mjh2017

At first I was dying of humiliation, even though he was just making fun of the title. But then I realized it was just another sign that I had achieved my very overdue life long dream to write. Lesson to me was victory doesn't hinge on outcome, victory comes the moment we have the courage to have the courage, to show up and do the things we've always dreamed of doing. :-)

There was more temporary exposure for sure. I really find it an honor that he had my book on his show, and it was a great lesson and one I can talk about (even was the core message of a recent TED talk I gave: have the courage to have the courage to chase your dreams regardless of outcome). A lot of people asked me how I didn't jump off a bridge after being a laughing stock but it all depends on how you look at it. I was temporarily humiliated but then happy about it. I emailed him asking if he would have me on his show too, you know, to play pin the testicles on the lion or at least have a dance-off but he never got back to me. :-)

The title is a SA expression that means, Have the courage to have the courage. Or, Have the courage to overcome your fears. The book is about volunteering in Africa and overcoming a lot of fears, mainly death and guilt and how to overcome the guilt when losing a loved one. The animals I went to 'save' ended up 'saving' me.

Hi There. No, I didn't actually. Many people said, well hopefully no one was watching (yeah, only 3,000,000 people)! But I'm glad it happened, it was a huge lesson to me. You see, we all have ghosts, (fears), some are universal some are unique to us. I wrote my first 'book' when I was six and was laughed at and quickly tore it up promising myself I would never be so stupid to put myself out there again even though I always wanted to write. So you can imagine when 25 years later I finally overcame that 'ghost' of public humiliation and wrote a book, how it now felt to have a few million people laughing at my book (title). I had to either let the ghost put the shackles back on me and feel like a laughing stock or say, nope, this is actually very cool because Fallon just gave me the opportunity to kick this ghost's @ss once and for all. We can all overcome our ghosts that hold us back. We just have to have the courage to have the courage. :-)

It's really true. When we focus on outcome we can become frozen or unauthentic. When we can let go of expectations and fear of judgement, failure, (or even success!), etc then we're truly free to be creative, to be inspired, to be in the flow of things. I haven't mastered how to do that but I do know how it feels to be laughed at in front of millions and know that it can actually be a good thing. If we can look at it, like, yeah, those are my lion's testicles Jimmy Fallon's playing with up there, LOL, it means I did it, I finished something, in this case it was the book that took 25 years to write. I'm working on book two right now and when I get stuck, I just think OK, if I don't keep going, five years from now will I regret giving up? Yep. So keep going. :-)