A Lifelong Journey of Learning: An Interview with Eric McNulty

#enduringsuccess #trustyourself #chooseandbecome #lifelonglearning #iamawriter #showupasyou #choosetrust #trust

Hello from Trish

Newsletter Intro   

In the Choose & Become Interview series, I delve into the five critical choices that led me to enduring success, and I unearth the inspirational stories of my guests as they share their journeys to enduring success with us using this five-choice framework.  

Each Create Enduring Success newsletter edition highlights one episode that you can link directly to or start by reading the quick summary along with some quotes from my guest that stuck with me.  

Today’s Episode—Eric McNulty, Crisis and Change Leadership, Harvard Educator, Speaker, Author, and Mentor

Eric and I met a couple of years ago but really connected last fall while we were both speakers at TEDx Walden Pond. His talk on our collective superpower as human beings of building community resonated strongly with me, and I couldn't wait to have him as part of my interview series.

While I refer to Eric as a leadership "expert", Eric considers himself to be a "intensive student in leadership" since there is always more to learn.

I really get nervous about the word expert. I rather call myself an intensive student of leadership. There's always more to learn, and part of what I'm addicted to is learning.

Watch now . . . or check out the summary and some of my favorite quotes below the video link.  

Introduction

Trish: Eric, will you share a little bit more about you, the whole Eric, for my audience and community?

Eric: Sure, Trish, and thank you so much for having me. First off, I really get nervous about the word expert. I rather call myself an intensive student of leadership. There's always more to learn, and part of what I'm addicted to is learning. So I am a lifelong learner.

I've really been blessed to be on the journey that I've been on.

So I do study crisis leadership and leadership in high-stake situations, which has brought me into contact with lots of really interesting people who make really difficult choices when sometimes even lives could be on the line. There is so much to learn in seeing what they go through and experience.

I'm also a birder. I love to go out and watch birds. I'm a traveler. I love food and wine and going on adventures like that. I am also a lifelong reader and writer. We'll talk a little bit about writing later on because writing is a big part of my choices and my more recent journey.

Create Enduring Success

Eric: When I think about enduring success, I think about success that I'm still proud of once it's all gone, like way in the past.

I see my enduring success in the people who come after me, the people who I've been able to touch and help a little bit along the way. And then if they're still learning from that and passing that on 10 or 20 years from now, that to me is enduring success.

Trish: Oh, that's awesome! And you do that every day because you touch people every day. I'm going to grab on to that - enduring success is beyond the moment.

Five-Critical Choices—Eric's Journey

Come along with me as I explore Eric’s journey to enduring success . . .

Make a First Choice 

Trish: Let's get into your journey to enduring success. What I've learned is that success really begins with making a first choice. Is there a first choice, and I'm sure you've made several, but is there one that you'll share with us that's impacted your journey?

Eric: Sure, and this is a fairly late in life first choice actually, but having to make a career transition in 2008, you may recall there was a small dip in the economy that upset a lot of our trajectories. And I had to shift gears. And I remember one of the things I said, because I had a little bit of time off there, was I had been writing my entire life, pretty much as long as I can remember.

But it was when I was deciding what to do next, and I said, I am going to be a writer. I will say that is what I do. That was a big step because I had always been afraid to do that. I knew I was reasonably good at writing. I'd gotten good grades. I'd been able to get paid for writing press releases and things like that. But when I actually came out and said I am now a writer, I knew I was stepping into the big leagues.

Then all these things went through my head - am I good enough that if an editor looks at this they'll agree? And the big fear was - so what if I suck? Right if you've going say this is what I am and then the world says well, yeah who cares? Then what do you do? But I said, you know what? I'm at this point my life, I was 50 years old and I said, it's now or never, let's just do this.

I think I'll trust myself. I think I'm good enough or I'll get better enough.

So that was the first choice and it's turned into a much broader writing career, writing books and articles, and has also led into teaching and speaking and all the other things. So that first choice to call myself a writer has led me to a lot of other really interesting places.

Trish: I know you've got several books I know you teach but I didn't realize that you made a choice to say "I am a writer". That is a big deal. So can you tell me a little bit about some of the books that you've written, and about how your writing helped you transition into teaching. I'm just curious.

Eric:

It is really interesting declaring yourself.

I think that's one of the things that I had in my younger years, I had moved a lot when I was young. I changed jobs, I've had a very diverse and somewhat serendipitous career. To say you're any one thing was almost, it was very, very challenging for me because I had been a bit of a chameleon and I could shift as needed and was sort of a utility infielder. To declare something was really a big deal.

