Blog - TCB Communications, LLC

The Leap of Faith

April 12, 2023 By Terese Cooke Bottner

Last summer I jumped into water from a 30-foot cliff in Texas. This was an event my 27-year-old son Sam was sure I needed to experience. I’m pretty sure he was born to push my limits and shake me out of my comfort zone. Before I jumped, I was sitting back on a warm soft rock “life coaching” two female college athletes on how to face their fear of jumping. I told them: “Don’t wait for the fear to subside—it won’t. You have to jump into the fear itself.” Such great advice from someone who had yet to stand with toes dangling off a 40-foot cliff.

They eventually jumped.

My turn.

Sam and the other 20-somethings were treading water below urging me to take the leap. “It’s so fun, mom! Just do it!” Everything in my body was saying absolutely do not jump! Every sweat gland in my skinny body was activated. My heart was racing and my body was trembling. I was thinking: I’m more than 30-years older than everyone here. I am going to kill or injure myself. For what—to face fear? This is the most ridiculous way to die ever! But having my son see me jump off what now seemed like a 50-foot cliff in the face of incredible fear trumped all rational thought.

I closed my eyes and jumped.

I could feel my body gaining speed in the decent.

The force of air altered my plan to hold my nose.

Abruptly, my body hit the deep cool water hard and awkwardly.

When I emerged to the surface in pain but alive, I heard Sam saying: “You okay, mom? Did you close your eyes? You landed pretty weird. You gotta keep your eyes open next time.”

I’m thinking: Next time?!

That was not my first heart-pounding physical leap of faith. Two years prior, Sam invited me to go skydiving with him and his cousin. I had the same terrifying fear when I leaned over the open fuselage loudly buzzing thousands of feet above the earth. Though an expert jumper was strapped tightly to my backside, my body and mind were reacting to the idea that I’m about to jump out of a fast moving airplane 13,000 feet above the earth. I’m about to do something completely reckless that may kill me. My hands are sweating even now while I write this.

I took one last look at Sam and my niece, took a deep calming breath and pushed off when I heard “GO!”
My eyes were open. I was breathing into it.

I was enjoying the fall!

After these two jumping experiences I learned that the thing with big jumps is to keep my eyes open and enjoy the fall. Leaps of faith create the amazing experiences I really want in life. They always feel scary and exciting because there is big risk involved. When I focus on all the negative outcomes it stops me from jumping and I stay exactly the same or I jump with eyes closed and miss the exhilarating experience of the fall.

Stay with me here… I believe that we are given the miraculous gift of life to play with the energies of the Universe, to see how amazing, impactful and meaningful our lives can become. When we choose to act courageously we are making a quantum leap. The energies of the quantum field behave entirely different from our normal laws of physics. When we take a quantum leap we are not adhering to what’s known and obvious, but leaping toward something great and exhilarating without knowing the outcome. We are here to courageously take quantum leaps as they are offered to us. We are asked to trust the leap.

How many times have you wanted something so much, but when it’s presented to you, you develop your list of reasons that this is not the exact right time, or you haven’t prepared enough, or you remind yourself of when you’ve jumped before and it didn’t go well? All good rational thoughts, but then you reject and miss the exhilarating possibilities that life is offering you. You stay safe. You remain sitting on the warm soft rock “life coaching” or you jump with your eyes closed and don’t enjoy the fall.

The Universe is demanding your courage to jump. You’ll never feel ready or fully prepared because by its very nature, the outcome is unknown. Life presents us with beautiful opportunities and experiences all the time. It’s energy is not rational, it’s exhilarating and scary. Every fiber of your body screams RUN AWAY or I NEED MORE TIME AND INFORMATION!

Leaps of faith are everywhere. You don’t have to jump off a cliff or out of an airplane. It’s not always a physical risk, but perhaps it’s an emotional or financial risk. You’ll never feel completely ready or prepared, but there’s something being offered to you that feels like what you really want. There is a quantum opportunity presenting itself to you right now that feels exciting and also scares the crap out of you. You choose. Stay safe, continue to wait for the “right” time, gather more information, or take the quantum leap of faith and enjoy the fall.

Four Seeds to Grow Great Gutsy Leaders

May 3, 2018 By Terese Cooke Bottner

Because it’s Spring and I’m desperate to start gardening, I’m sharing my four seeds of great gutsy leadership that take root from within. You know great gutsy leaders, and maybe you are one. We’ve seen them motivate hordes of people into action. We’ve seen them in locker rooms rallying every ounce of a team’s passion and grit. We’ve seen them coming into the office early or staying late to work with a teammate who is struggling, or bringing brilliant strategies to meetings. We’ve seen them in our homes and schools setting rules and boundaries, handing out consequences, nurturing us, and teaching us to be better, smarter, and more prepared.

We remember the great ones. They changed our lives for the better. So, what separates a person who out-ranks us, from a great leader? It’s what I call “the guts” of a leader… the good stuff that’s within that radiates out.

