Our decisions aren’t just about us. We are all connected and it’s surprising how often our decision to say we are going to do something can make those in our human orbit feel like they can too. They make our action mean something, and they decide to stand up and take action as well. Is there anyone tied to your decision to say “Yes, I’m stepping forward?”
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Episode 31 Show Notes
- Shout out to Ms. Angela Rhoe – for the Tied to Your Yes nudge
- Friends and family asking how I created my podcast – shared insights in Episode 18 – Amateur Podcaster
Episode 31 Transcript
This is Rebecca Clark. Episode 31. Tied to Your Yes.
This podcast is for anyone that knows they haven’t yet found and offered up their best work, but are compelled to seek it out and do it. Are you ready to move your desk?
A few years ago, I met up with a former co-worker and friend to catch up and talk over our hot chocolate and tea. I’m the hot chocolate gal and this friend’s named Angela Rhoe. She is always seeking to better herself in every part of life and so we always have these wonderful discussions. She brought up something that had come up in a conversation she had had with her minister or a mentor. She said that the woman talked to her about being tied to your yes, and she explained the concept. I loved it and was reminded of it on Martin Luther King Day because I saw different articles about Martin Luther King come across Facebook and Twitter, and I read a couple of them.
Martin Luther King was a person who had a dream, and he decided to act upon that dream and take daily action and he knew would be hard. He knew he might get killed. He knew that this would affect his family and friends. And yet he felt so strongly about this and had such a passion for it. He went forward to fulfill this dream and the act of him saying, Yes, I’m going to move forward and make this dream come true, inspired others to come forward, and some of the others that came forward were people that were great leaders who were making a difference all the way. Two people that were every day, good human beings just trying to make a living.
Some of the leaders came forward with massive amounts of money and support. Some others just came forward and said, maybe I could just go do a sit in. Maybe I can just go to a march. Maybe I can write a report at school. Maybe I can just treat people nicer around me and not judge them based upon my first impressions. But, he brought forward all kinds of people that because of his saying yes to his dream, they felt something they felt connected in some way where it gave them the confidence to take a step toward making a change in their lives, and some of them may have gone on to be great leaders in their own right. Some may have just changed how they interacted with people, but either way they were tied to his Yes. That’s why I remembered my conversation with Angela that day because as I watched what Martin Luther King had done, and think about all the other people I know or have heard of in life, I realized how important this concept is. It makes me want to step up more when I get certain nudges to make something happen.
Now, since I’m working on building a business, I am also doing a lot of learning right now and I loved something in a book called Expert Secrets by Russell Bronson. You may know him as the Click Funnels guy, but he talks about the importance of following that inner voice that we each have that can inform us on what direction we should go. And it’s almost like a pull for many of us. We have this internal pull that we want to serve and help people than we may be doing at the moment. And he talks about how, even with all of his success, he always has this certain amount of in adequacy that he feels that people call him an expert.
A lot of people are held back because of that negative inner voice saying, “Ah, you’re not quite good enough for you really don’t know enough to be claimed as an expert.” It’s helpful to look at this differently, as you just have to be a couple steps ahead of some of the people you’re serving, but more importantly, to realize that everybody has those feelings and to keep taking action and what a tragedy it is if we don’t because first of all, it deprives us of the experiences in the opportunities we could have, because opportunities and experience are would help us learn and grow and change and improve and offer up our best work. But, also it deprives others whose lives could be changed if you decided to move forward and keep sharing what you know, even if you don’t quite feel like an expert.
When I was reading this conversation he’s having about this and realizing this is all about being tied to your yes. And so there’s this one section that I wanted to read a part of because I think it’s important to share with you right now because I know the types of listeners on this call fit what Russell was describing.
