Motivational Leadership Speaker, Bestselling Oprah Author

Archive for October, 2008

For the most part, I think we fear our own power because acknowledging it requires us to take action. Taking action requires energy, stamina and presents us with the possibility of failing. It’s much easier to blend in with everybody else, all the fearful people who don’t venture into their zones of discomfort.

I look back on the great cynics I have known in my life, and I have to admit they provided a great deal of entertainment for me with their smart-aleck remarks as we watched one of our peers dare to chase some cockamamie dream that none of us thought could possibly work. Years later, the cynics had done nothing new with their lives. But, look at what the visionaries did:

There was the night city editor who quit to open a restaurant. It wound up being Ryan’s — an extremely successful chain and franchise. At the height of his success, the late Eddie Ervin owned 25 of the restaurants himself.

There was the television assignment editor who left to go to medical school and now is a great doctor with a huge practice.

There was the very lame reporter who left for law school and became quite well-known for civil rights work.

And when those dreams worked, we’d make some snide remark about it — and you know that came entirely from jealousy.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books, including an Oprah pick. She speaks to corporations and organizations on courageous and creative leadership strategies taken from her interviews with the best-known leaders of our times.

I hate those books that seem like they were written by used car salesmen who have the secret formula for magic self esteem, and unbridled success and wealth. I hate speakers who do that, as well. So when I talk about how thoughts determine results, realize the message is coming from a recovered cynic who spent her first career in the newsroom as a hard-bitten reporter.

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After I left journalism and decompressed a few years, I encountered others who manifested unthinkable success with an attitude shift that could only have been made because of their self confidence and fearlessness. They  believed they could achieve greatness, so they did.

I remember asking Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams what separates someone who is ordinary from someone who is extraordinary. “The belief that she’s ordinary,” said Williams, who won the Nobel for leading the crusade against land mines. There is so much power and truth in that concept. You are what your mind says you are. Your mind says what you tell it to say.

The biggest step in this process is the buy-in – that decision to stop rolling your eyes and leave disbelief and skepticism behind.

You can find hundreds of books telling you how to manifest great success and wealth if you just believe you can. Unfortunately, most of those books are shallow and cheesy, and ignore the fact that we are feeling, human creatures who unconsciously limit ourselves because we are afraid to dream big, try hard and possibly fail.

Cynicism is deadly to visionaries. It kills the optimism needed to embrace possibility. Why sit at the sidelines ridiculing a dream or a dreamer’s naiveté instead of tapping into that same hope and positive energy to create your own dream? Cynicism is, perhaps, the greatest obstacle standing between you and unbridled self-confidence. Negative people get negative results, so make the conscious decision to stop being negative.

That’s today’s assignment. It’s the first step to extraordinary success in difficult times.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books, including an Oprah pick. She speaks to corporations and organizations on courageous and creative leadership strategies taken from her interviews with the best-known leaders of our times.

When I got my first full-time job as a journalist, I sat catty-corner from a woman who seemed eons older than I was. She was thirty at the time – think of it, thirty! And, I looked up to her because she was savvy, quick-witted and unbelievably sarcastic about the ways of the world. She always had some sort of smart-mouthed take on whatever the subject of the day.

Like an idiot, I consulted her the day before I was to interview Abigail Van Buren (the original Dear Abby) on the telephone. I asked my co-worker to help me come up with some questions Abby had never been asked before.

“Why not ask her how many suicides have happed because of her advice? And, ask about the number of divorces, too.”

That was life in the newsroom. There was always a nasty remark about everything. We knew that when someone gave us a tip, there was always a secret agenda. That people who held themselves up as the most prominent or upright citizens would too often wound up being convicted of fraud or theft or sexual assault on a child. That the world was filled with lies and liars. That there was always a humorous, negative take on everything, because good news really wasn’t news, and we didn’t run into all that many “good” people anyhow.

We’d go to events and never clap for the speakers. We’d be irreverent, and sometimes, disrespectful to people in positions of authority. We always assumed dark, not light. The worst, not the best.

I tell you all of this so you understand that I had to leap from the negative plane where so many of us linger, and venture into the realm of light and possibility, where our true success awaits. If you want positive things in your life, you have to make that leap as well. It is especially important to make that leap if you are experiencing difficulties and need to redefine what is next for you. I’ll explore that over the next week.

