Chapter 1
What if someone finds out who I really am?
F – The fear
Can it really be a fear of saying who you really are? So often we hide what we really want, who we really are and what we really enjoy in life for fear that other people may not approve. And why is that an obstacle to success? Because if you can’t be honest about the fact that you enjoy a staycation, that you like cats, that you have children who light up your life, that you like model aircraft or enjoy knitting or you’ve always wanted to go on the Orient Express, how are you going to be honest and tell someone that you actually don’t want to sit on the board of directors, or that actually you DO want to sit on the board of directors?
And, likewise, when you get the things you want in life, how are you going to keep them if you are constantly second guessing and looking over your shoulder thinking, ‘What if someone finds out who I really am?’
If we are going to look at the real challenges to success, we have to start by looking at what you want in life. And one of the reasons why people don’t achieve success that matters to them and that they can really feel, is because they crave the wrong things. They go for goals and ambitions created for them by the outside world and by other people rather than by their internal values, passions and desires.
In the office it’s assumed you would want the top job. If you own your business it’s assumed you want a global empire with offices around the world. Why wouldn’t you want to be a millionaire? Everyone wants that, right?
If you want true success, you need to be able to confidently and succinctly say ‘This is what I want’ and to not be worried about what anyone else thinks. And yet it’s easier said than done, so Chapter 10 will be helpful for this too. To really power up your success, you can’t fight the person you really are. You have to learn to stop hiding behind what you think everyone needs you to be, or what you think people think you should be.
When things in life don’t fit comfortably with the person you really are, it works against your success. You find yourself doing things you don’t want to do, working on things that you don’t enjoy, towards goals that don’t fulfil you. Life lacks joy, excitement and passion. The people sharing those ‘Only five days until the weekend’ posters on social media are probably fighting the true version of themselves. They are filling their professional days with things that do not inspire and fulfil them. They put money in the bank and that’s about it.
In our world, from the moment we wake until, quite often, the moment we sleep, we’re receiving information. Even the journey to work isn’t safe. Everywhere is full of things that assault your senses. You can know what someone had for breakfast on the other side of the world, whether they ate papaya sitting on the beach or porridge on the back of a yacht. You can watch videos of the wildest commutes to work or people working from the most beautiful places in the world. Someone online will have it bigger and better than you: a faster car, bigger house, a bigger TV, more shoes, more hair, more money. And we are constantly manipulated as a consumer to purchase, believe and desire. Scary, right? No wonder it can become hard to find what you really want out of life. And it’s sometimes hard to even appreciate you are on that treadmill, being pulled along with the flow.
E – Examples and exercises
Example
On many occasions I have asked an audience, ‘Who in this room wants to own a Ferrari?’ What do you think the answer should be? Should it be a room full of arms shooting up? Should it be a few ‘Yes pleases!’ What would you expect?
In my experience only one or two hands go up. And then when I challenge those two brave souls who gingerly wave their hand near their ears I ask, ‘If you really want that Ferrari, why is your hand not shooting high in the air like when you were six, when you were practically being rocket-launched out of your chair you were that desperate to tell your teacher the answer?’
You see, if you really want a Ferrari then it’s a passion, an internal motivator that you can feel with every fibre of your body, and the minute you see the word, hear the word or see the image your body is alive with excitement and passion to know more.
Whenever I have ever used this example I have never seen that level of passion and excitement and never felt that feeling of ‘Wow I’m going to explode with love at first site if I don’t get to speak in the next Nano second!’
That, reader, is real passion. You need to find what your goals are in life, to work out what your internal motivators are, and find the confidence to be the real you. Find what makes you feel so alive that, as you read this sentence, you can feel your heart beating faster, a smile growing on your face and your mind wandering off as you daydream about the results. That is a passion, a goal. And all too often we hide what we really want and who we really are for the benefit of everyone else. And the results are that we only achieve what other people want.
