by Bruce Kasanoff
I recently recorded a very personal ten-minute video that draws on my own life experiences. (Its purpose is to explain my new online course.)
Although I don't use this exact phrase in the video, in the several days since I posted the video, it has occurred to me that I'm talking about the difference between a weak, unfocused and half-hearted effort vs. one that's driven by a relentless sense of compulsion and conviction.
Guess which one works?
Let me tell you a few stories...
At age seven, I was a normal kid who ran around the neighborhood and climbed trees. One day I had a twinge of pain in my hip while swimming and a week later I had a body cast on the lower half of my body. For two months, I lay in a hospital bed in our dining room, unable to turn over by myself. (It was the only way to stop the tissue in my hip from dying.)
This was followed by seven months of wearing a metal brace on my entire leg. Think: a peg leg, accompanied by a special shoe on my other foot, to make that leg the same length as my peg leg.
Finally, I had to learn to walk, then run, again.
At first, I remember crying on the floor, "unable" to get up. Fortunately, my parents resisted the strong impulse to coddle me. "Try again," they said about 500 times.
Eventually, my mindset shifted. Not only was I going to run again, I was going to run much faster than ever before. And I did.
My life—and maybe yours—is a series of half-hearted attempts to do something, interspersed with intervals in which my conviction to succeed was so strong that nothing was going to stop me.
Quick example that I describe in the video: armed with a 2.4 GPA from a state university, I decided to apply to only one graduate business school: Wharton. That is sheer lunacy.
I got in.
My moments of irrational confidence come rarely, perhaps every five or ten years. They feel very different from delusional thinking.
In essence, the voice in my head says, "This is going to be incredibly difficult, but I am willing to die trying."
If I simply tell you to be irrationally confident, you'll probably look at me with a blank stare. But if I share a four-step system for focusing your intention, the odds are very good you will use that system when you are ready.
I put those last four words in bold because you already know everything you need to know. You know how to be more loving, get promoted, start a business, make $100 million and live with an incredible sense of fulfillment. But you are perhaps not ready to die trying to accomplish one or more of those goals.
The magic happens when you use a simple, proven system and you decide you are ready to knock down wall after wall to accomplish your goal.
When I got into the LinkedIn Influencer program, as it was called in 2012, I then had to compete for attention with the likes of Richard Branson and Deepak Chopra. Everything they wrote was wildly popular. Most things I wrote made a gentle ripple. So I went on a tear, publishing five times as much content. I am pretty sure that for several years running, I published more content on LinkedIn than any other human being.
Why? I had no choice. I was going to reach a large audience on this platform or die trying.
You are reading these words today because I was irrationally confident. My friends and family members used to roll their eyes at all the pieces I was publishing. It didn't matter. My intention was clear. After years of wandering in the desert, being unfocused in my career, I was going to earn the right to be of service to other people.
I'm writing this newsletter and am developing online courses in part to teach others, perhaps you, to be irrationally confident. We all have untapped potential inside of us. We all can rise above half-hearted efforts and generate a sense of conviction that nothing can stop.
When you are ready, you'll know it.
All I'm urging today is that you remain alert for that moment when something clicks inside of you and you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt: I'm ready.
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If you're curious to learn more about me...
Kasanoff.com shares many of my most popular posts and books. It also describes my ghostwriting services.
BendYourReality.com is where I will be sharing my new self-paced online courses.
Mountain Minute is my other LinkedIn newsletter. It's where I help you grow your career by helping others.