Lessons

Lesson Info

Rewrite Your Story

When you're writing this list here, I don't want you to do that the give-me-10-things-you-love-about-yourself. Okay, and we're so, it's funny because we have such massive egos and yet, we'll be like, oh, I guess I like my hair. I like my, I don't know, I like my eyes. I like, you know. But the truth is, we know those things. We know the things that we love about ourselves, now you have to find what you're giving. And if you can't write 10 things that you're giving in your service, you need to seriously look at what you think you're giving. Because if anybody here wants to challenge me on finding 10 things to value themselves in whatever they're doing, no matter what you are, if you're a yoga instructor, doesn't matter. Okay, I had a girl that came up to me and she was a stripper. Literally, a stripper, and she said to me I earn 5,000 dollars a week, I can't keep my money. I said, okay, you don't value what you do. And she said, yes I do, and I said, no, you don't 'cause the bank doesn'...

t lie. And if you're pushing money away from you, you're earning it, you know you're worth the money but you can't keep it, so you don't value what you're doing. And that profoundly changed her. Because, she said to me, I don't value what I do, I judge it, people judge it and I said, then, why are you doing it? 'Cause it's not working for you, you're not keeping the money. And I said, if you did value it, you would find a way to keep it. It's such a bizarre example but when she said it to me, I was just as knocked back as she was when I said it back to her. So, what I'm telling you right now is, you need to change the way you're giving your service and then you don't need to sell yourself because giving service is selling yourself. So when somebody says, what do you do, instead of having an energy of 'I hope I get paid', you have an energy of 'This is what I can do for you' and, like I said, it's not about being subservient, it's about offering a product and a service that's actually valuable. So, this took me a long time but, as a photographer, I woke up one day and I thought, I stop time for people. Like, I stop it. I can literally create something that will outlive me. My body of work will live long past me. So if I photographed your child right now and then I grow old and die, your child will own this photograph and then her daughter will own it and then her daughter will own it and the legacy of what I've created is timeless. A two dollar piece of paper. So, when people say who would pay 300 dollars for that, say, well clearly, this woman, 'cause she knows that I've created a legacy that will exist in the ancestry of her name for longer than my lifespan. That when I photograph somebody, it may seem like something that's just so simple. So what, you had a photograph done. I can profoundly change somebody's life by spending two hours with them. I can take somebody who's never felt seen or heard or important in their life, take a photograph of them, show it back to them and significantly and profoundly change the course of their life by showing them how beautiful they truly are. I can show them that they are being seen for the first time in their life. I can take a 55 year old woman, take a photograph of her, show it back to her and she will look at me and she'll say, I have never felt beautiful in my life until this day. And the value of what I just gave her is coming back to me in income. So, until you can tell me what the value is, you will not make money selling whatever you're trying to sell. And until you can value yourself, you will not keep the money that is given to you. Now, why do I deserve to have savings? Because I was so blocked in avoidance, guilt and shame over giving and no boundaries, I would push money away from me, always to get a feeling. Always to get a feeling of being good enough, of being liked but, also, there is one point that Tiffany didn't touch one in over-giving, is to lord over people. Look how successful I am, I can buy you all dinner. Look how smart I am, I have no education, I can afford to pay for all of you. I'm undermining you when I over-give to you. In fact, if you have a little brother or sister that's desperate for money, if you pay for them always, you're actually saying to them, they're incapable of paying it themselves. Look how awesome I am, I am more than you, I am smarter than you, I am more clever than you. You're lording over people and you're disempowering them. And you're the one that's disempowered, so it's ironic that you're passing on disempowerment over and over again. And I just find that crazy that you're trying to sell something that you cannot give me service on, cannot put a price on and do not value and then you're telling me you feel undervalued. And that's the most crazy part is, you're the one telling me you're not getting paid and, frankly, I haven't heard of anything you're selling yet. And until you say, this is my service, this is my price, you simply will not get paid for it. You see, we're always looking for validation. Validation is seeing my importance in your eyes. It's when I ask you can I do something, can I do something, can I do something. So if I said to you, I really want to run a marathon, my first response to somebody who says I want to run a marathon was, yeah, I always wanted to run a marathon too, I just don't have the two hours a day to train. Like, it's two hours a day of running. And I was like, who has two hours? (coughs) Who has two hours to go for a long run and then go and have shower, and then blow out your hair, and then go to work, and two and a half hours later, you're training for a marathon. And one of my friends started training for a marathon and got injured six days before the marathon. Did all that training, never ran it. And I'm like, meh. But then, one day, I thought to myself, there's a really big difference between looking for somebody to tell you you can run a marathon and saying, I'm running every day right now, I like it so much, I'm thinking of doing a marathon. What's the difference? The difference is, the first person said, I want to run a marathon and what they're gonna hear back is their limits. Okay, so what you're gonna hear back from people when you ask for validation is their limits. I want to charge 1,000 dollars for this, well, nobody's gonna pay that. Those are your limits, those are not my limits. But what you're doing is, you're testing your validation because what you want that person to say is, you could easily sell this for 1,000 dollars, easy. And so, we feel like when we're supported and validated, that life is good because all these people support us. But how many of you, as start up businesses, realize that nobody's supporting you? In fact, most of the people around you are telling you how you're going to fail. Because what they're doing is, you're looking for validation and what their doing is telling you their limits, their belief system. Now, some of you have people around you that are like, your biggest supporters, like Heidi, you were saying your parents are like, "Charge more, charge more!" And that's great because you will actually charge more but the truth is you're looking for support and validation in people and if you're not finding it, you have no conviction in what you're trying to do. 