On one occasion when I coached a client through one of the exercises in this chapter, it horrified them that a hobby was more important to them than their partner. It wasn’t that clear cut. On working together, we discovered that the client did nothing to honour the things that mattered to them. They never did anything around the hobby that mattered to them. The internal drivers that made them feel alive were constantly ignored and turned off. By being aware of the values that mattered to them, they made small changes and it had a dramatic impact on their lives in all areas. It wasn’t a ‘them or us’ situation. It didn’t mean that they didn’t love their partner. It was all about being aware of the values that make them as a person and knowing that, by not honouring what mattered to them, they were not feeling happy or ‘alive’ and that, in turn, this was having a detrimental impact on many aspects of their lives and their work.
As you will see throughout this book, not all fears jump on you at 3 o’clock in the morning screaming and yelling and keeping you up all night. Some are far subtler. And sometimes we don’t even know they are there. In some ways I think these are the more frightening fears, because at least if you know a fear exists you can keep away from it. If you don’t know a fear exists, it’s very hard to avoid, isn’t it?
Exercise – The values exercise
The first exercise in the book is paramount to so much of the knowledge you could learn about yourself, not just for helping you to be confident about the person you are and what you want in life (and getting it), but in so many other things too. It’s powerful knowledge that could resonate through every aspect of your life.
Let’s start by working out what matters to you. To do this you don’t need to work out what the perfect life would look like; we need to forget about the outside world and think about you. What matters to you?
You know I said that throughout this book there would be a few little bits of homework? Well here is one of them, and this is one exercise I use in my life every day. It has changed the lives of countless clients and it could be a moment in time that makes you think differently forever, so it could be worth grabbing a pen and paper. This is one of only a few exercises in the whole book that needs a little effort from you, but I promise it can be really interesting and thought provoking, and can seriously power up your results, so it’s worth a go, right? It could be a ‘light bulb’ moment that changes your life. (In fact, just recently I used this exercise with a client and something that has literally had them stuck for years was cleared in one hour!)
- Take a moment to think about and list the different things that matter to you. This is a confidential list that you never have to share with anyone on the planet. You don’t have to justify your choices. If you want to put your children but not your partner then that is your choice, and no one is going to judge you for it. Choose 10 things – take a look at the list below for some examples. You don’t have to choose from this list – you can write anything you like.
For example, the things that matter to me are: career, holidays, family, success, friends, money, hobbies, culture, work, leisure, sport, health, exercise, socialising, finances, writing, gardening, reading, music, etc.
Create a chart like this and add an item to each box, still in no particular order:
Family Holiday Fun Work Helping others Travel Writing Walking Socialising Money - Then compare each item. For example, if you had to choose, could you live without family or holiday? If you could not live without family, then family would get one point and holiday gets a zero. Could you live without family or fun? If you could not live without fun, then fun would get 1 point and family zero. This is no reflection on your family. This is a no-guilt, for your eyes only, private document that will help you to see what matters to you. If you give family a zero it doesn’t mean they don’t matter to you, you are just finding out where in the great scheme of things they matter to you. So remember: no guilt, complete honestly, go with your gut instinct and write the truth!
Family 1 Holiday 0 Fun Work Helping others Travel Writing Walking Socialising Money - Carry on moving down the column comparing family and fun, then family and work, then family and helping others, and so on. However, remember, you would be using your own list of 10, not this example list. Do this for each of the 10 items. You should end up with a chart that looks like this:
Family 111111111 Holiday 000011111 Fun 011111111 Work 010011110 Helping others 010111111 Travel 000000000 Culture 000001110 Walking 000001000 Socialising 000001010 Money 0000101111 - With this information you can work out what your values are. For instance, with our example the top values for this person would be family, fun and helping others, because family gets 10 points, fun gets nine and helping others gets eight.
Although it is important to know the top 10 values that impact on your life, the top three are the ones that matter most to you. For this person work, holiday and money all get five points so they are not as important to them as their top three items. However, by being aware of them they will be able to factor in their genuine values to their life. This means that there will be times in their life when they need to be aware of these values and honour them. For instance, if they want to purchase something big, they know they are prepared to work hard to get it but that they still need a holiday!
Yes, it’s scary to say ‘These things matter to me’, but you have to start somewhere, right? Have you noticed how some people seem to have the light turned off in them? They seem to have lost their glow? And yet others seem to shine, and look radiant and alive? Often when people do this exercise it throws up a surprise. Something that they thought was a lifelong value turns out to be lower down the list of priorities in their lives. By being aware of this, they can start living a life that fulfils them.
