First published 25 January 2021 on Your Best Year Starts Here with Nigel Risner.
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At the end of episode 113 I'd asked for your word of the year. One word for how you want to show up. Nigel's word last year was phenomenal, because a new book had just come out and they wanted the online product to be phenomenal too. This year he went for persevere. As a monkey (his word) he gets caught up on new shiny things and drops the stuff he knows will make a difference.
I couldn't help myself and split perseverance into two words, patience and persistence. Nigel saw it coming. Keep doing the thing, and accept it probably won't happen as quick as you'd like. He then told me he'd been good for a whole week and the weight hadn't come off yet, and he was shocked. So I brought back Jeff, a product director I worked with in the early 2000s, who told a room of impatient salespeople that if you get nine women pregnant, you don't get a baby in a month.
My word was brave. For me that means asking for help and putting ideas in front of people even when I'm scared of the no. Anyone who knows me knows I love being around people, but I can be a harsh critic of myself. I also talked about an author who's sold millions of books and stopped reading his reviews, because his eyes always went straight to the one star ones.
Nigel wants the word stuck on my screen under the camera. At the moment it says Zoom meeting. He'd sent out some letters the week before and got one great response, which he said was better than normal, so now it's eight letters this week. Then we got onto lying to yourself. He reckons it's the biggest damage you can do to yourself, and I said if you're dishonest with yourself you'll end up dishonest with everyone else. He signed off by teasing next week's story, about opening a conference with "It's wonderful to speak to multimillionaires."
What stayed with me
- Perseverance is patience plus persistence. Keep doing the thing and let it take the time it takes.
- Lots of people give up a diet after a month, when they're two thirds of the way to seeing a real difference.
- Don't let one critic drown out a thousand cheerleaders. Usually the loudest critic is you anyway.
- Stick your word somewhere you'll see it, like under your camera, and check what you're doing against it.
- Every promise to yourself you break makes the next one easier to break.
If you are not authentic to you, you can't be authentic elsewhere. You just can't.
Neil Martin
And why would you lie to yourself? You are your most precious item.
Nigel Risner
