For those of you who don’t know by now, I had to give the “Talk of my life,” at TED Global 2009 this past July. I’m not a public speaker really and had no idea how to give a talk that would be worthy of the brilliance and inspiration of TED. But thanks to a fantastic web site called “SixMinutes.com” I got through it and gave, I think, the talk of my life. Because Six Minutes and the articles there were so instrumental to my success, I wrote the editor and asked if I could write a guest blog about the experience. He agreed and posted it today. Andrew is an incredible editor. And I’ve worked with a lot of them. He didn’t change much, but formatted my post and made it look so simple and clean and organized. He is amazing.

It’s easy to become intimidated if you compare yourself to the speakers who have been invited to speak at TED before. Al Gore, Tony Brown, Jane Goodall, Bill Clinton…activists, artists, musicians, scientists, doctors, politicians and some of the greatest minds of our time. But then again, if you remember that they have only one quality that makes them TED material. They have a great idea. And they’re there to talk about it. So when I realized it wasn’t about me (It’s not really!), but it’s about the idea, it got easier.

That’s the thing I’ve tried to remember as I do this trip this time around. Life is about the idea. Bridge a great idea with a great business plan and you have the makings of financial success. Bridge a great idea with passionate people who want to change the world, and you change the world. It begins with the idea, but it ends with implementation.

The world is full of great ideas. I used to have a boss who came up with 20 great ideas a day. He’d announce them to us all and say, “Who wants to take this great idea and run with it? I’ll give you 25% of the profits.” No one ever took him up on it. The problem was, all the HARD work goes into implementing ideas, not to coming up with them. The thing most people lack is the ability to implement, to stick with something, to persevere. Any of us could have taken the idea, or come up with our own and made 100% of the profits. But we didn’t. Over coming inertia and believing that you CAN do great things takes more than energy than most of us think we have. Including me!

I suffer mightily from that too, among other things! That’s the point I wanted to make with this post. We’re all on a pretty level playing field when it comes to being a success. The thing that holds us back is not life, or other people. It’s US. Ourselves. We THINK we can or we can’t and we’re right. We are all self-fulfilling prophecies, whether you believe it, act on it or know it or not. That’s what I learned from TED, and from writing my speech, from giving it and from realizing that we DO create our own reality. Whatever it is, it’s there as a result of the choices WE make. I know. You had a crappy childhood. Guess what? 90% of us did. Some were worse than others. But you’re an adult now. And you can change things. No, it’s not easy. It’s hard. But that’s how it goes. You can change that too once you get the hang of it.

Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to Andrew Dlugan for a great layout and for a fantastic website with SO many great tips on how to give a speech, and more. He and Six Minutes really did make TED and giving the talk of my life possible for me. Check them out!