But it was in that moment when I was leaving one job and having to find something else. I sat down with a couple of people who I knew professionally. And they said, could you help us write a book? I'd never written a book, but I said, unemployment, write a book? Sure, I can help you write a book. Now I'd written articles, I'd written press releases, and I actually had written a draft of a novel, which was really awful.

Trish: Ha!

Eric: But I said, I can do this. And so that piece was, okay, help us write a book. That was the first book, Renegotiating Healthcare, which is about negotiation and conflict resolution in healthcare and related settings. So I teach that now at Harvard and elsewhere, that particular topic.

Which is more of it that was more of a textbook, but it was good because in there is a novel because there's a story that winds through the entire book. That then led to other writing. I have written a couple of shorter ebooks, one called Your Critical First Ten Days as a Leader. And another one called Three Critical Shifts to Make as a Leader.

And that led to the book over my shoulder called You're It, Crisis Change and How to Lead When It Matters Most that came out in 2019. And that really does capture the program I work with at Harvard called the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. My colleagues and I, our now 20 years of work in the field, deploying to disasters, being with leaders in the midst of crises, trying to capture those stories as well as the principles and the techniques they use to navigate through them.

And that was such a great adventure because again, I had been in publishing. I knew that world a bit, which helped us navigate it. But then having to put it together and again, assemble the stories and make sure you've got the right collection. How does it flow and be really useful for a reader? That was good.

I've got another book in the works now, which is looking forward and looking at how we lead through these really complex challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss and social stress, enormously high social stress.

As part of the writing I'm doing in my work for Harvard and deploying to disasters, I started writing case studies to capture those lessons in shorter form. I had worked at Harvard Business School and had never taught a case study, but I had seen the best in the world teach case studies. And so I asked my colleagues if I could give it a shot to teach a case study. And so I got up in front of a class and I taught a case the way I had seen the people at Harvard Business School teach it. And I had fun. I really liked it. And so I was fair, I would say, at best to start. But I knew a couple of tricks so I could get through it. And that then led to an academic role for the last 10 or so years at Harvard.

I really enjoy that. Just helping people learn, helping ignite that little fire of curiosity and seeing the light in their eyes - oh, yeah, that's cool. I get that. Or I've got a question. That really is such an engaging way to be able to make a living.

Trish: That's just awesome. And I appreciate that the first choice you shared was later in life. I appreciate your perspective on why it's hard to make first choices.

Because in your instance, I think what you shared here with me was, oh my gosh, but is this my identity? And what if I'm not good? And what if people don't view me as a writer? But that's what I say I am. What if they don't see me as that? And there's all these things that come in and around us that can become barriers to making first choices. So thank you for sharing that.

Commit to Two Way Agreements

Trish: I'm going to take us to the second critical choice. The second critical choice I made was to commit to a two-way agreement. For me, this agreement, a near contractual agreement, was between me and my sister when she took me into her home. But since then, I've really reflected and I work with teams on two-way agreements because we enter into two-way agreements all the time, informally and formally.

What I experienced is the power of committing. That when both parties come together with the mutual expectation and desire for a positive outcome. When we both commit to actions that may start as I have to, it can transform to I want to. At least that was my experience. I think the idea of two-way agreements are tending to be more front and center now, even when I think about employers and the workforce and everything that's changing.

Will you share your perspective on two-way agreements and an agreement that you've committed to if you would share what that was and what did you give and what did you get?

Eric: So this may be a little bit different than what you're thinking, but it's one I find interesting and it goes back to that novel that I mentioned earlier.

The two-way agreement I made with myself was, I'm going to write something that I know is going to suck. It is not going to be good. But in order to see that I can do it, I've got to do it.

So I've got to say, can I write 250 pages of coherent prose with characters on an arc, with a plot, with things that happen? Can I actually do that? But I had to do it in a way that I said, I know that you just don't sit down one day and say, oh, I'm inspired. Let me pop out the Great American Novel.

I would have to be willing to put the work in to be bad until I could be better. That was the two-way agreement. I agree to do it bad until I can get good.

And so I've yet to tackle the second novel, which is okay, because I wound up making this transition professionally where I'm now writing nonfiction. That's what I've been doing a lot of in addition to speaking and teaching for the last 15 years. I've got the idea for the next novel or set of novels that will come.