Again, I appreciate how startling it may be if you have just carried out this exercise and been thrown a curve ball; however, the scariest step is being prepared to actually take a look and see what really matters to you. Therefore, please take 10 minutes out of your day, this day, today, and do this exercise, and then let’s look at the results and what they may mean for you.
So, if you did the values exercise, how do you feel about what matters to you? Does it fit in snug as a bug with the person you are now? Do you feel confident and happy that you are living in the right home, driving the right car, going to work in the right place, with the right people, doing what feels like the perfect job that makes a difference to the right people? Do you feel like you are surrounded by people that nurture and complete you, and do you feel sustained and happy and like every day is a joy and gift? If yes, then, great, your fear really could lie in one of the more obvious fears. I wouldn’t skip those chapters though. In my opinion, you will always learn more, even on those subjects you think you know about, because there is always another view, and there is always more you could learn.
If, on the other hand, the answer was ‘No’, what do you think is missing from your life?
A – Action
To help, you must find the inner confidence, and override the feeling that says the real you has to hide what matters to you. The person you really are is perfect, just perfect, and if you want real success in life, you need to know what that perfect version of you is all about. That way you can be proud and confident about what that person wants and desires in life. Then, no matter what comes into your life, you are able to ask yourself, ‘Does this fit with the person I am?’ It’s good to get into the habit of asking yourself this question.
So, if you were to look around you right now, you might see a nice environment and all the things that are supposed to make you happy, but you may not be ‘feeling it’, because maybe one of your fears is the fear to be you. And it’s all too common. It takes guts and confidence to say, ‘This is what matters to me and this is what I want’. One of the reasons that people don’t get the results that they want in their lives is because they are frightened to show the world what they really want. And when you get the things you want in life, just knowing it’s what matters to you will help build your confidence and help you maintain and keep them too. You may need the support and help from some of the other chapters; however, by being strong and confident in the knowledge that ‘this is me’, you will be able to stand proud.
If you want real success, you need to be prepared to say: ‘This is me; this is what matters to me’. In the results section of this chapter you will see that by creating focused goals that really resonate with your values, you are more able to achieve them. You can stay focused on what you want and ignore the fear. Answer these questions and create some of your own. The more fun and extreme the better! And you will see as you read this book that each chapter adds more skills, strategies and exercises to really help you power up your success.
- Do you want to own a global empire?
- Do you want to sit on the board of directors?
- Do you want to sit on the parent–teacher associations?
- Do you want to sing in your local choir?
- Do you want to work in your local store?
- Do you want to be a best-selling author?
- Do you want to own your own jet?
- Do you want to run your own successful business?
- Do you want to set up your own charity?
- Do you want to sing at a football stadium?
No one has the right to tell you who you are except you. And yet, unless you define yourself this world has a habit of doing it for you. Take a moment to think about the questions you would like the answers to.
R – Result
When you feel confident and internally empowered about the person you are and what matters to you in life, you will be able to live in a way that makes you feel good. You will smile more too. Do you remember I started this chapter by asking ‘Who wants a Ferrari?’
What do you want? What ideas did the action section of this chapter create for you? So often we glaze over and go on autopilot when we hear this question. When I’m running a master class or training session and this question gets asked, I hear things like:
- I want to travel the world.
- I want to be mortgage-free.
- I want a global empire.
- I want a sports car.
- I want to make lots of money.
But when I challenge people on their answers they rarely have any details for me.
One business woman told me she wanted to make more money. So I asked her, how much more was more?
‘Well you know, lots,’ she said.
‘How much is lots?’ I asked.
You could see she was really thinking about this. The rest of the delegates were all looking at her and for the first few seconds they were wondering what she was thinking, and then I realised they had flipped their thinking to start reassessing their own goals and were digging deeper into what they really wanted. As this lady thought I could see she was struggling. So I asked:
‘What do you want the money for?’
‘Well I like holidays, and I’ve not had one for five years.’
‘Okay, so where do you want to go?’
