The Power of Reflecting on Mortality to Turn Fear of Failure Into the Courage to Create and Connect
We all want the courage to express and create, to connect and lead, so our lives can have meaning.
Held back by fear, we are blocked in our creativity and reaching for connection.
What will people think?
What if I fail?
I might be criticized
And that’s enough to stop the flow. To never learn the language, make the friend at work, kiss the girl, go to the ball, travel to that place, raise that idea at work, write that book.
Nothing makes us grateful and fearless like a legacy mindset -- How will my future self feel about this? What choices would my future self want me to have made now? -- and the perspective that time is short and therefore precious.
We become freer to create, connect, reach out, and lead, at home and work.
And there are timeless tools to "remember," as Steve Jobs put it, as philosophers from Greek Stoic, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, and many other traditions have put it. There are ways to remind ourselves into perspective and gratitude.
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life." – Steve Jobs
Cameron cut his teeth telling moving, fact-based stories as a young trial lawyer right out of Harvard Law School, as a public speaker for the Corporate Executive Board, and as a founder pitching startup companies to investors, partners, and media.
He brings audiences and readers the diversity of thought and experience of a writer, an entrepreneur, a lawyer, an executive coach and talent builder, and a passionate student of:
great writing and literature
history and psychology
the world’s wisdom traditions, myths, and religions
nature and technology
In the last decade Cameron has spoken to audiences about disrupting talent and building teams, storytelling for fundraising and employer brands, the risks, rewards, and ethics of GenAI, and the courage-making, gratitude-boosting power of the Legacy Mindset [link to the sub-page for that particular speech].
Instead of worrying about all that could go wrong, we can train ourselves in the perspective of what our future selves would care about, in 20 years from now or even toward the end, and we can import that legacy mindset into the present so we can be bold and take action. It works!
Cameron shares personal stories and draws from his experience building meaning for people at the end of life (and writing a book about walking his mother to the other side, in Ordinary Magic), his study and writings on the world’s wisdom traditions, science-backed tools of positivity, the resilience required to start (and often fail) in 12 startups, and 20 years of coaching people into their best selves to teach audiences the stories techniques of bravening - ways to remind ourselves into courage, perspective, and gratitude.
How to build their Legacy Mindset muscles
How to Turn Fear into Fuel, and transform hesitation into momentum.
How greater purpose can get us into the Flow state of innovation and productivity
How to build resilience against the little deaths of failure, rejection, and criticism – so they can innovate and play
Empowering a Legacy Mindset
Cameron's Bravening™ Toolkit
Cameron gives audiences tools tested by both science and the world’s wisdom traditions to empower them to toggle into a legacy mindset at will: in brief moments of reflecting on how short our time here really is, in the moments of clarity and gratitude for others and our lives and work that follow, and in visualizations of our future selves that thrust us into the higher perspective that bravens us against failure and rejection. The tools for courage and clarity Cameron shares are part of his Bravening™ Toolkit.
WHY do people tend to want bravening?
Fear stunts the human genius inside every one of us.
The greatest barriers we have to engaging and leading, creating and innovating, are our core human fears of failure and rejection. Imagine what we could do with our wild and precious lives if we were more fearless.
How can a legacy mindset make people braver?
Reflecting on legacy and mortality famously focus our priorities.
Steve Jobs knew. “Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.” Ron Shaich, founder of Panera, builder of Au Bon Pain, backer of Cava and Tatte, knows. Every year, on some tropical island, Mr. Shaich conducts a yearly premortem on himself.
Yes, there are proven tools for making human beings more fearless. Tools that make us braver. Freed of our fears of criticism and failure, we finally reach out or even commit, we create, we let go, we lead and innovate, we are grateful. We stop putting off what our future self would like us to do today. Welcome to the bravening.
How do we get a legacy mindset?
Cameron shares his own authentic personal stories and draws in audiences with wit and comic timing, a unique eloquence, and some acting ability (karaoke is extra). He talks about the tools used in wisdom traditions and approved by science.
Cameron is prolific. Inhales information, ruminates on, muses on, and processes it, and thinks of ways of expressing it. In writing, speaking, posting, and during a phase some years ago, in karaoke. These strengths all make for better public speaking.
But for much of his career Cameron wasn’t willing to risk publishing most of the countless articles, essays, and other writings he researched and wrote. His fears limited his strengths.
His story of learning the ways to braven himself to our often paralyzing fear of being seen or criticized is central to his ability to show audiences how to braven themselves.
He also has invaluable experience coaching hundreds of people, one-on-one, in how to go beyond their fears.
But he’s also helped other people with their sense of meaning at the end of life. He developed a passion for helping people make meaning: in their jobs, their career brands and their relationships, and as they grow into the wisdom that we don’t have all the time in the world. That it’s precisely because life is so short that we have no choice but to seize the day -- if we can only keep reminding ourselves.
And in so many ways, Cameron’s life and work have shown us how to memento mori, or remember death, so that we may really live. Perhaps the most well-known and beloved example is his love story at the end of life, Ordinary Magic . . .
In a true story of carpe diem, Cameron's love story at the end of life is a powerful and moving story of how we can create a legacy of meaning and memories for ourselves and those we love, and how the ordinary magic of love and meaning can bring us everyday miracles.
Life is a quiet journey where every step tells a story. The true depth of love is understood by those who keep their promises. Sometimes, the most ordinary moments turn out to be the most magical. Memories are the light that guides us, even through the darkest paths.
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