But that's okay, because again, to write a book of any length is intimidating. And I still have that novel tucked away. I've read it and it's really bad. But that's ok. You don't get up to the top of a ski slope and say, okay, here I go, first run, I'm going to be ready for the Olympics. You're going to fall down a whole bunch.

So that was the agreement that came to mind when I first heard you talk about this.

Trish: And in that agreement, if I play this back, agreeing to committing to be bad until you're good would mean that your commitment is still going. That there's a second book in there that you're going to write. So the commitment is still going.

Eric: Right. The commitment is still there. You'll have me back when I publish it and we'll have another conversation.

Trish Kendall: Yes. Yes, 100%, 100%. And then I just want to ask a couple of details. If this is front and center to your mind, if it's not, that is okay. When you made the commitment of, I'm going to write a book that sucks, were there actual accountability points that you put in place for yourself?

Eric: There were in that I gave myself a rough deadline by which I wanted to do it. And then I had to commit to writing a certain amount - a certain number of words, a certain amount of research, all the steps that go into putting together a book. You've got to have some discipline around that. It definitely requires discipline. And then actually sharing it with some people to say, okay, this is what I've got. What do you think? Which is the first scary thing.

I actually ultimately wound up sharing with the gentleman who's now my agent for my nonfiction work. I was actually showing it to a literary agent. That's a really scary thing. And he confirmed that it sucks. But he's okay with the rest of the other work that I do. So yeah, exactly. I win. I win.

And now I have such amazing appreciation. My upstairs neighbor is a novelist and I see how much work goes into that. I think it's much harder than writing nonfiction because you've got to create that story. It isn't that you go find the story and tell the story. You actually have to create it and create a lot of backstory. And it's just an enormous amount of work and a lot of rewriting.

That's the thing that really is horrible about writing, at least for me, is the rewriting. The first draft is actually relatively easy for me because I'm good with words, but having to go back and write, and find the problem, rehash and do it again and do it again and do it again, but you have to. That's the only way you create something worth anybody else reading.

Trish: Wow, I'm sure it's just such a craft and such a lift. Joe, my husband, wanted to be a writer. So he, now, he's not 50 yet, he's almost 50, so maybe he will plant his flag at some point and say, I am a writer. You know, all the things that get in the way of following the dream or your aspiration or what you really identify with. I mean, I listened to you and I can't help but think of Joe and that writing is one of the things that just really holds true to him.

Eric: There's still time.

Build Trust

Trish: The third critical choice that I made was to build trust. At this point on my journey, I had to choose to build trust in myself. I did that by doing the little things great which then that made me feel very confident that I could begin to inspire the trust of others. Have there been times in your life that you had to build trust in yourself, and how do you do it? Or how did you do it?

Eric: This idea of trusting yourself is so critical. And I have found that preparation is one thing, so that you've pre-tested things a bit. As I was thinking about your question of building trust, what came to mind was my first real speaking opportunity on stage as an adult. (I spoke at my high school graduation - I wasn't very good but I got a few laughs!)

I was working at another part of Harvard producing conferences. Our after lunch guest speaker was a woman I had found named Alison Brown - a Grammy award winning banjo player who runs Compass Records down in Nashville. Alison started out in life wanting to be an investment banker. She got her MBA and was working at, I think it was Citibank, and kept finding herself flipping through banjo magazines under her desk. Finally she made the choice to go be a professional banjo player, and she's amazing. She's an amazing human being too. So I tracked Alison down and asked her to come tell her story at this conference.

I did all the background and my boss, who was the head of our group, was going to be interviewing her on stage. People are having lunch, I'm back making sure everything's ready. Alison's there, and I hand my notes to my boss for the interview. My boss turned to me and said, you know this better than I do, you're going to do it. There I am as people start filtering back in and all of a sudden we have 150 people sitting in this big ballroom.

Thank goodness they were big fans of Alison Brown because it made my lift a little bit lighter. But then I had to have the confidence that I actually knew this stuff and that I could actually conduct an interview on stage worthy of the people who had paid money to be there. This was not a volunteer event. So I had to actually meet expectations.

My boss said - first of all, you're from Harvard. If you forget something, no one's going to know it but you. And if they don't understand what you're saying, they'll think they're stupid because you're from Harvard, right? So use that. Which actually took an enormous amount of pressure off. Allison was great to work with. She's a tremendous person.

Really it was a matter of having the right relationships around you. And when someone pushed you in the pool, trust yourself to swim, don't trust yourself to drown.

