. I don’t care that 10 year-olds all over the planet construct these sites blindfolded—it was really hard, it was labor intensive, it was time-altering and energy sucking. It was intense. How intense, you might ask? Let’s put it this way— there are about 4,327 people on the Internet who have either written about or done a video on various aspects of WordPress design. Every one of them now knows me by first name.

Voila! I was cibernating. I dug into the underbelly of the blogosphere. I binged, I googled, I yahooed, I youtubed,  and I ate a lot of  ice cream.

I’m back. I’m excited it’s 2010….. actually, it’s not that I’m happy it’s 2010, it’s that I’m thrilled it’s no longer 2009. More on that later this week.

What did I learn from my adventure into cyberspace? Lots of things, but mainly that I’d best not leave my day job. The good news? Lot of things. Mainly, however, that given enough motivation (fear), we can do anything we set our mind to—trust me, if I can put this website together (with the help of my totally committed coach), then you can

_____________________________________________________and

_____________________________________________________and

_________________________________________________________.

INITIATE IMPACT!

1. What is one thing that you really want to do and are absolutely certain you can’t (or won’t, or aren’t willing to) do?
2. What fear(s) stands in your way?
3. What are you afraid of learning about yourself?
4. If you fail, what have you decided this will say about you?
5. If you succeed, what have you decided thatwill that say about you?

The rumor is true…. I did disappear for the past three weeks. I’ve been cybernating (as in hibernating in cyberland). In no time at all I went from cyber klutz to cyber savvy. For those of you who know me: It’s been transformational.

I have a few more finishing touches to put on my website in time for its debut this coming Monday, January 4th. Until then, I wanted to share this inspiring, heart opening, hope-filled video. Enjoy and do share it with the world.

Remember– you were born to have (positive) impact: Your impact is your brand and your life purpose. In 2010 I wish for you ten times what you dare to wish for yourself!

Much love and great health, and I’ll see you here next year.

I double dare you to watch this video without moving your hiney…..

See, I told you you couldn’t do it. Now pass it on and make somebody’s day!

If anyone knows who wrote this gem of a piece, would you let me know so that I can give credit where it’s due? Thanks!

At the end of this email is a quote of the month by Jay Leno. If you don’t
read anything else, please read what he said.

Very well stated, Mr. Leno.

_________________________________
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn’t get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs
covered with bright colored lead-base paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets
and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads.

As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster
seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes.

Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special
treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren’t overweight. WHY?

Because we were always outside playing…that’s why!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And, we were OKAY.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps
and then ride them down the hill,

only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few
times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Play stations, Nintendo’s and X-boxes. There were no videogames, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound

or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat
rooms.

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no
lawsuits from these accidents.

We would get spankings with wooden spoons, switches, ping pong paddles, orjust a bare hand and no one would call child services to report abuse.

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them.

Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever.

The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.

If YOU are one of them, CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good.

While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave and
lucky their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it ?

The quote of the month is by Jay Leno:

‘With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding,
severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and
with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a
good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?’

For those that prefer to think that God is not watching over us…go ahead
and delete this.

For the rest of us…pass this on.

(continued from yesterday)

Barb was already in coaching when she came to the realization that her career trajectory needed to change course. She’d been wandering through her organization like a five year old in a puddle, yet didn’t understand why she wasn’t getting anywhere.

I told her, “If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you arrive?”

Barb was tenacious once she made up her mind to do something. She emptied her mind of a lot of sloppy thoughts that hindered her progress, and came to a deep understanding of why she’d stood in her own way. The moment she committed to take her foot off the career brake, I could literally see it happen.

Look at taking your foot off the brake, as a decision to stop doing something that’s incongruent with one of your goals.

The next step was for Barb to start doing something new; for her to take action and positive steps toward something she desired. That’s where she ran into trouble. Or, I should say, that’s where she stood still, heels dug in, refusing to move.

What was required of Barb was for her to strategically plan her next five years of professional development. Then we would define the tactics needed to get her there. It took a long time for Barb to take this next step.

To sum it up, she had little difficult stopping a particular behavior, but great trouble starting a new one. Why? For Barb, as is true for many people, stopping herself from doing something was passive and, therefore, easy. On the other hand, starting something action-oriented was very much the challenge.

Starting a new way of thinking or a new behavior required that Barb take the initiative; that she put mental and physical energy behind her hopes and wishes. She believed in herself… but not as much as she needed to in order to get up that steep hill.

Look at the two as the difference between being a ‘victim’ in your life, and being empowered. It takes a lot more self-trust and, therefore, self-confidence to vote for yourself, than it takes to not show up at the polls.

More on this soon. In the meantime….

INITIATE IMPACT!

1. If you were to take one little, tiny step toward an important goal of yours, what would it be?
2. How would you feel once you’d taken it?
3. What will you regret, one year from now, if you fail to move toward this goal?