Trust.

photo by Tela Chhe

Learning to walk is never easy. As infants, we start with blind trust as we imitate those older than us and attempt to get on our feet. With the first fall, we begin learning NOT to trust.

Falling hurts. Don't trust the concrete. Don't trust the end table corner. Don't trust whatever it is I just tripped on, leaving my face a half inch deep in blue shag carpet.

Mommy - I can trust Mommy. She'll catch me. If she's not making dinner, cleaning the table, or running that loud machine in the living room that seems intent on chasing me all over the house.

Eventually, we learn to trust ourselves, our own strength and balance, and walking becomes second nature.

For me, I had to learn to walk twice. Once the regular way, then, for the second time, 38 years later. When my left ankle ceased to operate without pain, I took the upgrade option, allowing doctors to lop off my left leg about five inches below my left knee. This meant 6 weeks in bed, followed by the fitting of a prosthetic leg.

There are a lot of factors involved with learning to walk after a procedure like this. For me, I was relatively lucky. No catastrophic injury, so my remaining leg was healthy, the stump smooth and uniform. I was healthy, if a bit overweight, and I had some incentive - I was due to compete in the 2006 World Championship of Public Speaking 8 weeks after being given my first new leg. I wanted to walk across that stage if at all possible - and walk without worry.

Just as I did as a one-year-old, I went through a testing process, learning to trust all over again. To trust that my leg wouldn't hurt when I walked. That I was putting the new leg on correctly. That it wouldn't fall off, buckle under my weight, or slip out from under me. I had to take a leap of faith - trust in something that I couldn't verify ahead of time, since I couldn't feel where my new foot was. I spent many days falling forward, falling backward, totally focused on the leg, instead of walking.

It wasn't until I chose to trust the prosthetic that I began to walk as I had before. To focus on the goal and trust I had the process in place to get me there.

It's easy to spend life looking for better and better processes. Faster, more reliable technology. The next big thing. The silver bullet, sure-fire system to fame and fortune. Is it easier to focus on the method instead of the goal? Do we feel we have control over methods, but not the results?

Certainly, finding a good system/process/prosthetic is important. But there comes a point when we need to Trust in the process we've given ourselves, instead of waiting for something better. To focus on where we're going more than how we're getting there. You rarely get where you're wanting to go by focusing on your toes, synthetic or otherwise.

Trust is a good thing - and remember - after you learned to walk - you learned to RUN.

If It Were Easy, It Wouldn't Be A Challenge.

Photo by BKM_BR

Are you equipped for the Challenge, or is your tread wearing thin?

25 days ago, I threw down the gauntlet. 12 days ago, I asked for feedback. It's been suggested that The Champion of Choice Challenge is less than powerful, and that I should dump it altogether.

The beginning of the Champion of Choice concept itself was Spring of 2009 - I was looking for a 'tagline' of sorts to help people know who I am and what I talk about. I wanted to be that "Champion of Choice Guy", since the core of most of my talks is personal choice, power, and responsibility. Turning it into a challenge seemed a logical choice as well, if a bit risky. The original method was daily videos talking about what I wanted to achieve each day, and how well I did. The videos stopped the day I got feedback that my videos were getting repetitive.

I've had multiple reboots of the Challenge - I'm in the midst of 4.0 at the moment.

I've put in a lot of thought over the last 12 days about the future of this blog, and the Champion of Choice concept. From a marketing standpoint, I think I'm better off simply being me - Rich Hopkins. There are very few speakers that are known by monikers other than their names - Scott the Nametag Guy, comes to mind, as does Steve Siebold, the 'Mental Toughness Guy', but only Scott really markets himself that way. Zig is Zig, Jeanne Robertson is Jeanne Robertson, Les Brown is Les Brown. A gimmick simply isn't necessary. If anything, my Speak & Deliver brand, which goes with the coaching side of my business, has grown more quickly, and offers more recognition.

What is the goal of being a Champion of Choice, anyway? What is the goal of the Challenge?

Success. Personal success, be it spiritual, physical, financial, professional, relational, emotional, or any combination of the above. Self-Defined Success. Success that relies on our personal definition of it, instead what the world insists success should be for each of us.

Self-Defined Success is a result I've been pursuing my whole life. Working not to worry about other people's opinions of me, be it kids in school that made fun of me for the way I walked and ran, or pursuing the type of career and family I wanted whether my family or friends understood and supported it or not.

It isn't easy. Judgments come everyday, both external and internal. Either can freeze us in our tracks, and make us want to ease back into the easy fitting roles that will allow us to be accepted and approved of by others, instead of sticking to our guns and learning to approve of ourselves based on our own criteria.

It doesn't mean living in a complete vacuum. Feedback is important - and more important is how we handle the feedback. Instead of making my videos more interesting last year, I went to written posts. Instead of trusting my strategy, I took a job that wasn't right for me, despite some of the positives that came out of it. (Even wrong choices can have positive results if you make right choices within them).

My choices this fall continue to be questioned by the world, and I often find myself questioning them as well, out of fear. This is the same fear that keeps many of us in our boxes, afraid to do what we really want to with our lives, and settling for less success than we are capable of achieving.

