Tag: courage

Courage quotient

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

What is your courage quotient?

What will it take to have you go towards:

…a feeling of discomfort?

…a place that is just outside where you normally sit?

….an action that you’ve talked about with a few people but have never taken?

…an idea you have that you’ve wanted to share, but you’re afraid it will get shot down?

…something that you’ve been building but have kept hidden away from everyone who matters?

It’s all too easy for all of us to get caught in behavioral ruts – patterns that have worked for us so far.   These can create parallel emotional ruts, a safe emotional space whose safety comes from nothing more than a sense of familiarity.

It’s like you’re standing at the side of a pool, thinking about how cold the water will feel when you jump in.  And the time keeps passing until it’s impossible to stop thinking about that first moment, that big shock that’s coming to the system.

It’s true, it might be a big shock.  But only for a minute, and then it passes.  The truth is that few of us will look back at our lives and think “I was too bold.  I was too courageous.  I reached too too far for the things that really mattered to me.”

No one’s asking you to be Lewis Pugh, not yet at least.

Jump.

Going towards truth

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Takes guts, involves risk, can feel like walking through the fire.

Turning away, though, doesn’t mean that the truth you’re ignoring doesn’t exist.  It just means that you’re choosing not to see it and stand before it.

Bear witness, find courage, go towards truth.

Just you

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

A number of years ago I bumped into an old family friend, a senior partner at a law firm, on the 7:30am Delta Shuttle from New York to DC.  For me, catching that flight was always a discombobulated mad morning dash of stuff and stumbling through security (shoes, belt, bag, computer…) and grabbing a few newspapers for the flight.

As we were going down the aisle in the plane I noticed he had nothing with him – no briefcase, no suitcase, nothing.  I asked him about it and he said, “They asked me to come down to DC for the day, so I’m going.  What they asked for is me and that’s what they’re getting.  Nothing else.”

It was said tongue-in-cheek, with a smile, but I liked the point he was making.

At some point you need to strip it all away, the busyness and the stuff, the laptops and the schedules and everything unnecessary, and realize that in the end it’s just you, laid bare.  What you have to offer, the clarity of your insights, what you, unadorned, bring to the table.

Clean, simple, no additional baggage.

Out loud

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

What if you committed, for a little while, to verbalize the great ideas that pop into your head?  The important, risky (-seeming) ideas that represent what’s really on your mind.  The ones that you don’t say because they’re a bit too real, too honest, too to the point.

There are few skills more important than being able to say the right thing at the right time in the right way to shift a whole conversation.

One-on-one conversations, group conversations, high-stakes and low-stakes conversations, all are susceptible to that kernel of truth and insight that breaks them wide open.

The entire business school case method is geared, ultimately, towards teaching this skill.   For two years you sit with 85 incredibly bright people, and the class is orchestrated by a Professor who, if she’s good, is looking for just one thing: getting students to learn how to integrate the case content and the points made by other classmates, pulling those threads and her own observations together to get to real insight, all in a way that move the discussion forward.

You can save yourself $200,000 and two years at a top business school by starting, today, to say your great, good and OK ideas out loud.  The best place to start?  Not necessarily the ideas you think are the best ones.  Start with the ideas you’re afraid to say out loud, the ones that make your heart beat a little faster.  Fear is a great indicator of how real they are and how much truth they contain.

It’s true that saying these things in a way that they are actually heard is itself an art.  But you’ll never practice that art if your most important ideas are kept under lock and key.

Your ‘ask’ is not ‘by the way’

~ Sasha ~ 6 Comments

It’s so easy to be terrified by “the ask” that you want to make – whether that’s for advice or a job or to create a partnership or for funding.  It’s as if there’s this sense of shame and embarrassment that you would actually want something to come out of the meeting.

Why?

Your meeting has a purpose.  There’s something you are trying to create in the world and some role that you hope the person across the table from you might play in making that creation happen.

Yes, you must explore, you must understand one another….and it’s fabulous to dream together.  There’s no way to properly ask for something before understanding who the other person is, what they are trying to accomplish in the world, and whether the thing you’re hoping to do is something that connects with who they are, where they are in their lives, and their dreams.

