The Client Letter
~Date.Current~
The Desert of Arizona
60 Degrees, Well Before Sunrise
I remember pacing back and forth for probably a good 30 minutes before I got up the courage to dial the number, call her and ask her out. It was my second year of high school and I was about to do something bold.
I did dial the phone. Let it be known that I did make the call. Unfortunately, it’s at that point that things turned out far worse than I ever could have imagined.
If she had said, “No,” that would have been a much better outcome than what actually happened. But she didn’t say, “No.” Because when I asked her if she wanted to go out sometime, she said something completely unexpected.
She simply didn’t believe that it was me on the phone.
“I don’t believe it’s you.” That’s basically what she said.
How do you recover from that? I certainly didn’t know. Couple that with the extreme anxiety that was going through my body at the time and I basically hit a brick wall of shame. Frankly, I don’t know exactly what came out of my mouth.
Something like, “Blah, blah, blah… Okay, bye…”
Actually, I do remember what happened. It’s been etched in my mind for the past 20 years. I offered to meet her the next day at school to prove it was in fact me.
Except I don’t know if she showed up, because I didn’t. I peeked around the corner, didn’t see anyone, and left. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of dealing with Rejection 2.0. So I just didn’t show up.
There’s a lot we don’t do and won’t do in our life and business because we just can’t bear the idea of getting rejected totally and completely.
We won’t be honest with our friends.
We won’t be honest with our clients.
We won’t even be honest with ourselves about what we want and what we don’t want.
Life is too short for behavior like this. Plus, no one, and I mean no one, cares about you more than you do. So here you are, sitting on this side of the wall of fear, unable to scale the wall because of THEM.
Except they don’t care. And they never will.
That’s not a problem. That’s the most liberating thing you could possibly discover.
For when no one cares, you realize you have the power. You can’t really “give your power away” permanently, because no one else wants it. They’re too busy with themselves.
Your real power has just been sitting there all these years waiting for you to pick it up. So the time comes when you either decide to pick up what’s yours, or you simply let it sit there forever unclaimed.
Any feeling you’re afraid to feel, any outcome you’re scared to experience, just do yourself a favor and bring it into the present where it can’t hurt you. Just feel it now. Fear rarely happens when you’re dealing with something in the present. And then, when you realize this fear won’t kill you, go on and actually build the life and business you want.
If that means you want to earn a billion dollars, go do that.
But if that means you want to stay home with your kids, make $50,000 per year or LESS and that’s happiness to you, then by all means, go do that.
The world will tell you that’s thinking “small.”
Except there’s no shame in actually doing what you want. That’s the secret they don’t want you to know. That’s the secret very few are willing to admit in public:
What you want for your life is enough.
That’s really the only thing that matters. It’s the gift we get to give to ourselves.