Showing Up When You Want To Give Up

The week before Christmas I had a big workday planned in Los Angeles with clients at Sony Pictures Television and FOX. Rather than fly in the night before and miss dinner with my daughter, I decided to take the 7:30am flight out of Albuquerque.
 
I got up at 3:30am, did my make-up and hair and slipped on a dark grey sleeveless Jackie-O style dress, a pair of Trina Turk high black boots and a leopard print trench. I was dressed for a winter’s day in LA, not Santa Fe where it was freezing cold with snow and ice on the ground.

At 4:30am my cab driver called from the gate. I pressed a key to let him in and waited at the door with my suitcase and computer bag. Ten minutes passed and the phone rang again. The cab had slid down the steep gravel road to my home. The driver told me I’d have to walk to the gate to meet him. I grabbed a pair of gloves, scarf and flashlight and slogged through the snow wheeling my suitcase behind me.
 
After a long walk to the top of the hill, I could see the driver’s headlights below shinning through the gate. I became overwhelmed with the situation and longed to sit down in the snow and just give up.
 
Separated from my husband, the feelings of loss for our 16-year relationship flooded in. I was now a single working mom, and in that moment, I realized that I was really on my own and no one was coming to save me. The headlights almost blinded me as the driver shouted, “You can do it!” I put my boots in the snow to avoid the ice and slowly made it down the treacherous hill through the gate and into the cab.
 
Two weeks earlier, my client from Food Network called to ask if I would get on a plane that day to fly to New York. A nor’easter was coming. If I didn’t leave immediately, and my scheduled flight cancelled the next day, I could leave a room full of executives in the lurch. I dropped my daughter at a friend’s house and found a flight out before the storm hit.
 
Woody Allen once said that 80% of success is showing up. In the dead of winter, in the cold black night, the path to your destiny can be covered in snow and ice — making you feel lost and alone. It’s only when you breakthrough your fear and take one-step forward and then another, that you show up as a leader, a solid partner and someone in service to others.
 
I learned long ago that you are your word. Never under-estimate the power of being someone others can count on. Over the last 20 years, I’ve won countless projects not because I was the client’s first choice necessarily, but because another vendor dropped the ball.
 
My prediction is that those who succeed in 2013 will be the ones who are a sure bet. Believe in yourself and resist the temptation to feel entitled, play victim or put roadblocks in the way of what needs to be done. I think you’ll find that the end of the world that was supposed to happen in 2012 was really about letting go of fear and stepping into faith.
 
Robin Fisher Roffer, founder and CEO of Big Fish Marketing, is America’s leading personal brand strategist for executive level career professionals. She’s the best selling author of 3 books including The Fearless Fish Out Of Water: How To Succeed When You’re The Only One Like You. Discover Robin’s secret formula for igniting your career with a personal brand at 8 Steps To Igniting Your Personal Brand.