Who doesn’t want to be a great gutsy leader? It seems to me that’s what we should all be aspiring to. That’s who we should be hiring! That’s who we should be following when we ourselves aren’t leading!

My four seeds of great gutsy leadership are self-awareness, positive self-talk, positive energy, and a mindful practice. I also suggest consistent practices to nurture and grow your gutsiness.

Seed #1: Self-Awareness

Great gutsy leaders begin growing here! If you haven’t started already, create a clear concept of who the heck you are.

Define and accept your best self.
Review personality assessments and ask yourself these questions periodically to be more aware of your own patterns:

What values do I respect the most?
What are my strengths?
What are my weaknesses, and how am I working on them, or adapting?
How do I handle conflict?
When am I happiest?
What do I love about myself?
What is my purpose and life goals?
What do I enjoy most about leading others?

Now stay focused on the best you, not the self-conscious stuff that limits you. The best you that adds value to people’s lives and leads others to greatness.

Learn what others love about you!
Performance reviews are a good tool, but don’t wait; initiate feedback on your own.

When you see an opportunity, ask your team, your peers, your manager:
- What do you love about me?
- Have I pissed you off lately?
- How do you think I can improve?
When you invite feedback, your feedback to others will be more appreciated and motivational.

Seed #2: Positive Self-Talk

No level of obstacle can prevail in crippling a mind that’s continuously fed with positive self-talk.”
― Edmond Mbiaka

It’s true. You are your own best friend. Gutsy leaders know this.

Communicate positively to yourself.

Consistently compliment yourself out loud using your first name. Write yourself little love notes or inspiring thoughts. Stick them somewhere like your mirror, refrigerator, or desk. Yep, it sounds a little crazy, but it really works!
Reward yourself for a job well done. Give yourself a hug, pat yourself on the back, and send yourself a pajama gram.
Take time for yourself. Take a fun trip, take a walk, go fishing, read a book for pleasure, invite a friend to a movie… whatever makes you feel happy and revived. C’mon now! You deserve it!

Seed #3: Positive Energy

Radiating positive energy consistently inspires and energizes those around you. It’s infectious! Teams with leaders emitting an optimistic and limitless energy achieve at a higher level. This is how teams come from behind to win in the ninth inning. When most people say, “No way. We are done.” Gutsy leaders in the dugout say, “Keeping going! We can DO this!”

Stay present. Learn from the past, but don’t dwell in it. Plan for the future, but don’t waste energy on worry. When you are present you are calmer, a better listener, and a courageous visionary. What defines you is who you are in this moment.
Keep moving, learning, and having fun! Leaders who are physically, mentally, and socially active have an easier time radiating optimistic energy.
Take frequent trips out of your safety zone. Gutsy leaders are more comfortable with risk because they practice being brave. I’m not talking about anything too dangerous, but doing things that open your mind, body, and spirit. Possibilities might be practicing yoga, taking a trip to learn about a different culture, volunteering at a soup kitchen, taking a dance class, learning a new sport, taking on a challenging project, reading a poem or singing at an open-mic night, or hiking up a mountain. This is the stuff that feeds the limitless energy. The fear factor and ego are minimized. Now your default leadership mindset is open-minded and courageous.

Seed #4: Mindful Practice

A mindful leadership practice is a consistent time set aside to quiet your mind. A mindful practice allows you to be more creative, de-stress, increase concentration, and improve communication with others and yourself. You may call this meditation, journaling, or quiet time. It can be done on a walk in the woods, a jog along the beach, sitting on the floor of your bedroom or office, or in a comfy chair on the porch with a cup of tea. It’s most effective if you can hear your breath.

Morning Intention practice. Set quiet time in the morning to set your intentions for how you want your day to go. (5-30 minutes)
- Listen to your breath.
- Acknowledge what your grateful for.
- Set clear intentions on how you want to feel.
- Visualize how you will lead and communicate your best self.
- Detail how you want to serve and make people feel empowered.
- Visualize success.
Listen to your body, mind and spirit. Thank your physical and emotional symptoms of pain, chronic illness, low energy, high blood pressure, crabbiness, lack of patience, and lack of focus; then figure out and deal with the root cause. Life without balance, holding on to past emotions, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, worry, personal and professional relationship problems, and poor eating habits, are all root causes of symptoms. If you’re not functioning well, it’s difficult to be a great leader.
Evening Reflection practice. Take time at the end of the day to reflect on what went well and what didn’t.
- Listen to your breath.
- Give gratitude to all that you have and all that you don’t have. Give gratitude for what is working and what is not working for you.
- Ask yourself…
- What worked for me today?
- What can I let go that’s not serving me?
- What am I learning from the challenges?
- How can I improve as a leader?
- Say aloud or write down something positive about yourself.
- Say aloud or write something positive about your team.
- Make notes to improve.