But, as you begin to change your world, change yourself. Realize that there isn’t always a negative agenda or a negative outcome. As difficult as things are these days, we’ve still got it pretty good.

I often think of a story told to me by Kathryn Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space. Her mission was to deploy the Hubble Telescope, and it entailed complicated, intricate steps that all had to be perfectly executed.

“This was not the time to be staring out the window. We had the professional futures of other folks and a lot of federal money placed in trust in our hands.”

While she was doing her work outside the space shuttle, Commander Bob Crippen called out to the astronauts and had them take a second to look away from their tasks “…so we would know this was not a (training) repetition in the safety tank. It was the real deal. There was a planet over our shoulders. He made us pause to absorb  the reality, and I’m so glad he did. We could well have gone back in the airlock and said, ‘Was that the (training) tank or was that for real?’”

When we immerse ourselves in so much intensity, it is so easy to lose perspective. The reward is not only achieving our goals, but the joy that comes from trying to attain them. Which memory means most to you – getting your college diploma, or remembering the things that happened on your way to earning it? Your wedding might have been a crown jewel moment in your life, but wasn’t it fun to go through all the giddiness of meeting and falling in love?

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Remember that as you go on your way. Some of your experiences will be quite trying, but they really provide you with a defining moment to live all out and be who you are. Enjoy that. The reward is in doing something different, pushing yourself, feeling the support from your friends and family as you dare to be bold.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books, including an Oprah pick. She speaks to corporations and organizations on courageous and creative leadership strategies taken from her interviews with the best-known leaders of our times.

This is going to be quite a month, and a real endurance test. I am off on a marathon speaking run that will give me only two breaks at home. It culminates with a two-week run to Portland, Or., Chicago, Miami, Bentonville, Ar. and San Antonio. I will come home and have less than 24 hours to recover before doing the 3-day, 60-mile walk for breast cancer.

I’m not complaining. There was a time when I griped about the rigors of the road travel I had to do and, guess what? Business dried up. I have learned that the magic (and my income) is out there on the road, so I have this mantra that I embrace wholeheartedly: I LOVE TO TRAVEL. Bring it on. Book me some more. 

Seriously, I can’t believe I get paid to have this much fun. I go out there, I stand onstage and feel beloved, I meet all kinds of great people, then I get to come home and live in Clearwater, Fl. This is a good life.

Anyhow, the point of this blog is that I will do my best to post while I am out there. But, if I miss a few days, don’t kill me. It’ll slow down after convention season ends.

Fawn Germer is the best-selling author of four books, including an Oprah pick. She speaks to corporations and organizations on courageous and creative leadership strategies taken from her interviews with the best-known leaders of our times.

Back when I was a reporter, my friend Kathy used to bash the media and it would really tick me off. She talked about media bias. And a lack of depth. And agendas. She complained that political coverage was always about the horse race and never about the issues. I’d roll my eyes.

I always hated media bashers. I thought they were simplistic and quick to blame. As Kathy kept pounding away at coverage, I told her to cancel her subscription to the newspaper if she didn’t like things and thought to myself, “She just doesn’t get it.”

Well, now I get it. I wrote my last news story for U.S. News and World Report five years ago, and I have detoxed and cleansed. I realize that it was me who just didn’t get it. This week has been especially ridiculous.

The media scared the hell out of us with the economic crisis. It went something like this:

“$700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse. $700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse.”

So, the bailout failed.

We kept hearing the same chorus of “$700 billion. Wall Street. Collapse.” Scared everybody. The world is ending.

But, relief! A subject change. Thank goodness for a bright, new day. But…

“Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin.”

These are serious times and we are being fed redundancy and pap. Let’s talk about which politician is scoring points in the debate instead of the debate! And I am sick to death of hearing Palin’s name. Whether she scores in the debate tonight — or not — I need a time-out from her and all that superficial nothingness I am getting. It does occur to me — a lot — that this is a turning point in our history that will shape the way we live for the rest of our lives. And what do we get from the media?

I wonder: Whatever happened to content?

And then I think about Kathy and I wonder if it ever really existed.