This week's Pep Talk: "Our Life Stocking"

It was a rare Saturday in December when there wasn’t a holiday party to attend. There was one scheduled for the evening, at my darling girlfriend’s house, but I wasn’t invited. No, this was her annual “girls only” gathering and I was told to stay away.

The day was spent holiday shopping, writing, working out, running errands before heading to Longmont, Colorado, 25 miles north of Denver, to check in on an old buddy of mine. We first met years ago when his company sponsored a hole at a golf tournament where I was also a participant. By random chance I ended up being their “celebrity” member of the group. We had a blast that day and have been good buddies ever since.

The Peoria, Illinois native has always been a dreamer. I like that a lot about him. He’s built several successful companies and always seems to have another idea waiting in the wings. He does a nice job of, as I like to say in Pep Talks, “putting fear aside and allowing wonderment to win.”

But like all of us, the entrepreneur is not perfect. He has talked for the past year about writing his first book. Finally, after twelve months, we’re seeing some action. It’s my pleasure to occasionally make the short trip north and encourage the process. “Just start dumping” is what I usually tell him in trying to get his life story out of his brain and into, at least initially, a computer.

Evening was descending upon the day as we sat in the back of his retail shop and talked about jumpstarting his dream. In uncharacteristic fashion for this energetic father and husband, he’s allowed fear and self-doubt to dominate courage and wonderment. He’s been reluctant to start something healthy and productive that consumes a lot of his thoughts. Ever been there? I sure have.

So often in life we battle ourselves when it comes to chasing dreams and goals. We think constantly about something but do little, or nothing, about it. I believe two culprits hold us back: self doubt and ridicule. Our brains tell us, “you might fail” and our brain also tells us, if we share the idea, for validation, with someone else they might have a wide-eyed look of, “Are you crazy?” We trapped in this vice, created by our brain, between self-doubt and potential ridicule. It’s a lousy location when your spirit inside is saying, “go for it!”

It’s the holiday season of 2010, time to think of meaningful gifts for others. What about giving a gift to self this year? How about the gift of courage winning the, almost daily, battle against self-doubt and potential ridicule?

Courage. Self doubt. Ridicule. This holiday season may you unwrap the blessings of the first choice: courage. It’s a gift. The other two are limiting beliefs we must try our best to keep from slipping into our life stockings.