This lady went on to tell me about how she would love to go on a cruise.
‘Indoor cabin or outdoors?’
‘Outdoors!’ she said with passion (We were getting somewhere!)
‘Suite or just a nice balcony?’
‘We don’t need a suite; we won’t be spending that much time in the room.’ (Now we were really getting somewhere!)
‘Is that the only holiday?’ I asked
‘Oh no, I’d love to take the whole family away to Portugal for a holiday.’
‘Two weeks or one?’ I asked.
‘Only one, I don’t like them that much!’
In this way, the woman was able to build a picture of how much money she wanted to earn, what she wanted to do with it and to really build up some real passion for it. Now, if she hadn’t taken the time to work out what she personally wanted, she could so easily have tried to create a goal that was not harmonious to her. If she had listened to the outside world, the world of X Factor and Facebook, she could have created a goal that said she needed private jets and a villa in the South of France for six weeks. That wouldn’t have been a goal that floated her boat. And it wouldn’t have been achievable.
And I’m also pleased to say that the holidaying entrepreneur’s Facebook page has been plastered with holiday snaps for the whole year!
As we’ve seen with our holidaying entrepreneur, you need to have clearly defined goals to get somewhere in life. And your values impact on what those goals look like. They are the backbone to your success.
I’ve also seen the impact it can have on a person’s success when they don’t stand proud about the person they are. I remember the business owner who was damaging their health, their family life and their business because they wouldn’t tell the professional world that they were a parent. As if children were a crime. What message would that send to their children as they grew up? What kind of role model is that?
As we worked together, they were able to see that it was ridiculous to keep up this fakery. Okay, so there was a real risk that they could lose business, because people had grown accustomed to being able to communicate with this business owner 24/7; however, as this business owner found out, it was their ‘choice’ to stay ‘stuck’ with these customers or to move forward and ‘find’ customers that would respect them. It is scary to do this, and it is a sensible fear; however, with the right support and the right actions this person was able to think in a new way. They reframed their beliefs so that they could honour their core values and create goals that would make for a happy personal and professional life.
I speak from experience here: I have auto immune diseases. Now, I don’t share this for you to say ‘aw, poor you’. I share this because when I came back to work in 2013 after a year and a half off lying around in a dark room saying ‘ouch’, I had to think to myself, ‘Do I risk losing out on work by being honest with people and telling them that I can only work part time, or do I lie about my capabilities?’ Being a coach I knew what people were not saying as well as what they were saying. I saw it as a real risk that people in business would consider me weak if I admitted these illnesses (and in my experience, some do!). However, I appreciated I was at risk of letting it become a fear.
I wanted to test the limits of being who I really am. Was that scary? Of course. I’m not a robot. But we all have to push ourselves. As a coach, I feel that it’s important that I regularly remember the real fear that my clients so often feel. I have learnt many ways over the years to remove so much fear from my life and it is only by pushing ourselves that we can constantly grow and get better results from ourselves and our lives.
Since becoming poorly, the long-haul flight holidays have been less appealing and European caravanning makes me happier. In the middle of an Internationally Celebrated Global Entrepreneur Week I told everyone I love caravanning and that I was a sick business owner. Afterwards I had the same number of people coming up and wanting to talk to me as in previous years: the same number of enquiries, bookings and opportunities and the same level of high reviews from my audience. Yes, it was scary being the real me, but being myself really was the only option. If I want to move through life feeling genuinely happy with my results and my life, it’s the only option. Success will be easier to achieve if you are not putting on a pretend façade that needs to be constantly maintained. Think how much energy you could be putting into winning at work and your success if you dealt with the fear and found the strength to be true to who you are.
Would or could you have done the same?
There have been many studies that show that people don’t stand up for others in a crowded environment because of the group mentality that overrides our own opinions and values. Nobody wants to stand out and speak up. If you are able to find what your values are, to be confident about them and create goals around them, then you will know that your actions are true and are taking you towards the results you want. You could still find yourself in scary situations. However, you will have the confidence to go through them because the results that you expect will far outweigh the fear. Now how fun does that sound?