If it were easy, it wouldn't be a Challenge. The Challenge continues. What will not continue is my branding effort to be 'The Champion of Choice'. I've always felt that particular moniker is a bit egotistical sounding, a bit cheesy. Maybe I could have made it a successful synonym for me, if I truly believed in it, but I simply don't. What I really believe in is the concept of being a Self-Defined Success, and that being a Champion of Choice will get us there.

Self-Defined Success will now be the prevalent theme, combined with Champion of Choice, but headlined by my own identity.

Why would I put this thought process here for all to see? Same reasons I always have - to be transparent and to potentially help you as you face difficult choices of your own. Besides, some of the fun of four-wheeling is looking at the dirt you've kicked up onto your truck. Self-Defined Success doesn't come always easily, and being a Champion of Choice is a daily challenge.

Watch for changes here - but more importantly, be willing to make changes in your own approaches, if you find yourself running into rough roads on your way to your goal. You don't have to give up - you may just need to upgrade your tires.

Champion of Choice Newsletter....

photo art by Paul Stevenson

Yesterday I was setting up a newsletter list for my wife over at ThrivingWithNF.com, and the harsh reality hit me - I haven't sent out a newsletter all year, and have only sent 3 in the lifetime of my list.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and in this case hell is a list of people who probably have forgotten all about me!

There are several choices involved in restarting this newsletter:

A. One or Two - most of you know that I am a speaker, and a coach. My other blog, Speak & Deliver has a strong following, and coaching is a primary income stream. As a speaker, I'm continuing to develop on the Champion of Choice theme, building a keynote and a book. Should each have a separate newsletter, or should I have a combined newsletter that covers both?

B. How Often - Monthy? Weekly? Twice a Month? What can I keep up with? Should it even have a regular schedule? What is valuable to you?

C. Do I Market - Should I put ads in the newsletter? Should I send marketing letters for various products I involve myself with to this list?

D. More Readers - While over 200 people are now subscribed, I want to get over 1000 by the end of the year - which marketing methods will let more people know about our crusade to champion choice? Currently people sign up at my website, which also faces the challenges of Speaker vs. Coach. What else can I do?

E. Content - Should I repurpose the blog? Use guest writers? Offer profiles of great Champions of Choice?

Lots to think about, but choices must be made.

Have you been sitting on a project for days, weeks, months? Share it with us, and your fellow Champions of Choice will chime in to help. As for my project? Please - help me help you!

Is Choice a Decision, or an Action?

by Stephen Barnett

Three frogs are sitting on a log. After an 3 long hours in the sun, one decides to jump off. How many frogs are left?

The answer to this age old question posed by motivational speakers everywhere is, of course, three. A decision isn't the same as an action. Which poses, to me, as The Champion of Choice, another question - is Choice a decision, or an action?

A Choice, in my estimation, is a selection - an order of sorts. We choose what we want off a menu, and order it. Initially we decide, but until we Choose, we don't get the results we decided upon. I may decide I want a hamburger, but if I don't choose to tell the wait staff, my decision remains the same but my choice is silence and hunger. 

The Secret Movie is often derided for its "Wish and You Will Attract it into Your Life" philosophy, illustrated by the boy wishing for a bike, and the girl desiring a necklace, immediately followed by each getting their desire. What it doesn't show, and presumably doesn't even believe, is the actions taken by the recipients, or the people around them, to make those wishes come true.

It may FEEL like enough: "I wrote down my 6 month, 12 month, and 5 year goals - wow, that was tough", "I know I want the Mercedes-Benz, not the Cadillac, now that I've done all the research and test-driven both", or even "I have had it, I am ending this relationship/job/bad habit" - all can come with a bit of an adrenalin rush of satisfaction for finally verbalizing or writing it out for all to see. Heck, the motivational experts themselves tell us to let the world know, to write stuff down, to know our goals.

It may FEEL like enough, but it's not. How many of us have reams of notebooks filled with goals we've never fulfilled? One of the jokes I used to use in my speeches was "I'm a great goal setter - my goal for losing weight gets bigger every year!"

Frankly, it's not even necessary. We take successful action all the time without goals in mind. Results may not always be what we want, but we are capable of action every second. The retail world thrives on impulse decisions/choices, from candy bars to tinted windows and titanium hubcaps. But action successfully taken is not the same as directed action.

We can have decisions that sit inert without actions, and actions with a variety of results without clear decision driving them. At the end of the day, a lack of acting on decision OR choice is a decision/choice in an of itself. The Choice is an action, but it is not enough.This is, in general, how the average human lives most of their life, letting their Choices of NOT choosing create their environment.

Perhaps this is just a battle of semantics, and I should be just as happy to call myself the Duke of Decision. But for my intents and purposes, Choice = Decision + Action. 

We can Choose our results, by deciding what they are and taking action on them - Choosing them, plucking them off the shelf ourselves, putting in the order to the kitchen, and jumping off the log to our next destination. Decision and Action must work together to create Choices that build our Self-Defined Life.

Time to jump.