What did you do of Relevance today?

Have you ever read something that stopped you dead in your tracks? Caused you to put the book down for a second while the reframing of the world around you took place?

I have; many times. Most recently, last week reading Chris Guillebeau’s The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris described being at a conference and watching the keynote speaker, a former Vietnam prisoner of war tell his amazing story of survival and eventual escape. Chris had one question right through the presentation: This might be a great story, but what’s this guy been doing for the past 30 years?

BAM! (Sound of being punched in the stomach; hard.)

I realised in that moment, that although I’ve been moving away from being the guy with no legs for a while now; I need to move further away. I put it this way speaking in front of my peers at the Canadian Association of Profession Speakers a few days ago: 

“What scares me most about change is that I won’t. That in five years time I’ll be on stage somewhere telling the story of how I lost my legs; and if that happens, I will have failed. I’ll have failed because having no legs is no longer challenging for me; it’s become irrelevant. And if it’s irrelevant to me; it’s irrelevant to my audience also.”

Does that mean I don’t tell people what happened? No. I let video tell that story. And then we move on.
We move on to where it gets interesting.
Into what was once unchartered territory…

Because what’s relevant is what the loss of my legs has taught me in relation to you. In relation to what you need to do.

Tough question then for you:

Is what you’re doing today relevant?
If the answer is no; what can we do to fix that?