I had been really afraid. I previously had to do some basic MC stuff at a conference, you know, the bathroom is down the hall, lunch is at one o 'clock, those kinds of things. My knees would knock and I'd be terrified until all of a sudden I wasn't. And now this is a big chunk of what I do is I go around the world and talk to people and stand up on stage and do it.

Trish: Yes, you're an incredible speaker.

Eric: Well, you too, and you've been on stage, we've both been on stage. And you step out there, you're like, is the voice going to work? Am I going to remember things or am going to forget things? And you just, you've got to trust it's going to happen. Thank goodness somebody pushed me in the pool. I didn't jump in, somebody pushed me in the pool and I trusted myself to swim and it worked out well.

Trish: It's so awesome that your boss, she trusted you before you trusted yourself. In that moment her confidence and trust was so high and then you stepped into it. You know, what you said at the beginning of your story, I think plays into this for me for sure, is being prepared, preparedness. I mean, we prepare, I know you prepared the crap out of your TEDx talk.

I don't think necessarily know that because it comes off so natural. It comes off, you know, but preparedness, I think, breeds confidence and confidence can help breed trust. So here's something else that's on my mind and we didn't prep on this. So if we want to bypass it, we can bypass it. But one of the things I'm thinking about as it relates to you with trust is -

When I think about your TEDx talk, and this will get to community and belonging as well, our fourth choice. What you were relaying in your TEDx talk was when groups of people come together, especially in critical high stress situations, how we interact together and trust each other, can dictate what happens in that situation.

Eric: Well, absolutely. And I think the core of what I was talking about is that we as humans are a social species. We are hardwired to work together. Yet for so much of our lives, we push our individual goals. We have to push our individual career. We compete to get into a college. We compete for jobs. We compete for parking places. We're always competing.

Yet the essence of who we are as humans is our ability to be together. And that does require enormous amounts of trust. You've got to be vulnerable and hope that you and others are predictable in the face of vulnerability. If I give my trust to you, you'll have my back and vice versa.

When things have worked really well, whether you're in a community group or you're in work or wherever it happens to be, when you really feel like you're part of a community in that setting, how much better it is, how much more uplifting it is, how the positive energy flows, how the emotions are good.

And again, when I work with people in crisis situations, when we see really high performance we also see really high trust. People know they are there for each other.

Resilience is at first a group phenomenon and then an individual phenomenon. It's all about social ties and knowing people you can count on, people you can turn to when things are not good.

Even if it's someone to be there to get you a cup of coffee. Alone is a very bad place for us as humans. That's why solitary confinement in prison is sort of the ultimate punishment. We are not meant to be alone. And so that's why trust happens.

Yes, you trust yourself, but you trust yourself when you trust others or others trust you. I mean, really, you can't really separate those things.

Trish: It hits hard with me for all the reasons. I was just meeting with a client in Chicago and this gentleman said a first choice that he makes it to choose to trust. He chooses to enter an interaction from a point of trust. Then if his trust if lost, that's different, but he goes into it choosing to trust.

I know that there's sometimes different views on that. You know, you need to earn my trust before I'll give it, or I'm gonna give it until you lose it. What I appreciate about what you're talking about is community coming together and trusting each other. Maybe sometimes we need to earn it. Maybe sometimes we just give it right away, because that's in the greater good of us together. But trust being just a critical element of us as humans.

Eric: One place that I would direct you and your listeners, is the work of a gentleman named Jerry Mikulski, who's talked about design from trust. If you look at your systems, where is trust assumed or where is mistrust assumed? Every time you badge into a building, they're essentially saying, we don't trust you because we need to verify who you are before we let you in the door. How many approvals do you have to get when you go to buy the $100 office supply thing? We don't trust you to buy it, to have the judgment to buy what's right and the right value.

There's so much mistrust built into our system that it becomes part of our default thinking, which is really interesting. And then when you flip that around to how do we design for trust or design from trust, as he calls it, you actually then get more trust.

Because when I feel that you trust me, I feel like I can trust you. We have that human reciprocity.

We lift each other up.

Create Community and Belonging   

Trish: We are naturally getting into my fourth critical choice. And the fourth critical choice was to intentionally create my own community and create belonging. I grew up without a sense of belonging, and I'm not alone in that. Lots and lots and lots of people have experienced that. I think all of us have experienced not belonging in some way or another. I held onto it so strongly that I don't belong. I actually wore like a badge of honor that I didn't need community. I didn't need anyone. I didn't need to belong.

