Stress and Confidence
Hi everyone! Today, I’m going to talk about stress and confidence, and it brought to mind a time when I was in a very stressful situation that wasn’t meant to be stressful. It was supposed to be fun. Trust me, it was stressful and how even now, during this time of craziness, I pull on that to say, ‘You can do it to myself.’ So, here’s what happened.
This is a bazillion years ago.
I went to one of the first Tony Robbins firewalk programs. We were in Manhattan and they were about 200 of us, and it was right across from Penn Station. If you know Manhattan and we were on, I think the second floor of this place, we were learning the techniques to do the firewalk and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll learn the techniques but I’m not so sure I’m going to do the fire walk.’
Anyway, off we go learning how to use neurolinguistic programming, and it’s very powerful. It was really a lot of fun. He was a great teacher and then he started down the stairs leading us out to the sidewalk where there were two. I think there were two places where you could do the fire walk. It was evening. There were three ambulances parked there, which you may just say, ‘What did I get myself into,’ and there I was doing my right arm up, looking at it, going cool moss, because what’s the opposite of hot fire? Well, it’s cool moss.
So, there we were walking down this, there saying, ‘We can do it. We can do it.’ I still Wasn’t sure if I could and you could feel the stress mounting and the stress hormones just charging through my body, but it was fun right? It was a not. It was a contrived stress situation. Let me put it that way.
So, when we got outside, I remember kind of looking around to see how other people were doing it, and somehow I got pushed toward the front of the line, and all of a sudden, there I was standing in front of the hot coals, looking up at this very tall man. He was about nine foot seven. I thought, looking up at Tony Robbins. If you don’t know who he is, go google him, but he’s a really big interesting guy, and I’m standing there, and he looked down, and I said, ‘No, no, I just came to see what it’s like,’ and he looked at me and he said, ‘You’re ready?’ He said. I’m ready. I didn’t say I’m ready, but all of a sudden there I am. I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘No, you’re ready.’ So, I took a deep breath, put my hand up, and walked across the hot coals saying, ‘Cool moss,’ got to the other side, and it was spectacular because I walked on this hot thing that was supposed to burn my feet, and I was fine, and then what you do is, you celebrate.
So, people were there hugging me, and it was in days when we could hug each other. Not that long ago, hugging and celebrating and this went deeply into my nervous system. I could do something I didn’t think I could do, and it could really turn out very nicely. So, after I finished celebrating, I turn around, and then this is what’s interesting, my husband Herb was with us, with me and Julie my daughter, and all of a sudden, I turn around and I look and there’s Julie with her arm up getting ready to go, and I went, the stress really went high at that point because I said to myself, ‘Are you crazy? You are taking it with your own feet, that you could have risked burning is one thing, but taking your daughter? What if something happens?’ And I started to feel this stress going up.
Anyway, it was too late. I’m already on the other celebration side. Julie walks across. Did a great job. Put her arm up and did the cool moss and then we celebrated, and then a little later Herb came across, and the three of us were really fine. It was so exciting.
Now, Julie and I, and her but Julie and I and Herb, particularly have talked about this recently, and how when stressful situations occur. Now, we both can pull on that memory of that moment of walking across, doing something that looked impossible and we were able to do it.
So, I want you to think about this. There is no such thing as a stress-free life. We all know that. Now, we’re all dealing in many ways with our own ways of handling either being furloughed or money not coming in or the dreams we had being pushed into the background, and we’re doing it.
So, my suggestion when it comes to stress and confidence is, find a way. I’m not going to be doing a fire walk in these days, but find a way to do something that’s going to challenge you, that you know isn’t going to destroy you. Although, I have to tell you, there were a few people who did get burns on their feet. So, it’s not a simple walk across without any kind of issues, but find something that you can do, because doing something that’s very stress-filled and surviving it, overcoming it, getting past it will keep you strong during these times.
So, to all of you, I say have a beautiful day. Find a stress situation you can master and let me know about it. So, to your success.
Thank you so much. Till soon.
