I have launched a 'few rockets of desire' in my lifetime to move from being a world class dumb-ass to being a world class smart ass. No, not a smarty pants, a truly smart guy, you know a wise ass! :)
For the longest time I pretended I was smart when I was truly dumb. The problem was that even though I could 'talk the talk,' I couldn't 'walk the talk'.
I felt like a fraud most of my life, terrified someone would discover that I didn't know the difference between a jelly bean and a kidney bean...
That all changed for me at a meeting in Dallas, Texas where a man named Randy MacNamara was speaking to a crowd of 500 people. He was the most real, the most genuine and the smartest person I ever met...
Usually I am not star struck but I was with Randy. After his speech, I got the nerve to go up on stage and ask him how he became this amazing, over the top, brilliant person... He answered me a way that made me feel like I was his equal even though I knew I was not.
He said to me:
"Frederick, if you want to be BRILLIANT like me, you have to be willing to risk making a jackass of yourself from time to time.
Once you lose your fear of appearing the fool, your brilliance will speak through you naturally with no effort at all.
He was right, nothing like making a jackass of myself hundred of times to lose my fear of being a fool. This allowed the 'best me' to show up in life.
Randy's parting advice to me was this:
"Frederick, you can either care about people or you can care about what they think of you and you cannot have it both ways. Choose one."
From that day forward, my desire to care about people became more important to me than what other people thought of me,
My choice to care about people freed me up to become the person I always wanted to be, an over the top, full blown me.
No comments:
Post a Comment