Which you and I know was a bunch of hogwash because as you were saying human beings are made to belong within a tribe. On my journey I figured out that belonging requires action and it requires reciprocity.

I'd like to get more of your perspective both on community and belonging, but I'm going to flip it and I'll start with belonging and what does it feel like to not belong?

Eric: I think most of us have had those times in our life. I mentioned that I moved a lot when I was growing up and most of those moves were okay. I figured it out, but there was one time in particular with junior high school, which is the seventh circle of hell for most of us, I think. I was in a town where I just did not fit in, I didn't belong, I made some basic social mistakes that got me ostracized. And I really felt alone. If not for very supportive parents, who I don't think realized how alone I felt, but I knew that they were there for me. Although they were divorced, they were both there for me. My dog who was there for me. And I played James Taylor and Carole King albums until they wore out. And that was very comforting music. I know what it felt, but felt to be very much alone.

But I think what I carried forward from that, well, first of all, was the next time we moved and thank goodness we did move when we did, I was not going to let that happen again.

The trick is not just to fit in, but it's being able to show up as you and belong, right? You shape shift so that you're sort of camouflaged, and you feel like you fit in, but you're not really showing up. That's just a different kind of being alone. But how do you actually be able to show up as yourself?

And be strong enough to be individual and feel accepted and loved and cared for and that you are part of a community, part of that community where you're giving as well. And so that was, I say, I think looking back on timing, it was very fortunate for my trajectory that we happened to by chance move again when we did. So I moved to a better place. But I've always known that feeling of being completely alone.

As much as I have a strong introverted side, I have to be an extrovert out speaking and with my work. I try to be very cognizant of who's not fitting in the room and how do I help them fit in? How do I reach out, be the person who reaches out and say, hey, come on over here, let's grab a cup of coffee or bring them into a conversation. I'm intentional about that. Sometimes awkward, but always intentional.

Trish: Yes, because then I also think we get blocked by fear of rejection. You use the terminology shape shifter and I'm going to put that in my pocket because I did that my whole life until I was in my 30s. I belonged by being a chameleon. Even now, I have to be cognizant of that and focus on showing up as my true authentic self.

Moving on to communities, can you tell me a little bit about some of the communities that you're a part of?

Eric: I'm very much part of my geographic community. One of the things I like best about the place where I live is that there are a lot of friends in the neighborhood. And it's a dense urban area, which people think of as, oh, nobody wants to talk to each other. Well, we all want to talk to each other. And I, again, give credit to the dogs, because dog walking is a great way to meet people. But just neighbor helping neighbor shoveling during the winter and those kind of things. So that is one community.

I'm part of the community of birders. And so when I go out, if I'm out walking and I've got a pair of binoculars and someone else does, we've got a natural connection. We start talking to almost instantly about what we're seeing and what we're thinking. And there's a bond there.

I think one of the more powerful communities, and this goes to, again, what's over my shoulder there, the work I do with the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative. We were just talking the other day about whether we are just another executive education program, or what makes us different? One of the things that came out, which I saw right away, was we're a family and that we never let go of the people who come through our program. These are people who are out making tough decisions, they're out saving lives. And yet more than a thousand people have been through the program and we are in touch. We are always in touch just helping each other as a part of community.

Just in the last couple of weeks, someone reached out and said, hey, I've got a way to deliver potable water. Do you know somebody who could help me get this thing into Gaza? Like, yeah, I think I do. And I reach over and make this connection to that person and say, you two need to talk to each other.

Retired police officer who, because of a death of a relative, is now working on reducing the rate of cervical cancer in the military, (which there is a higher than normal incidence of this for a bunch of reasons). He asked if I could help. Yeah, I know this person and that person and that person. Let's make that connection. Let's make it go. And so that's the stuff I really love about my work.

I also know that in any city in this country, I am one or most two phone calls away from people who are going to say, hey, let's grab a burger and a beer. Let's go. I want to sit down with you. And so it is this family.

And it is the people, it's people who are helping people. It's the helpers, as Fred Rogers talked about. It's the helpers out there who are there for each other, there for us all.

And I'm really fortunate to have become part of that community, quite to the accidental story we told earlier about becoming a writer and then teacher.

Embrace Boundless Love 

Trish: And this beautifully leads me to the fifth critical choice. The fifth critical choice that I made was to embrace, like literally take it, embrace it, my boundless capacity to give love the verb, the action, the verb of love, and accept the love that others want to give me.