Find the strength and inner confidence. Remain true to yourself so that wherever you are, and whoever you are with, you are able to get the results you want in life.
I don’t want to be frivolous or glib here. I won’t mind admitting in the run up to that event, I questioned if I was committing professional suicide by admitting a love of caravans and a need for rest and medication. I asked my husband on a number of occasions if he would listen to my keynote. I asked my teenage children to endure my keynote. (To teenagers, I can assure you, it’s an endurance test to listen to an hour of your mother talking!) I needed to get the opinions of people who would be critical and yet honest about my work. People who knew my target audience and who wouldn’t just say, ‘That’s nice dear’, and this was something I knew I could get from my close family.
My children and I have a code. When they show me a piece of work, I will ask them ‘are you wanting the a) polite reply or the b) realistic one?’ And the great thing about teenagers is they don’t have an ‘a’ mode. Their setting is permanently on the ‘b’ setting. So if I was pushing my luck with my comments, I knew my kids would let me know!
And, taking into account the current trend at the time for racing caravans on the back of ‘reasonably priced cars’ on the UK’s top TV car magazine show, I really was leaving myself open for embarrassment. Was I really going to walk into a room full of my target audience for business and do this?
If you want to achieve your big goals and dreams you need to be able to fly in the opposite direction to a roomful of other people. In the UK we have seen a massive growth in self-employment. For women in particular, according to research by Julia Dean OBE, since 2009 women have accounted for over half of the overall growth in self-employment. And yet this is a risky path to take. It is fraught with fear and risk. By choosing self-employment, women are missing out on the chance to sit on the board of directors, to rise to the top of a FTSE company, to make CEO. Why? Are women feeling it’s beyond their reach to achieve these things and choosing the easy option? Do women need training to get to the top? Or are more and more people redefining what success, goals and ambitions look like?
The increase of men taking advantage of fairer rights to paternity leave hasn’t happened, despite a country poised ready for panic about the lack of skilled staff. Why? Is this another sign that people fear speaking up for the things that matter to them in life? What does that do for success? Happy people make happy staff, which is something we hear more and more. Productivity is not much improved on 1960s standards, and yet we are busier than ever, so something has to change. Are you ready to be a part of that? To do this you will sometimes have to tell a room full of people what your ‘caravan’ is. Scary? Absolutely. Worth doing? Absolutely!
You will need to gauge people’s opinions. You may still experience fear to begin with. However, positive action will result in more positive reaction. It is only inertia and inaction that will allow that fear to grow and fester. Know your values, know your passions and your reasons for them.
And yet, fear could still be a deciding factor that stops you from taking action to enable the true you to walk away with the results you want. To ensure you still take the necessary action you need to look at your reasons for this. If you don’t honour your values, what would you be agreeing to? Ask yourself these very important questions:
- ‘If I do not work out who I really am and if I am not prepared to stand up and be that person, then what am I agreeing to?’
- ‘If I don’t honour the person that I really am, and my values, then what am I agreeing to?’
Think back to the values exercise and the values that matter to you. What are you agreeing to live without? What are you agreeing to sacrifice? Ask yourself:
- ‘If you continue to live in a style that does not honour your values, what impact does it have on your life?’
- ‘What impact does it have on those that you love?’
Yes, it is scary to be the person that you want to be; however, is it not more frightening to hide the person you are meant to be? Do you remember the passion I said you needed to find what you really want? Remember the person that really wants a Ferrari? That is how you need to feel about this, as if your very being needs to know the answers to the questions on this page. And to be honest with you, it will be hard to achieve the big ambitions of your life if you don’t, which basically means you are trapped in this chapter!
The fact is, I am speaking to you as I speak to my clients – with absolute love and a belief that you can get the results that you want. However, it does have to come from action, and not all action means working a 16-hour day, juicing and climbing mountains. One of the most powerful things you will ever do is to understand that you are free to choose to think what you think.
You can allow fear to be in charge. Or you can break down each fear. See how it works, see where it is in your life. Use this book to dismantle it and get what you want. So if you did take action in Chapter 1, shall we move on and set some seriously awesome goals?
Now I bet that scares the pants off you! Don’t worry, we are in this together aren’t we?