“You’re all experienced. You’re all talented. And yet sometimes you feel like maybe I have to become more talented and experienced and educated before I can offer up my best work. So he says, I want to take a moment not to convince you that you’re an expert, but to give you whatever permission you might need to be able to move forward. You have the ability and responsibility to serve others with your gifts, whatever they are. You have been blessed with talents, ideas and unique abilities that have gotten you to where you are in life, and those gifts were given to you so you could share them with others. There are people today who need what you have, and they’re just waiting for you to find your voice so you can help them change their lives. What a tragedy for them. If you don’t develop your voice. “
Now that was especially interesting for me to read, because recently I had someone who had told me the last few months that they were interested in working with me and being coached on some career coaching and mind coaching. And I said, “Yes, you know, I want to practice more and I’ll let you know when I’m ready.” I got sick for a while and figured, Okay, I’m gonna get slowly up to speed and start learning again and get going again in a few weeks. But, this person reach out to me and said, I need coaching now. I would like you to start coaching me, tell me how much to pay you and let’s get going is essentially what was said in a nutshell. And in that moment I stopped, and I swear I got five or 10% healthier in an instant because something clicked in my brain and said, “Rebecca, someone is tied to your Yes, you need to get going.” It’s time to get to work again. It’s time to think that you are enough, that all the practice and experience you’ve had so far is enough to start, and this person is ready, and they have already expressed that they’re tied to your yes. So, it’s time to show up and start delivering. And I love that because it’s coming from a a completely different angle, isn’t it?
I have a vision that keeps getting fine-tuned as I go of what I think my near and far future should be. I’m slowly working toward that. And, I know that there are people that are tied to my yes that are tied to my decision to step out and take some risks knowing that there’s goodness on the other side of that. But, sometimes along the way there are nudgers that inform you that they are tied to your yes and that you had better get going because they are ready to go. And what a blessing that is when you have to step up and show up for those people because you are elevated in that process because like oh, I have got to help. I have got to be prepared. Someone’s ready to listen, and that’s a powerful moment.
I’ve thought about how many times in my life that I have said yes to something and can directly see how it was instrumental in helping others that thought that I could help them. Now, I’m a believer that if I don’t show up and that person needs someone away will be provided for them. But how great would it be if you know you’re supposed to show up and you actually do it so that those that are tied to your yes can stay tied to your Yes, because they need you and you need them.
I have a very small experience. Years ago, I went through a lot of drama around taking a social dance class at college. I would sign up for it every semester and then promptly drop it. And then one year I felt great because I actually walked down the hallway by the class and then kept walking home and dropped it. I was so worried about not having a partner being too tall. Ah, that none of the guys would want to be a partner with me on that. Maybe foxtrot, cha cha, the swing and the waltz might be too hard for me at the same time. Deep down, I knew I wanted to know how to dance. And so, finally, in that last year of college, I finally walked by and then walked back and walked in the room, and it was so nice to hear the professor or the instructor. I guess you’d call them say, Hey, it’s obvious there’s way more women in here than men. It’s obvious that everybody doesn’t get a partner. You don’t need a partner to practice and learn. You just need a partner for the dance tests.
So every few weeks there’d be a dance test, and so that end up being a great experience. And after that I was able to teach some of my younger brothers that were still in junior high or high school, some of the dance moves and then they were able to apply those when they were there, little school dances, and I had other friends that I showed some basic dance moves to people that wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking the class and that weren’t trying to be a ballroom dance champion, but because they were comfortable with me and I had bothered to learn it, and I was never a cheerleader or ballerina or anything of the sort, and they felt comfortable learning it from me.
