there are only two couples in the show and one finally wins. The program runs for most of the fall season.
It should be noted that in my country fame is a bit of a strange animal. Estonia is such a small country (just over a million people) that it often seems we’re all famous. It sometimes seems like Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame got turned into fifteen hundred minutes here. In a country of a million people, a lot of people are famous (or infamous) for something. And so we tend to respect the privacy of famous people a little more. You walk into any restaurant in town, and it’s not impossible that you’ll find the president having a cup of coffee there. Or your favorite film actor. Or a former jewelry thief. Or the white collar criminal who is visiting from his new life in Africa. People almost never go up and bother famous people in Estonia, because then nothing would ever get done. We’re all just living in one big neighborhood. So famous Estonians don’t really have the same paparazzi problems that Brad and Angelina have, if they’re even still together.
But while autograph seekers don’t hassle our movie stars, Estonians do like to stare. We’re a nation of starers. It could be our Soviet past, but I don’t know. We don’t always express our feelings in overt ways, but if someone disapproves of you he will rarely hide it. He may not say anything to you, but he will not mask his true feelings with a smile if you happen to meet his glance in the supermarket. A famous person can be shopping in the dairy section and people will just turn and look at her like a monkey in a zoo. At least for a while, until common decency gets the best of them (it usually does), and then they go back to selecting their milk and peering over the cream to sneak another glance.
While I was out jogging, I began to mull over the questions in my mind. If I do want to be on the show, then what is my real motivation? Why do I really want to go on the air weekly and dance in front of friends, clients, and colleagues? They already know I am not a good dancer. Do I need television footage to prove it?
There were a lot of possible motivations. One is, of course my, ego. Perhaps I simply want to be more famous. It’s true that I’m well known inside business circles, but my name is not a household name. Nobody is going to put me on a box of cereal, not that I would want to be there. Kids aren’t going to talk about the cool trainers I am wearing and want to get a pair themselves. I’m a motivational speaker and business consultant. Maybe I’m a motivational speaker and business consultant who dreams of being a star? Maybe.
Maybe money was my motivation. If I got cereal-box famous, there would be new sources of revenue for my company. I’d no longer just deal with businessmen; I’d become the Dr. Phil of Estonia. I’d have my own television show and help everyone lead better lives and cure cancer and end world hunger and feel good about myself and make gobs more money so I could do whatever it is I’d do if I had gobs more money. Maybe.
Another motivation could have been simply a desire to win. I have to admit that from the first moment I began thinking about this show, I wasn’t thinking about going on the show. I was thinking about winning the thing. I know for me this is sometimes not a healthy motivator because it can become an obsession. Setting your sights that high is also a pretty good recipe for disappointment. I like to win, be the best, do my thing really well. If you’re not the lead dog then you’ve got your nose under someone else’s tail, and all that kind of thinking. (I can still tell you exactly how many books I sold door to door in the United States every summer I worked for Southwestern. And I can still tell you the name of the girl who set the company record that year, and exactly how much she sold.)
If I was going to go on this show, I would need to manage my time in order to have enough and more time for learning to dance better so that I could win it. I knew that it was not about just dancing skills. I knew that at the final stages the audience votes, and how known you are to the general public counts more than the actual dancing. And that the best dancer might not win at all. But like many motivated, successful people, I didn’t care. Whatever the prize was really for – dancing, popularity, best smile – I wanted to win it for the sake of winning.
Second question: Did I believe it was possible to win? Absolutely. I was in excellent physical shape. My health was fine. I was thin and flexible. I have a good memory and believed I could easily learn the dance steps. And who was I up against? Many weren’t as fit as I (though there was one professional athlete). But all were surely highly motivated and all were successful within their own fields. But would they be willing to put the time into it that I was willing to? Probably not. I have always been willing to work harder than everyone else. Why should this have been an exception? Sure, I believed I could win the show. Whatever the requirements or criteria for victory, I could win.
But the third question was the kicker. Was I willing to pay the price? Could I even guesstimate the price? Price is almost always misleading. Whatever you think the price is, it’s usually more. Have you ever built a home? No one ever estimates that properly. You always hope it’ll be cheaper than your estimate, but it usually comes in 20 or 30 percent more. Then you have to buy the furniture! It’s the same with your time. It inevitably requires more time to complete something than you estimate, even when you’re being conservative.
The more I jogged and the more I thought about the subject, the more unsure I became. Dancing would probably at some point be the only thing I’d be doing. Looking at the calendar and my other tasks ahead of me I realized that if I went all the way I’d probably have to cancel a new seminar I had planned for that fall. I just could not finish the preparations on time. Would I be willing to commit several hours a day if I wanted to win? My early enthusiasm for winning turned to doubt. It started to dawn upon me that it was more about whether or not I should go at all and not so much about if I wanted to win or not.
Finally I decided to go for it. Why? I realized that only after the fact. You see, in my work, I’m the one who encourages others to seek challenges and accept the ones presented to them. I must have felt back then that by not accepting the invitation it would go against what I was teaching others, making me a hypocrite. To prepare for the show, I used the seven decision making questions and set a goal of winning the competition. (These seven questions are discussed in detail in chapter 4). In retrospect, I worked really hard – perhaps too hard – to win the show. And even though I did not win (I came third), I gained a lot of other things thanks to taking part it in. Was it all worth the effort and time? Not really. Would I do it again, if I could wind back time and make the same decision all over again? Most likely not.
But that is my story. What do you want? Not for others, not for societal requirements, but for you. What is it that you really want? What do you want most right now?
CHAPTER TWO
Dream big dreams
Restaurant la Vie
C’est la vie. It’s a common expression, but I’ve never liked it much. “That’s life.” It’s mostly used to communicate that life is harsh but we must accept it. It’s often delivered by a friend or parent to suggest we had set our expectations too high.
I like to begin my seminars by asking people to imagine that we are all dining at the imaginary Restaurant la Vie, where they have no printed menu, because you can order whatever you want. What do you want? Everything is available. Some things may take a little longer for the cook to prepare. The prices for some items are higher than others. Some things have fancy-sounding names that you may not fully understand and that may not live up to their promise. But everything is available. Anything you want, you can have.
What if everything in life were available to you?
There are, of course, a few exceptions. Perhaps by accident of birth and reasons of citizenship, you cannot become the President of the United States or King or Queen of England. Or perhaps you do not possess the gift from God necessary to become a famous
