The Secret to Getting Anything You Want in Life given by Jennifer Cohen | Jen Cohen | TEDxBuckhead

So I know the

secret

to

getting

everything you

want

in

life

, but before I share it with you let's talk about why we don't get what we

want

. We all have fear, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, but everyone. A lot of those things come from a central place and that doubt is the reason we get a shitty job, it's the reason we don't get the body we want or earn the money we deserve and stay in relationships much longer. that we know about. If we doubt ourselves it is because we never change and do not act, so what is self-doubt?

Doubt is a story we tell ourselves that we cannot do something and that it is not possible how we will be rejected. and fail, that's why many times smart people fail when you're really smart, you're very good at predicting all the possible negative outcomes, so you never take action, that's why I think boldness is a stronger indicator of success than intelligence. People think of all the negative things that will happen when things go wrong, but bold people think of all the good things that will happen when things go right now. I'm not saying that smart people can't be bold and that bold people can.

Don't be smart, but boldness is the

secret

sauce boldness is what puts you on the path to success mmm I need some water, so when I was 18 I had a big dream. I'm from a small town in Canada called Winnipeg. and my big dream in

life

was to be a VJ of a lot of music, you know what MTV is for you, so I wanted to be like the female Carson Daly? I mean, I'm dating myself, but you guys have The point is right, so I knew the job was super competitive, so I knew I thought, "Okay, I need to make a killer demo tape and that demo tape will allow me cut Keanu Reeves' job." Keanu Reeves was the biggest movie star of them all.

At that time and unbeknownst to me, he always wanted to be in Shakespeare, right, and he had just finished speeding up the movie and he thought what better time and place than to go to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where it's minus 40 degrees and do Hamlet, so I thought to myself that's great. Right now I'm going to get Keanu Reeves on my demo tape for muchmusic and I'm going to get my dream job, so I told my family, I told my friends and of course they all laughed at me to the day next when I knew I was. in the city I went to the theater where he was performing I stayed back and waited now ten minutes turned into 20 20 turned into 30 30 turned into over an hour and now I'm frozen my friend I took with me went home a long time ago and yet he was still determined five minutes later, he walks out of the back of the theater.

I boldly walk past all the girls and all the media and all the cameras and I tap him on the shoulder and I say Keanu, you're going to be my ticket to my dream job and he of course looks at me dumbfounded and says how could I just give you a autograph and I said autograph why do I want your autograph that doesn't help me at all I need you to get me my My dream job is so decided that of course he tries to ignore me and says give me your phone number and I will call you when I have a couple minutes, so I grabbed a girl I don't know and she had some eyeliner in her purse.

I took the eyeliner I took my gum wrapper in my pocket I wrote my number I wrote my name and I handed it to him and I ran away I go to school the next day I tell my friends before I tell my family and they all laugh at and he makes fun of me the second day, the same thing happens, but now more kids know and now they all make fun of me like, oh ho, yeah, Keanu calls you, ha ha, what a loser you are, of course, don't you They call and the same thing happened on day three, but I'm going home.

On that third day my mom says: did you hear the answering machine? I say no and at that point, of course, I'm dating myself, an answering machine we didn't have voicemails back then, okay, I'll just let you know, so I'm going to press. game and what do I hear, I hear a man's voice say on the phone while my mom answers, Jennifer is there, my mom then says who it is and I hear it's Keanu calling Jennifer, she's home, my mom says she's at school he calls again and Le hangs up so I said oh my god the next message is the same but it's kion saying hi it's Jennifer this is my phone number you were telling me something about something and "I wasn't sure what you were saying, but call." It was driving me crazy, so once I regained my composure, I called him and very boldly explained what I was talking about and the next thing you know, two days later, I was sitting on my parents' couch in our living room with my three. friends holding amateur camcorders and someone holding a boom box hitting him in the face and I had my Oprah moment, okay?

