…you can’t lose.

Before giving a recent speech, I went to the reopening of Casa Bonita in Denver.

As a child, eating the food at Casa Bonita was a >75% chance of getting food poisoning. That’s why my entire life, the only thing I ever ate there was the sopapillas. You couldn’t enter the experience without buying the food, so they basically forced food poisoning on an entire population. At least Black Bart’s cave was worth it!

So the day before an important speech? To go to Casa Bonita was madness. What if I got sick? What if I couldn’t talk?

Well here’s the thing about good stories: Let’s say the worst happened. Let’s say that I got food poisoning from Casa Bonita, and that’s why I couldn’t give my talk. Any dyed-in-the-wool Colorado kid would see that as a badge of honor.

I could think of no better story than to have a speech cancelled for that reason.

If we reframe our experiences as potential good stories to tell, it takes a lot of the pressure off of the outcome.