But if the moment you come to that thing, that “ask”, if you find that you’re muttering quickly under your breath; or, just as bad, if what you really are hoping will happen comes across as just one in a list of things that you rattle off all too quickly in the last five minutes of the meeting – if that happens you have to ask yourself why you had the meeting in the first place.

A great test: ask yourself afterwards whether there’s a chance, any chance at all, that the person you met with doesn’t actually know the most important thing you were hoping would happen.

And then, think which mistake you’d rather make: getting turned down, or having the person walk out the door not really understanding what you hoped to accomplish in the first place?

 

Some talk is cheap

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

The meeting you cancel because the topic has been covered, because the work is done, is a gift to everyone.

The meeting you never have because the conversation is too real or seems too hard – that is the real waste of time and opportunity.

It’s not time that’s scarce, it’s courage.

The wrong public speaking mistakes

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

Public speaking is neck-and-neck with fundraising on the list of things people consistently fear.

To avoid that fear we often choose to read to people rather than speak to them.  That is, we write down and recite prepared remarks.  If our goal is to get our words across, this approach is guaranteed to succeed.  Visually represented, if we read typed-up remarks we’re likely to say nearly 100% of the words we have written down.

Reading your speech

Of course people didn’t show up just to hear your words, they showed up to hear you.

Yes they want you to have done the heavy lifting of thinking about and synthesizing your remarks.  Yes they expect that you’ll practice what you’re going to say with trusted colleagues and friends before you speak to get it right.  So yes, prepare.

But also remember that you are so much more than the words you put on that page.  You are a human being and people are desperate for human connection.  They want to feel and experience what makes you tick and how your mind words.  They want to interact with you, even if you are up on stage and they are part of an audience.  And most of all, and easiest to forget, they want you to succeed.  They are good people and they want good things for you.  Also, if you succeed then they do to – they learn more, they have more fun, they get a glimpse of you.

The speech read head down, in a monotone, is nearly always devoid of human connection.  Air flows back into the room when the speech-reader looks up, smiles, and says even one extemporaneous remark – the smiles from the audience aren’t just because the remark was funny, it’s because they’re breathing a collective sigh of relief when they glimpse your humanity.

And that glimpse is missing when your attention turns from them to the piece of paper you’re holding in your hands.  That connection is lost.

The reason error avoidance (aka “reading what you wrote down”) feels like a reasonable tactic is because it masquerades as a way to ensure that we avoid failure.  But what do we mean by success?  Because we know that, when we all start out, it’s nearly impossible to overcome the terror of standing up on a stage and ALSO get our point across without some help from our notes.  But the decision we can make is to recognize that someday we want to break free, someday we want to speak to people not read to them, someday we want to feel comfortable and maybe even a little bit happy up in front of people telling them our story.

Conceptually, we can break free a bit by asking ourselves whether quadrant 3 really is better than quadrant 2: that is, is standing up reading something we could have handed out actually better than saying a small fraction of what we thought we meant to say but making a real human connection?

Four quadrants of public speaking

Before you answer, you might remind yourself that the audience is at the edge of their seats, wanting you to succeed.

I’d trade error avoidance for human connection any day. Especially since I know that when you speak from the heart, you’ll speak your truth.

 

Two traps

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Each day, each post, I walk a narrow path.

I avoid thinking too much about all the people out there who are going to read each post I write – people I like and respect and whose time I know is precious.  Because if I get too hung up on that, I can easily decide that a post isn’t worthy of landing in thousands of inboxes.

Or I could worry that the number of people reading this blog isn’t big enough, and try to write posts that will get more people to sign up.

Instead, I try to show up and do my best, most honest work.  I listen to my own standard of the work I’m striving to produce, and limit internal debates to conversations between me and my computer screen and ask: is this the best version of what I’m trying to say?

And each time I hit “publish” the inner critic, the doubts, the second-guesses lose a little bit more steam.

Gifts – The Icarus Deception

~ Sasha ~ 10 Comments

The other day I received a massive, 40 pound box full of goodies from Seth Godin.

