This Is the Key to Connecting with Others

For 12 years, I’ve been helping clients find a single point of alignment—a kind of hidden doorway—between themselves and the people who matter most to them.

I call it the Resonance Point.

It’s the overlap between what deeply matters to you and what resonates with your extended network—not just followers or customers, but people you’d gladly speak with if you found yourselves in the same room.

When you find this point, things shift. Communication gets easier. Meaning deepens. Opportunities ripple outward, often in surprising ways.

Here’s the hard part: most people can’t locate this point on their own.

I can find it quickly for others, but I still struggle to find it for myself. That’s the nature of resonance: it needs reflection.

Too many entrepreneurs treat this like a mass-marketing exercise. They want to resonate with 10 million people.

But resonance doesn’t scale like that.

Zoom in. The closer you get to what truly, unmistakably matters to you, the more others feel it. But not everyone will. That’s okay. You’re not here for everyone.

Then comes the final step: Of the things that matter most to you, which ones also matter deeply to your people?

This is where most impulses collapse. They’re either too self-focused, or too generic. They miss the sweet spot.

As a ghostwriter, I often serve as an advocate for my client’s network. I listen for the 10% of what they say that has real value for others… and gently discard the rest.

It’s not that the other 90% isn’t interesting. It’s just not resonant.

For example, most people don’t care that I get hungry at 11 a.m. or that a mosquito ruined my night. But they might care when I write about navigating a challenge they also face… especially if I do it with clarity and heart.

Some rare people naturally hit their Resonance Point. I had dinner with one of them last night. She’s so aligned with her calling that she doesn’t even think in terms of audience. She just shows up, soul-first.

For the rest of us, it takes reflection, feedback, and usually another pair of eyes.

This article won’t solve it for you. But it might point you toward the one place worth focusing your attention: where what matters most to you… meets what matters most to those you serve.

To Get What You Want, Lean into Resistance

by Bruce Kasanoff

I come to you with wonderful news!

You already possess a treasure map.

The treasure map will lead you to everything you want in life, including many desires you have that you don't even recognize yet.

The map uses an ingenious system to guide you. I can explain it in just three words: lean into resistance.

The mere fact that you find it hard to talk about a given subject is reason enough that you should force yourself to talk about it.

If you are hesitant to change a habit that hasn't been working for you, that hesitance is solid evidence you need to change the habit.

Resistance, in the form of your own internal reluctance to say or do something, is how you find your treasure. It is what nature uses to test whether you are worthy of finding the treasure.

For eleven years (and counting), I have had deep weekly conversations with a small handful of entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants. Over that time, I have seen that the topics people are most reluctant to discuss are the spaces in which each person has the greatest potential for growth, additional impact and a more fulfilling life.

To cite a personal example, I have been known to avoid topics that might make me overly emotional or anxious. Well, guess what? Those are the areas in which I have finally—kicking and screaming and dragging my feet—made real progress. It would have been preferable to make such progress 20 years ago, but...

Such is the nature of resistance; it masquerades as your friend, but really is keeping you away from your treasure.

I bet you have already observed friends and colleagues misunderstanding how to deal with resistance. Perhaps they make the same ill-guided decisions repeatedly or they fall victim to the same blind spots? That's the result of running around resistance rather than confronting it head on. If you can see this misguided response in others, learn from it. Lean into resistance.

Try this... play with the difference between fear and FEAR. Don't tackle immediately the most vulnerable part of your life. Instead, pick an area in which you feel a little bit of fear and unease. Lean into your resistance and do the opposite of what your inner voice is suggesting. Poke where you are a little bit sensitive.

When that works, pick an area that's slightly more challenging. Over time, you may even be ready to confront your one or two most resistant areas. That is where your treasure lies.

I am Bruce Kasanoff, an executive coach who can help you get what you want. Book a one-hour call with me and I’ll prove it.

When to Be Irrationally Confident

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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I am Bruce Kasanoff, an executive coach who can help you get what you want. Book a one-hour call with me and I’ll prove it.