Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success: Discovering Your Gift and the Way to Life's Riches Read Free

responsible for my gift.
    If you are like I was, you need to stop lying to yourself with excuses. Your excuses are as empty now as they were when you first started using them. I need you to realize that your gifts are opportunities, and to embrace a new belief: You are a success.
    Now, before you skip this section and say, “Steve, I don’t make excuses for my life,” hold on. The people who claim that they don’t make excuses are usually the biggest offenders. You know who you are. You are a Type A person who goes hard in your career, but you are normally the one making an excuse for missing a family member’s birthday or canceling a date for the third time. Success doesn’t live in one part of your life and become exempt in another. If you’re going to do this, you have to do it all the way. You have to be open to using your gift to embrace your opportunities and change your life.
    When I began in comedy, I was protective about letting people into my life. I was trying to write like other people. I didn’t really develop the real truth of who I was as a stand-up until I was no longer afraid to open up. Sharing my truth led me to tons more material to joke about, including my past, my relationship with my parents, my failed relationships, and things I was currently going through. For me to grow in my gift, the first thing I had to do was to learn to be honest.
    When you open up yourself to being honest, you can just deal with whatever the truth is. All of your truth may be negative, but that can be a positive, too. If you uncover the negatives about yourself, you then have a chance to improve. That’s why it’s very important that when something goes wrong in your relationship, or when something goes wrong in your business, the first question you ask yourself is “What did I do wrong?” You have an opportunity to change yourself or fix the situation at any given moment. You cannot change another person. If I point the one finger at everyone else and ignore the three pointing back at me, I have relinquished my chance to grow, change, and develop. But the moment that I pay attention to the three fingers that are pointing back at me, then and only then will I grow.
    Too often you focus on the cons before you even consider a pro. You can’t even think about the benefits of taking on your dream because you’re too busy focusing on the “what if,” the “what could be,” and the “why it won’t work for me” excuses. You’re willing to waste years of your life walking away from your dreams instead of running toward your destiny.
THE COMPARISON CURSE
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    Some of you are afraid to step up into your gifts because you’re too busy comparing yourself to someone else. God made you and the way you do what you do exclusively for you. The world doesn’t have time to interact with your representative—it needs the real, authentic you to show up and shine your light.
    Don’t get stuck thinking, Well, there’s already a million and one motivational speakers out there. There’s nothing new that I can bring to the table. There might be fifty motivational speakers in your city, but you are the only one who has your unique set of experiences, mistakes, lessons, pitfalls, and triumphs that can make the difference between someone living an ordinary life and that same person stepping into an extraordinary future. You’d be amazed how your personal story about leaving your small town and taking a leap of faith in the big city could speak to someone louder than, say, a story told by Les Brown ever could. Use your energy to perfect your game, not someone else’s.
“I’M NOT READY TO SIT AT THE BIG TABLE”
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    Often, we get these stereotypes stuck in our heads about who can and who can’t sit at the Big Table to make decisions. We count ourselves out before the game starts because we think we don’t