'Cause I don't need to ask you if I can do something. Now, if I want you to support me while I'm doing something, I'm gonna say, right now, I'm training to do this or I'm trying to do this or I'm working towards doing this, I could really use your emotional support. Because sometimes I just can't get through it without help. You can say to people, this is where I'm working towards right now, this is my goal, and right now, I need a cheerleader. You can ask somebody to be a cheerleader for you but you are not to ask for permission to live your dreams and goals because the truth is, I should not have to drag you, kicking and screaming, to your dreams and goals. So, when you're telling me you need somebody to validate you, you're saying, I don't believe I can do it. And I can always tell the difference between somebody who's going to achieve something, somebody who's going to sell something and somebody who's going to make something work 'cause the truth is is the person who is already working towards it, that means their goals are congruent to what they're actually doing in their action every day. So, to me, you're not trying to sell something or trying to be in business. How can any of you sit here, half of you in this audience sit here and tell me that you're not making any money when none of you can tell me your price list? Like, you're already failing because you're telling yourself you can't sell something you haven't priced yet. And all I'm trying to do is get you to put a number on there and make a decision, with conviction, so you can actually start doing it every day so, yes, you can be rejected and then see the mirror back to you on what you need to work on next. Because every time somebody rejects you, every time somebody says I'm not buying this product, it looks like crap, every time somebody says, I'm not paying for this, who do you think you are, you're going to get a message on what you need to work on next. Now, yes, you can get smacked down and hit down and you don't want to get up and you don't want to get out of bed, yes, I get it. I've been there, done that. You go and sit and watch Netflix all day. Go to the beach, watch Game of Thrones, whatever you have to do, Drink a bottle of gin, come back tomorrow and start again. You know, the best piece of business advice I've ever been given is, manage your disappointment. People are going to disappoint you, clients are going to disappoint you. Staff will disappoint you on a daily basis. But manage how long you are disappointed for. Now, can you imagine if you actually went with 90 seconds of disappointment? And actually felt 90 seconds disappointment come into your body and say, today, I am disappointed. And I'm gonna let it stay in my body for 90 seconds and then I'm going to let it go, 'cause in order to make a new pathway of anger, fear, past or disappointment, you would have to drag something from the history in your brain, bring it forward and re-empower it. So it works like this: Bang, oh, I'm so disappointed, that really hurt! Okay, breathe it in, I accept this disappointment right now. This is just disappointment. And then, what happens, that brain starts churning and it says, people always do this to you. They do it to you 'cause you're nothing. They do it to you 'cause you have no value. You're not important. Nobody's ever going to care about you. Nobody's ever going to support you. This is exactly what happens with your family every single time, every single time you stand up and start getting successful, somebody's gonna kick you down and beat you down and tell you you're not good enough. And before you know it, you're 90 seconds has been re-empowered by an old story of an old 90 seconds that's coming back and coming back and coming back. Now, I maintain, when you're selling a product and service as a creative, you have to imagine that you are a dress shop and that you are the person that works in the dress shop, you sell dresses. How many women come in in a day and try on a dress? Do you buy every dress you try on? No, you don't. Do you feel bad about it? I do, because I'm an over-giver, so what I would do-- (audience laughs) Is I would try on a dress that wasn't that good for me or too tight, or too or not my shape or not something I'd wear and I'd come out and I'd say, yeah, no thanks, and they would give me this, you-can't-afford-it look, so I would buy it to prove that I could. (audience laughs) Yeah, I swear to God, I was that person. I know there's people out there nodding, 'cause I know that you know that I'm that person because the idea that this person judged me and thought that I could not afford this stupid dress that I don't want to wear anyway, now, I walk out, I value myself enough to say, thank you, it's not for me. And if they give me the look, I just give them the look back. (audience laughs loudly) I'm like really, you're gonna guilt me into that commission? No. There is a reason that I have 700 dollar, gold, Phillip Lim laptop bag. It is the single most fabulously ridiculous thing I own. But I went into a very fancy establishment, I looked at this gold bag and I was like, I want this gold bag, I've worked so hard this month, I've got savings and I looked at it, it was 700 dollars and I'm like, I do not want this bag but it was so cute that I thought I wanted it. Turned, looked at the two people looking at me like I was some dirty, poor kid from South Auckland. My thoughts, not their words, my thoughts. I picked up that Phillip Lim bag, I popped it on the counter and I paid for it. And I did that, not because I needed that bag and not because it was a smart choice, 'cause what a stupid thing to do. I did that to validate myself. That's how people act around money. That's how people act around money. I did not want to be judged by these people that do not know me, that do not care whether I bought it or not. And yet, I felt that to my core. So, to me, validation seems like support but, ultimately, it's not, okay. And there's a really big difference to asking people to support you and asking for validation but if you feel yourself stuck in validation, stop and say, right now, I'm stuck in validation.