I think a lot of what we're talking about, from my perspective, plays into that. Because a lot of people will start talking about love the emotion, and I don't mean love the emotion that's not a choice. I'm talking about love the verb that is a choice, and that manifests in different ways for different people in different cultures in different situations. So, and I think we've peppered that in here in this conversation.

Will you give me your perspective on how giving love the verb manifests in your world.

Eric: I think it's such an interesting question. The way you pulled it apart is really interesting as well, because we say love, we immediately go to the emotion, which is different than expressing it. And again, this is not necessarily romantic love or familial love, but how do you actually just show your love for other people? To me, it's sort of being there when it's inconvenient, being there when it takes a little extra effort.

Again, the two examples I just talked about of people reaching out and saying, hey, I know you're busy, but can you help? And my response is but I'm not too busy for that. Because you're trying to express love, I'm going to help you in that as well. And so that's it. And I know because I've had a lot of help along my journey and people who have gone out of their way and said I'll tell you about this. I'll help you out there.

I get calls if I can an informational interview about what it's like to be in academia or be in crisis leadership or whatever? Unless I'm going to be on an airplane someplace, I always say yes.

Trish: Yes, I mean you said yes to me right away. Yeah. When I asked you to spend this time with me.

Eric: Right, and we just keep paying it forward and paying it sideways to each other. We are rich beyond belief. And to me, that is what love is.

Love has no limit. Being able to pay it forward is a privilege and an honor, and at the end of the day, is what makes life worth it.

Trish: Eric, thank you. Thank you for choosing, like we just said, choosing to give me your love. I'll say that. Giving me your love by accepting this invitation, coming in and spending this time with me. And really, for everyone who knows you who's watching this, they've watched your TEDx Talk.

And your TEDx talk, if I get it right, Overcoming the Faults in Our Default Thinking, I was right there in the front of the audience, hit me so hard with your focus on community trust.

You didn't use the word love, that's the word that came into my mind. And the idea of moving from a me to a we type of thinking. And I learn from you every time I interact with you and I thank you so much for that.

Eric: Thank you. I want to say one last thing about that TEDx evening, if I may. It relates to what we just talked about. There were 15 of us, I think, who were speaking that evening. And that could have been a hyper competitive environment. We all had our TEDx talk to deliver. But that was such an instant community.

And there was so much love in that room and people like you rooting for me and me rooting for you. And it became very much not about us.

We had our moment, we had our 10 minutes on the stage to do our thing, but the eight hours that we were there, believe it or not, folks, was all about being there for each other - being there for each other and loving each other and supporting each other.

Trish: It was absolutely, yes, there was no me. It went from me to we, and each of us made that happen. Each of us intentionally made that happen. And I am with you, Eric. It was an incredible experience. And now I have another community. Thank you for being along this journey.

Final Thoughts from Trish

A know Eric as an accomplished writer, speaker, educator and mentor. What I didn't know about Eric was the tremendous leap of faith he took to declare himself "a writer" later in his career, and his evolution from a "knee-knocking" speaker to commanding such a presence on stages all over the world. We are all life-long learners, whether it's acquiring new skills, starting new careers, or just the constant process of becoming better humans. Eric helped me realize that when we reframe the times we struggle as learning opportunities we allow ourselves the grace to create a richer and more fulfilling life.

Episode Reflection and Action

In further reflection on life-long learning, below are a few questions I invite you to contemplate with me.

• Is there some little something that is nagging in the back of your mind that you've always wanted to learn or do? How can you take that first step and be willing to be bad at it in order to get better?
• Is there someone, or a community, in your life whom you can enlist to help "push you in the pool" to try this new venture?
• We all inspire people in ways we don't even realize. Think of someone in your life who has, in a moment of self-doubt, helped to push you in the pool. Can you reach out to this person to let them know the impact they have had on your life? How can you pay this forward to someone else?

Thank you!   

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Wishing you all the best on your journey to enduring success.     

Choose & become!    

Trish   

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More About Trish    

Trish Kendall, an expert in creating enduring success, is proof that anyone can transform their life and become the most successful person they know!    

Inspiring people around the world, and providing a pathway to enduring success, Trish brings candid stories, humor in the face of true hardship, simple lessons, compassion, and love to all her speaking engagements and workshops.     

Book Trish for your next conference or team offsite.