#MondayInsight:

A number of years ago, I interviewed a guy named Stephen Goldstein. He’s a former Sr. Producer for Oprah and a former congressional lawyer who regularly put people on the stand in front of the Senate. 

Over time he started to see that what made someone a great guest on Oprah were the same things that would make them highly effective on the stand in front of congress. He wrote a book about this, called ‘The Turn On,’ which is about what makes you likeable in the public eye.

The book highlights eight elements of likeability, with the first two being that the person is captivating and that they give people hope. 

Ever since that interview I’ve seen that these two things – captivating people + giving them hope – are essential to us as courageous messengers. 

After all, every transformational endeavor encompasses an element of paradigm change because it asks people and systems to shift how they see themselves and their world.  

So anytime you’re inviting people into your paradigm-changing work, you’re making a big ask…

Which is to trust you enough to guide them into the unknown!

And that requires both courage… and hope. 

Hope that…

• That there are solutions they’ve never seen or considered (even if these solutions are quite different from anything they’ve explored or experienced before).
• That things can be different, even if they’ve exhausted all known solutions in their existing paradigm.
• That there are people like you who are equipped, skilled, and called to guide them into a better, brighter reality. 

Traditionally, we rely on charismatic leaders to captivate us and give us this kind of hope…

But what if that’s now how you’re built… and you still have a calling to bring a courageous message to the world?

That’s where the frequency of your calling comes in.

Every true calling carries a frequency that represents a different consciousness than the energy of the wounds that drive so much of our world.

And when someone is truly ready for a quantum leap in their lives, the energy that your calling carries is highly captivating, and it does indeed generate hope! 

Why? Because when they feel they are at the end of their rope and out of options with no way forward, the energy of your calling generates renewed hope that there is a way forward… even if it’s really different and they’d never considered it before!

Your calling represents an energetically enriched idea that is evolutionarily advanced and outpaces the solutions your market currently has.

So when you’re speaking honestly and courageously about your true calling, people can feel the energy of it! They know there’s something special in there – a mystery that holds a key to their future that they didn’t even know existed!

What could be more captivating  and hope-generating than that? 

And they’re going to need that kind of hope in order to have the courage to join you in leaping into the unknown.

Because if there is no hope – no hope for it to work out, no hope of a better way, no hope of a new life ahead, they will not have the courage to take the leap. 

Remember this: when we bring people into uncharted territories where they will be asked to take courageous leaps over and over again. What people are looking for in you as a leader is not someone with all the answers. What they are looking for in a leader is someone who was willing to go first, acting on faith. 

And my friend, you’ve spent your life learning to act on faith. You’ve had the courage to leave the ordinary world behind in search of a new future – first for yourself… and now for those you’re here to serve. You’re a guide that can be trusted, and the calling on your heart carries the very hope your people need.

PS – On the messaging side of things, when I’m working with my clients and we locate THE THING their people have been avoiding – the thing that must be addressed to make a quantum leap into a new world…

I’ll ask my client if they speak about this thing in thier marketing – and they’ll almost always look at me like I’m nuts!

But when you’re speaking to an audience that’s at the end of their rope, telling them about the hard thing they’ll have to face in order to get to the other side of their struggle actually makes sense! 

It’s like, “Oh, THAT’S what I’ve been missing this whole time!” They see that facing this hard thing is the KEY to their liberation.

It’s not easy, but it is the way through – and that too gives people tremendous hope.