Great gutsy leaders love themselves! It’s not arrogance or lack of humility. They have taken the time to grow; to know and understand themselves. They see themselves in others, and are emotionally intelligent. They are limitless, positive, and consistently step up to mindfully serve and lead others to a higher place. Great gutsy leaders radiate to elevate.

Add some water and sunshine and now you know how to grow a great gutsy leader!

Happy Spring!

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Three Keys to Inspire Action

April 5, 2017 By Terese Cooke Bottner

Dynamic leaders are masters of their message. When presenting, they incorporate three key components to INSPIRE ACTION: KNOWLEDGE, CONFIDENCE and PASSION. Effective communication is a marriage of mental and physical qualities. Some of us naturally have more of one than the other, but dynamic leaders who inspire action, showcase both the physical and mental attributes of communication.

Knowledge is power.”
— Sir Francis Bacon

INSPIRING ACTION requires mental preparation. The KNOWLEDGE you are prepared with organized and relevant content. You are connected to your audience because you have an understanding of them and their needs through experience and/or research. You don’t waste your audience’s precious time; you tell them only what they need to know. Your presentations feel interactive to your audience because you welcome their input. You make the audience feel that you’re in this together. You know, no matter what your audience throws at you — tough questions or irrelevant responses — you will be ready, because you’ve already worked with your team to field the toughest questions, and you’ve studied all the angles. When you are knowledgeable, people listen to you.

A man of confidence will be trusted because he first trusts in his ability.”
— Felix Nyemike Nkadi

When you convey CONFIDENCE, you are physically communicating in many ways. Eye contact is the number one most effective physical communication skill to convey confidence. With effective eye contact you connect on a personal level and make everyone in the room feel included. You don’t hesitate with non-words (i.e., ah, um, like, you-know, etc.). You are not afraid of silence. You open and relax your gestures. You stand tall and move with purpose. You smile and incorporate appropriate and relevant humor in your conversations and presentations. You listen. You dress appropriately and impeccably for every occasion, and your handshake is firm. When you present, you present; you don’t talk through a slide deck. Confidence is being at ease in every environment, because you have made an effort to see the world and connect with all kinds of people. When you convey confidence people watch you.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whether you’re selling widgets or asking an investor for $20 million, you have to convey PASSION. A leader’s passion is the motivation behind every action. Passion is the motivation to buy, to invest, to vote, to protest, to go into battle, and to love. Passion comes from within. It is heartfelt. With every presentation you must find your passion. Ask yourself questions like: How will your product make your clients’ life better? Why should we care? When this idea is fully embraced, how will it change your community or the world for the better?

Now that you have found your passion, you need to control it. People can get so caught up in their passion that they are perceived as nervous, rambling, or even crazy. Passion needs to be controlled in order to utilize it to inspire action.

Passion can be conveyed in many ways, but here are my top three presentations tools for conveying passion: Voice Inflection, Pausing, and Eye Contact. Voice inflection is crucial in conveying passion. When you’re excited about your message your voice may get louder and you may talk faster. When you want your audience to listen intently, you can slow your speaking pace and drop your voice to a whisper. Another way your passion is made obvious, yet controlled, is the use of pauses. Pausing is a great control tool. It allows your audience to process your last statement, while you gather your thoughts, and adds a bit of drama to your message. It’s also a great way to control your excitement. When you’re passionate, you tend to talk fast–not necessarily a bad thing, but your message can get lost on the audience if they don’t have time to process, and you may get out of breath or lose your train of thought. So pause, breathe, and think. Eye contact is a great tie-in to pausing. Holding eye contact with one audience member while you make a statement is impactful. “Eye-flitting” will be perceived as not connected, or even a little off-balance. With these three presentation tools you can imbue your message with passion.

Absence of passion is a two-way street of no belief. If you can’t convey passion, your audience perceives that you don’t whole-heartedly believe in your idea, plan, or product so they, in turn, don’t believe.

We have all seen presenters who act confident. The audience will watch, but if they don’t hear relevant & meaningful content, then it’s merely a performance. People will watch, but not take action. On the other hand, a presenter who is knowledgeable and prepared, but fails to convey confidence or passion, will not fully engage the audience. The audience may hear the message, but not take action. When the audience doesn’t hear or feel the presenter’s passion, they are not motivated or inspired to respond in any way.

One of these components without the others is likely to lead your audience to respond in numerous ways: a sudden urge to use the facilities, or at the very least their Blackberries; a strong compulsion to nap or day dream; to stare at you with perplexed faces; and/or to cut the presentation short with no plan of action.

KNOWLEDGE + CONFIDENCE + PASSION = ACTION

DYNAMIC LEADERS INSPIRE ACTION. When you communicate effectively, KNOWLEDGE, CONFIDENCE and PASSION come together. Your audience will listen to you, watch you, and be inspired to take action.