A couple of years ago, I gave a giant keynote to my biggest audience ever. It was one of my first talks back after COVID shut down the world. And, I was recommended to the event planner by a friend whose reputation I would never want to sully. So, you might excuse the fact that I was a wee bit nervous.
Right before I went on stage, I walked up to the CEO, a very alpha male dressing in a suit that was tailored within an inch of its life, and said, “Hi, I’m Laura Gassner Otting. Thank you for trusting me with your audience.”
He looked me dead in the eye, as he gave my hand a vice grip pump of a handshake meant in every possible way to be intimidating, and said, “I’ll trust you when you are done.”
Gulp. I think it was maybe the worst and most scary pep talks I’ve ever been given in my life.
Now, let me back up a minute.
I am one of the lucky ones.
I rehearsed the speech until I could give it in my sleep.
I was wearing my power outfit in its full Limitless Yellow glory.
I had an A/V check an hour earlier and knew the look and feel and sound of the room.
I was ready.
But, what if I hadn’t been?
What if I was telling an incredibly vulnerable story on stage for the first time in my life? (I was.)
What if I had never spoken in a room this big? (I hadn’t.)
What if I was coming out of a sickness that tried to kill me and had still a bit of brain fog and was worried that I would forget my speech? (I was.)
In that moment, literally seconds before I was going to be introduced, I had to make a choice.
Will I crush it on this stage, or will I fall apart in epic fashion?
Will he trust me, or won’t he trust me?
Could I fake it on that stage until I made it, or am I just a fraud waiting to be found out?
I was asking myself the wrong questions.
The better question was this: would I trust myself?
Who gives you your power? Who steals your power?
We give away our power every single day to those who are the brashest, the loudest, the most (and possibly fakest) confident. It’s not until we learn to trust ourselves that we are able to stride out on that literal or metaphorical stage and take what is rightfully ours: our greatness.
Step one, therefore, is to stop giving votes in our lives to people who shouldn’t even have voices. Yes, yes, I hear you saying, “But LGO, he is your client, he has a vote!” And, in fact, he does about certain things… up until a point. And that point is his knowledge about me, a woman he was meeting for the very first time and about whom he knew virtually nothing. He got a vote after he saw me speak about how well I did, but wasn’t knowledgeable enough to get a vote beforehand about how well he thought I might do.
It breaks my heart to know that so many of us let people like this intimidate us from even trying, from putting our whole selves out there.
Thank goodness for that crazy yellow outfit because I learned, as I walked out of stage still a bit rattled by him, that you can’t play small in head to toe yellow.
I strode, I shined, I kicked ass, and he thanked me for it after.
So how do you find your greatness, especially when all the voices around you are giving you bad pep talks?
It started by finding you Fundamental State of Leadership
Today we are going to help you put your limitless self front and center in everything you do. I want you to take a moment and think about a time when you were firing on all cylinders, when you were kicking ass and taking names. You were closing the deal, you were making it rain.
Or… maybe you were having a quiet moment with a loved one, and privately helping a friend or colleague through a difficult problem.
Now ask yourself:
What were you doing?
Who were you serving?
What energy were you mustering?
What muscles were you engaging?
Who were you in this moment?
Think about who you were, and what you were doing, and now write these traits, actions and energies on a post-it note and stick it to your bathroom mirror or on the lock screen on your phone. Somewhere where you can easily see it throughout your day.
This is you at your very best. This isn’t you carting around the weight of someone else’s definition of who you should or could or can’t be. This is you, limitless.
And the more you can be intentional about being that person every day, the more you can lean into that person, the more you can reach back and bring forth that person any time you are stuck. This isn’t you faking it ‘til ya make it, this is you being more of the you that you already are.
