Nothing Happened To Me Today...except I started the 90 Day Challenge.

Why Do 90 Day Challenges? It's too much trouble!...isn't it?

31^st July 2017

For you, that’s a question I can’t answer. For me it’s the travel to the venue, the seat in the arena and the walk onto the stage. It is the platform for speaking.

The 90 Day Challenge is the sergeant on my shoulder whose screams of abuse over-ride the voices telling me to spend the time on E mails; Twitter in general and Facebook in particular. To keep tapping the keys when my brain is screaming “I don’t know what comes next.” To become what I tell my clients to be become. ‘More Comfortable: More Confident: More Inspiring.

My Why!

My why goes back 60 years or more to the time when talking at the table was forbidden, talking after dinner wasn’t encouraged because my Dad had just come back from the foundry and I couldn’t talk at night because my brother slept in the same room but was four years younger. At school I was told to “Shut up”, and in the factory no one could hear me. Throughout those years I wrote stories, spent much time on my own (I was a pretty fat 8 year old) and the only opportunity to express myself came because I was a pretty good footballer for my age.

At 15 I was apprenticed to one of the best engineering companies in the Midlands but after a year I realised that walking through a wooden door, into a wooden machine shop at 6.45 am, when the sun was rising over the rooftops and walking out of the same door at 4.45 pm as the sun was going down, wasn’t what I wanted to do for the next 40 years of my life. I wasn’t even a good machine tool grinder.

I was 16 when I told my mother I wanted to leave the factory and go back to college. “What do you want to do that for, you will never make a go of it”. That was the message for the next three years. Given by someone I know now was trying in her own way to protect me because my parents thought engineering was a job for life. Unfortunately the drip drip effect of those words affected me well into my forties and perhaps longer.

The Breakthrough.

My first experience of speaking came when I was asked to be the best man at a ‘hookers wedding’ – big New Zealand rugger player Mike was- but his bride to be Judy was the daughter of the chairman of Nuneaton Chamber of Trade, so the reception and best man’s speech would be to 150 of Nuneaton’s top business owners, in a marquee, in the grounds of a stately hotel.

I prepared. I practised. I edited the script and re-practiced over and over again. The day of the wedding was upon us. I got the groom to the church on time. I sat the guests on the right side of the isle. I got the photographer finished on time and the party to the reception. Then came that moment, the best man’s speech.

I rose to take one last look around the marquee, the silk fabric hanging down from the central chandelier, the tables each with ten guests seated around them and began to speak. The length of the presentation is lost in time, I have no idea how long it went on but at the end these business men and women gave me a standing round of applause. I had found my voice.

The Payback.

That voice then went on to be a semi-professional football coach, a supply teacher (with no teacher training) and now a business owner. That one day changed my thought process, my self-esteem and my business marketing. Originally, Balance Health and Fitness delivered personal training and shiatsu therapy on-site. It meant I touched people. It meant people had to trust me. It meant that simply handing over a business card was not enough to get people to know, like and trust me. I found people were far more able to that if they heard me speak.

So, in conclusion, my WHY is to make sure I never lose my voice, make sure I am comfortable telling stories for as long as I can, make sure that other people have the opportunity to work with my team to change the words they use and the impact they make.

This is my WHY.

My Why has transformed the boy who said nothing into the man you cannot shut up...Do I get nervous/anxious when my time to speak approaches? Of course.
Am I comfortable with that nervousness? Yes!
Would you like to become more comfortable, more confident and more inspiring when you speak to people...Contact me:

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Ernie Boxall Owner, ERNIE SAID 07962 216833 | ernie@erniesaid.info | WWW.ERNIESAID.INFO | Shuckburgh Grove, Leamington Spa. CV32 7NT. UK

Turn Up With A Purpose: Stand Up To Make An Impact: Speak Up To Be Memorable

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