I got that demo tape now look, I got the best demo tape ever, you bet I did. I got the job interview. on MuchMusic Sure yeah, I got the audition, yeah I did, you're right, you're right, I got the job, hell no I didn't get the job, so why am I telling you this story and the reason why I'm? Telling you this story is that it was a very crucial moment for me in my life, it taught me a great truth about success, which is that you must ask for what you want and that's it, you must ask, you know what to say is the squeaky wheel that sets. fat, it's actually quite true in an age where we are bombarded with an overload of information from every influence or expert telling you how to be successful, do this, do that, do the other when in reality it's the most basic thing and simple thing you can do, you must stop.

Deliberate, stop planning, stop creating flowcharts and just act now, in the words of another fellow Canadian, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take, so when you think about what boldness really means, it basically all comes together. boils down to what you're after. what you want and don't take what you can get the problem is that most of us live by default, we opt for what is convenient we take what is available and accept what is in front of us now what I have realized is There is a big misconception of what boldness really is.

People assume that boldness is something you are born with or not, but in reality it is not very certain. That's not true at all. Boldness is a skill like

anything

else that you need to practice. you need to take advantage of it to improve more and more. There's a mindset that I developed called the 10% goal and what's basically very simple, the idea is that whatever you want most in life, take ten tries. The problem is that most people don't take ten tries. The truth is, most people don't even make a try. They call themselves out before they try, and the purpose of the 10% goal is to feel comfortable failing 90% of the time.

Now I guarantee that if you make 10 attempts at

anything

, one will succeed because this is what I know, one will get what you want or two will get something you didn't even know was available. I want to take a step back because this is what normally happens, what most people do, the reason most people don't get the job they want is because they don't actually look for the job they want, see what's available on monster.com or LinkedIn and then the reason why most people don't get the money they want, guess what they don't ask for the money they want.

In reality, a survey was conducted among over a hundred and sixty thousand people who truly believed that they deserved to earn more money and two. -Thirds of those people didn't even ask for a raise, but seventy percent of the people who did ask for a raise got one, what does that tell you now? I want to come back because I was making another comment about the ten percent goal, ten percent. objective as I was saying two things ago number one makes you feel comfortable failing ninety percent of the time number two gives you resilience and a skill that is the wrong slide let's get comfortable again another example when you go to a restaurant more What we do is ordering what's on the menu, but what being bold really means is ordering what's not on the menu, because well, when I go to a restaurant, what I do is see an avalanche of ingredients and then usually , I like to make my own mix, now I think it's very cheeky, however I'm sure the waiter thinks it's very very annoying and possibly most of the time I'll get my food spit out at me but I get what I want. and they ask you very nicely, but the reason is that when you feel comfortable asking for the small things in life, this gives you the skills, the habit and the confidence to ask for the big things in life, so how do you practice failing 9 ? out of 10 times or how you feel comfortable Baili 9 out of 10 times and the answer is to practice the more you do something over and over again that becomes your new normal how would you train your body to be strong, you train your brain to be bold, ha, ha, look your brain is now bold with this beautiful image, thank you, so I have an action item here for everyone, which is to write down whatever you want most in life and then take ten tries and it has to be ten. attempts you have to accept the 10% goal you have to commit to doing 10 attempts because that's the idea: you're basically going after what you want and not just taking what you can get now.

I had a whole section here about all my colossal failures and how they led to a million successes and I deleted it because we've all had failures and the truth is that it doesn't really matter what matters is that I'm living proof. that when you go after what you want and not just take what you can get, you are exponentially half happier and more satisfied with your life. The only thing I know for sure about the ten percent goal is that it works 100 percent. of time because either you get what you want or you get what you were supposed to do now I wasn't the fastest athlete I wasn't the prettiest girl or the smartest girl in the class by far, but I still became a best-selling author a entrepreneur who sold companies for millions of dollars co-founded a breast cancer charity that raises thousands of dollars year after year, all failing 90% of the time and you too can fail if you fail you can fail you can fail to succeed just chasing what you want and not accepting what you get thanks