I was one of the 4,242 people who happily jumped in to support Seth’s Kickstarter project to fund his next book, The Icarus Deception.

Of course, for $111 I didn’t just get the book.  And I didn’t just get 8 copies of the hardcover book (to give away), which itself would have been a steal.  Those 8 books took up a tiny corner of this massive box, which also contained two copies of V is for Vulnerable, a alphabet book for grown-ups, with wild, wacky, beautiful illustrations by Hugh MacLeod, about leaning in, creating art, and having the courage to ship; a delicate, hand-made mug by Lori Koop, with a hand-written note from Lori that reads “Seth asked me to make this for you….this is my art. –Lori;”  an LP (yes, as in a record) whose contents I have yet to discover….I just need to get my hands on a record player; and a totally massive, 11 x 16 inch 800+ page full-color book that, impishly, has a bunch of rubber ducklings on the front cover.  It is a collection of Seth’s best online writing from 2006 to 2012, and it’s literally the heaviest book I’ve ever laid my hands on.

Icarus Kickstarter goodies

My experience of this whole thing is joy.  I can see Seth smiling as I smile; I’m wowed by the beauty and the irreverence of each and every piece, as well as the chance that each of them gives someone else – not just Seth – to shine.   And the whole undertaking is, literally, delightful – my high expectations are blown out of the water; even with inklings of what might have been in the box I was surprised time and again.

It really is possible to delight our customers, to thank our greatest fans, to make them feel special not out of a sense of obligation but because you want to and you can.

And going back to the massive, 800+ page book, I also think back to my many experiences of sharing Seth’s advice with others – whether on publishing or on courage or on pushing through the resistance.  Yes, tons of people get it and live it.  And then there are the folks who  say something like, “Well yeah, that’s interesting and that probably works for Seth because he’s Seth.”

When I take this book, which physically holds just a small portion of what Seth has produced in the last six years, the only thing I can think is: he’s Seth because he produced all of this.  He’s Seth because any bit of advice he’s giving is something he’s already been doing for years; he’s Seth because he ships; he’s Seth because he’s not afraid to take risk, to show up, to fail, to shine, or even to look a little silly.

Finally, as homage to all of this (especially the silly part) here’s a little video that gives you a sense of the mega-tome.  Of course it’s not just heavy, it’s also beautiful and it will transform the conversations you have around your coffee table.  And it will remind you not of what Seth can do, but of what you can do if you show up fully every day.

One month, 100 rejections

~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

There are great reasons, as a nonprofit, to look for long-term, sustainable sources of revenues, to build a business model that brings in earned income or investor capital.  Philanthropic funds are so hard to come by and often so expensive to raise.

But I also see a lot of intellectually appealing arguments made by founders about not being a traditional nonprofit, when what’s really going on is that they’re just not willing to get out and fundraise.  I’ve seen missions contorted and organizations drifting far away from their original purpose because a founder has decided “I’m not a fundraiser.”

The best part is: all of the best fundraisers I know also say “I’m not a fundraiser.”

(except for one, Jennifer McCrea, who is putting the mojo back into fundraising.)

Here’s the thing.  Most people aren’t fundraisers.  Most people find it petrifying at first.  Most people fail at first, feel like they are hitting up their friends, even feel a little bit ashamed.

But the part I really, truly don’t get is how you could be willing to devote years of your life to a project but not be willing to ask people to fund it.  And I don’t mean write grant proposals, I mean ask people who are philanthropically active to write a check to help make your dream possible.

So here’s my pitch: this thing that you’re willing to devote your life to?   Take one month and get out of the building, knock on every door you can, and promise yourself that you won’t stop until you’re actually rejected 100 times.  Keep track of the 100 rejections so it’s real and you’re making progress.

Because I’m positive you can survive 100 rejections.

Because I’m positive that even if you get rejected 100 times, your idea will get stronger by virtue of talking to all of those smart people.

And because I’m sure that if you set out to get rejected 100 times you’ll raise the money you need long before you hit 100.