If you guys would, please, I want you to think about a change you got going on in your life
right now.
It’s going to be a private process.
I’m not going to go, “Hey, sir, tell us, how is your marriage going?”
I’m not going to do that to anybody, alright.
I’m not putting anybody on the spot.
But the only reason I’m here is to give you stuff that you can use and that’s going
to make a difference in your life.
I’ll tell a few jokes; I’ll tell a few stories, that’s great, any speaker does
that.
But that’s not really why I’m here.
It’s not why I do what I do.
I know that every single one of you’ve got some change going on in your life right now
where I said there is a ring in that rubble.
And when I said that, some of you, “Gary, you don’t know my change and if you did,
you wouldn’t tell me if there’s any ring in there.
You wouldn’t tell me there’s opportunity in there,” and I believe there is.
And believe me, if you’re not going through a major change right now, tomorrow, next week,
next month you will be.
So be thinking about a major change you’ve got going on in your life, professionally
or personally, because you can apply this stuff for the same price.
You can apply it at work or at home.
And my job will be to give you tools to help you get through that.
Okay?
First off, the way I’m going to do that is I’m going to share with you the lessons
I’ve learned; the five big lessons I’ve learned.
The first one is change always creates opportunities and, because we’ve covered that, it’s
up to you to find them.
Those changes, like I said…
So I’ve asked you to think about your greatest change challenge at work or at home.
My job will be to inspire you to a certain degree.
Again, that’s somewhat what us speakers are expected to do.
But more importantly, for me, I want to inspire you to do something.
My goal is that when you get up and walk out those steps at the end of this evening, that
you got at least a couple of ideas about what you’re going to go and immediately apply
that’s going to make a difference in your life with whatever your change situation is.
Now the world record on that is I say that to my audiences, and I had a guy come up,
here’s what I’m hoping for you guys, I finished my speech; everybody claps, “Ahh,
great.”
I went over there, the speech hadn’t been done more than five minutes.
I’m putting up my computer.
A guy comes up to me and he goes, “Well I did it Dr. Brat [sp].”
I said, “What did you do?”
He goes, “I changed.”
He said, “You know how you asked for the change?
I changed.”
And I said, “Well that is kind of a record.
What did you do?”
He said, “Well my particular situation that you asked us to think about, the one I came
up with was something work related, and it was a change I really didn’t want to deal
with, but I sat here and I listened to you, and I took some notes, and as soon as you
got done speaking, I just went out there and I called up the person that I’d been avoiding
all of this time, and I left him a message, and I told him I want to deal with this issue
that we both have been avoiding.”
That’s my hope for is that you can pick up a nugget or two that will make a difference.
And I’ll share some other stories like that along the way.
So inspiration plus applications, lessons I’ve learned…
And when I talk about that, I talk about your organization and also you personally, because
I can tell you leaders of organizations, when I’m not speaking, I’m out there consulting
with senior leaders in organizations and they are hungry for people who can adapt to change
and that they don’t have to pull along.
If you can do that, you get a leg up.
That’s lesson number two.
The word we’re going to use tonight is accelerate.
Change is accelerating everywhere for everyone.
I’m going to try to give you tools to help you accelerate yourself through that change…
Now some of us do what I call the double whammy.
And the double whammy looks something like this.
And this example I’m going to give you now, it’s true for both men or women.
We take out this chair and we go, “If only my spouse hadn’t left me.”
Then we get thinking about it and we pick this one up and we go, “What if they come
back?”
And here I am holding onto these chairs and there could be a big, fat golden ring of opportunity
that Michael, or somebody else comes up and puts right in front of my face, just like
some of you have that opportunity every day; there it is but I can’t grab it unless I
do what?
You’ve got to let go of the chairs.
Now I know that letting go of some of the things that have happened in your life, emotionally
in particular, isn’t nearly as easy as just letting go of a chair.
I also know it’s an ongoing process.
It’s not like you put down the chair once and you’re done.
We tend to pick them up, put them back down, pick them up, put them back down.
But if you stay conscious of it, and you keeping working at it, you can learn to let go of
these chairs.