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

[Music] so I know the secret to getting anything 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 fear of not being good enough but all of those things stem from one core place and that self-doubt self-doubt is why we get a crappy job it's why we don't get the body we want or make the money we deserve and stay in relationships much longer than we know we should self-doubt is why we never change

and we don't take action so then what is self-doubt self-doubt is a story we tell ourselves that we can't do something and that it's not possible how we'll get rejected and fail which is why it's oftentimes smart people often fail when you're really smart you're really good at predicting all the possible negative outcomes so you never take action that's why it's my belief that boldness is a stronger indicator of success than intelligence smart 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't be smart but it's boldness that's the secret sauce boldness is what put you on the path to success mmm I need some water so when I was 18 years old I had a really big dream I'm from a little small town in Canada called Winnipeg and my big dream in life was to be a VJ for muchmusic do you guys know what that is that's like MTV for you guys so I I wanted to

be like the female Carson Daly I mean I'm kind of dating myself but you guys got got the point right so I knew the job was super competitive so I knew I thought to myself okay I need to make a killer killer demo tape and that demo tape will get me the job cut to Keanu Reeves Keanu Reeves was the biggest movie star of all time and unbeknownst to me he always wanted to be in Shakespeare right and he just finished speed the movie and he thought what a better time and place than to go

to Winnipeg Manitoba where it's minus 40 and perform Hamlet so I thought to myself that's a great moment I'm gonna get Keanu Reeves to be on my demo tape for muchmusic and I'm gonna get my dream job so I told my family I told my friends and of course everyone just laughed at me the next day when I knew he was in town I went to the theater where he was performing stood in the back and waited now ten minutes turned into 20 20 turned into 30 30 turned into over an hour and now I'm

frostbitten my friend I took with me went home long ago and yet I was still determined five minutes later there he comes walking out of the back of the theater I boldly walk through the all the girls and all the media and all the cameras and I tap him on the shoulder and I say Keanu you're gonna be my ticket to my dream job and he of course looks at me dumbfounded and says how would I just give you an 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 dream job so determined he of course tries to blow me off and says give me your phone number and I will call you when I have a couple minutes so I grabbed some girl who I don't know and she had an eyeliner in her purse I took the eyeliner I took my gum wrapper in my in my pocket 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 everyone laughs at me and teases me day two same thing happens but now more kids know and now everyone's teasing me like oh ho yeah do Keanu call you like ha ha like what a loser you are of course no call and same thing happened day three but I go home on that third day my mom says did you hear the answering machine I'm like no and at the time of course I'm dating myself an answering machine we didn't have voicemails back then okay just letting you know so then I go press

play and what do I hear I hear a man's voice saying on the phone with my mom picking up is Jennifer there my mother then says who is this and I hear this is Keanu calling for Jennifer she home my mother says she's at school call back and hangs up on him so I was like oh my god the next message same thing but it's kion who's saying hi this is Jennifer this is my phone number you were saying something to me about something and I wasn't sure what you were saying but call me back

I was freaking out right freaking so once I got my composure I called him back explained to him very boldly what I was talking about and the next thing you know two days later he's sitting on my parents sofa in our living room with my three friends holding amateur camcorders and someone holding a boom hitting him in the face and I had my Oprah moment all right I got that demo tape now look now did I get the greatest demo tape of all time you bet I did did I get the job interview at MuchMusic

I sure did did I get the audition yes I did you're right you're right did I get the job hell no I did not get the job so why am I even telling you this story and the reason why I'm telling you this story is that was a very pivotal moment for me in my life it taught me a real big truth about success which is you need to ask for what you want period you need to ask you know that saying is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease it's actually quite true in a

time now we are bombarded with information overload from every influence or expert telling you how to be successful do this do that do the other thing when it's really the most basic simple thing you can do you need to stop deliberating stop planning stop creating flowcharts and just act now in the words of another fellow Canadian you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don't take so when you think to yourself what does boldness really mean it basically comes down to this you chase what you want and you don't take what you can

get the problem is most of us live on default we default to what's convenient we take what's available and we acquiesce to what's in front of us now what I've realized is that there is a really big misconception of what boldness really is people assume that boldness is something you're either born with or you're not but that's actually quite not sure that's quite that's not quite true boldness is a skill like anything else you need to practice it you need to harness it to get better and better at it there is a mindset that I

developed and it's called a 10% target and what that is is basically very simple the idea is that you whatever you want most in life you make ten attempts the problem is most people don't make ten attempts the truth is most people don't even make one attempt they call themselves out before they even try and the purpose of the 10% target is to get very comfortable at failing 90% of the time now I guarantee if you make 10 attempts at anything one will be successful because here's what I know either one you'll get the thing

you want or two you will get something that you never even knew available I want to take one step back because this is what normally happens what most people do is the reason why most people don't get the job they want is because they don't actually go for the job they want they see what's available on monster.com or LinkedIn and then the reason why most people don't get the money they want is guess what they don't ask for the money that they want actually a survey was taken of over a hundred and sixty thousand people

who actually really believed that they deserve to make more money and two-thirds of those people never even asked for a raise but the seventy percent the people who did ask for a raise got it what does that tell you now I want to go back because I was making another point about the ten percent target the ten percent target like I was saying does two things number one it makes you comfortable with failing ninety percent of the time number two it gives you the resilience and a skill that's the wrong slide let's go back to

be comfortable another example when you go to a restaurant most of us what we do is we order what's off on the menu but really what being bold means is ordering from off the menu because well because I'll tell you when I go to a restaurant what I do is I see a flood of ingredients and then I typically kind of like make my own mish-mosh now I think that's being very bold however I'm sure the server thinks it's very very annoying and possibly more at times than not my food will be spat in but

I get what I want and they ask very nicely but the reason for that is when you are comfortable with asking for the small things in life it gives you this 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 do you get comfortable Baili 9 out of 10 times and the answer is practice the more you do something over and over and over again that becomes your new normal just how you would train your body to be

strong you train your brain to be bold ha ha see your brain now is bold with this beautiful picture thank you so I have one action item here for everybody here which is write down anything you want most in life and then make ten attempts at it and it has to be ten attempts you have to embrace the 10% target you have to commit to making 10 attempts because that's how the idea is you are basically chasing what you want and not just taking what you can get now I had a whole section here about

all of my colossal failures and how they led to a million successes and I took it out because we've all had that we've all had failures we've all had successes and the truth is it doesn't really matter what matters is I'm living proof that when you chase what you want and don't just take what you can get you were exponentially half more happy and more satisfied with your life the one thing that I know for sure about the ten percent target is that it works a hundred percent of the time because you either get the

one thing you want or you get the thing that you were meant to do now I wasn't the fastest athlete I wasn't the prettiest girl or the smartest in the class by far but I still became a best-selling author an entrepreneur who sold companies for millions of dollars co-founder of a breast cancer charity that raises thousands of dollars a year after year all by failing 90% of the time and you can too you could fail to succeed by failing you can be fail you can fail to become successful by just chasing what you want and

not taking what you get thank you [Applause] you