In the work environment I remember when at that time the leadership wanted us to get into mobile learning and wanted us to turn it all over to a contractor to explore strategies and approaches and products on. I use that as an opportunity to say OK, we can work with a contractor, but can you give me a chance to work on some of this myself with some people in our organization? And we created a grassroots team that led by influence. And I will tell you it was so interesting because there would be some people that would come to a meeting or two. We’d have it during the lunch hour. We say, Hey, if you’re interested in mobile learning, come, we’re having a lunch and learn. We’re going to discuss our experiments here and talk about next steps, and there were some people like, Oh, I don’t have enough time, you know, I don’t think I can do this, and I could just look at them and say, That’s fine. No one’s forcing you to join this. In fact, we’re only interested in people that want to commit little pieces of their personal time and work time to this effort. We don’t want you if you don’t think you can do it. And they kind of look at you like something was wrong. But I was serious that this wasn’t required. This was something some of us felt strongly about and we’re gonna pursue. And what was amazing is there was a meeting or to where we realized that we were too big for the room we’re trying to meet in. I think it fit about 15 people, and we had a few sessions where there are 30 or 40 people. They’re so interested and how they could apply this to their work. Or could they be involved in one of the experiments? And they would call me in my spare time. You know, it’s like, Hey, can I talk to you after work about this, or what about this idea? And people were using evening hours to try out different tools and products that could help them create mobile learning experiences. This is when cell phones became smartphones. This is that time frame. Maybe in that I don’t remember 2010 and 2011 period, but it’s amazing to see how once you decided you wanted to help something move forward, you attracted others. They want to move it forward. And those others that were attracted became leaders in their own right on this project.
Most recently, it was interesting to see when I stepped out on my own and the first thing I decided to trade was a podcast. It was interesting to see who was tied to my Yes, at that point, there are thousands of resource is out there on how to create podcasts, how to deliver podcasts, the ins and outs of podcasting. There’s no end of resource is super easy. Go look them all up and I looked up a few of them. But, the reality is, is the most value I got was one on one conversations where I asked podcasting friends what they did. So, I go through my little journey about a month I was stressing about. It’s like, how do I get the right music? What do I talk about? Or, how do I talk about it because I have hundreds of topics to talk about, and what tools should I use? I didn’t know where the gaps in my knowledge were, and I was aware that I had gaps, but I was trying to figure out what those gaps were, finally figured it out and realized it was super easy to do. I just needed to make improvements on things that I still have to work on, right some of the intros and outros and learning how to story tell better and things like that. But, I got my episodes up, and this is probably end of September, beginning of October 2019 and once I got a few episodes up, I had some friends and former co workers come out of the woodwork saying, Wait, you started a podcast. How did you do it? I know there’s lots of resource is, but I want to find out how you did it.
And it was a great reminder to me that sometimes you don’t even realize when you’re the right person to help others take their next step. When you are when you have people tied to your yes, and maybe it’s because of my imperfections. Maybe it is because I’m open with the learning experiences I have, and I’m okay sharing how in perfect the process is for whatever reason, they felt like they could reach out and say, Hey, can you give me tips? Hey, can you share with me how you did it?
And I know that some of them have started on their podcast right now, and they’re going to have gotten some information from me and probably more important, maybe got the next step in confidence to start their podcast. But I also know that they’re not gonna end up using the same tools and approaches I did. But something in the information I shared with them will lead them to the answer for them. So they are still tied to my yes, and they’re probably tied to a couple other people’s yeses as well.
And that’s the beauty of the intertwining of all of our interactions, Right? People may come to me for certain things. They may be tied to my yes, but I might be tied to their yes for something else. And it’s someone else. So all this to say that it’s worth taking a few moments, Maybe after listening to this episode and thinking about what is it that I felt deep down? I need to step forward and Dio. And why am I not doing it? Maybe I need to take a first step.
Maybe there’s someone waiting for me to do this. They’ll learn from me or to connect me to someone, or to just be that boost of confidence. I need to take the next step and also think about who you’re tied to. And maybe you should tell them maybe that will give them the confidence or the push or the nudge. They need to step up their game and be prepared for the people who are waiting for them to deliver all of their experience or their stories and their knowledge.
I’m grateful that Angela Rhoe told me about tied to your Yes. And so when we were talking in our conversation, Angela was inspired to bring up that story to me. And then now I I’m sharing this with you. It’s a sequence of nudges. Thank you for listening today. Seek out those that are tied to your yes, seek out those that are taking action. You may be tied to their yes or they may be tied to yours and keep moving your desk have a great day.
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