The miracle of PostSecret

Well praise be and hallelujah!  My thoughts are finally cogent enough to write about this weekend.  So there’s the first miracle – I’m getting some rest and my head is getting straightened out again.  🙂

This weekend I attended a PostSecret live show.  PostSecret is a project that invites people to send anonymous secrets in on postcards and a handful are posted each Sunday at www.PostSecret.com.  Some are very personal and heart-felt, some are silly, some are completely heartbreaking, and there’s a bit of everything in between.  If you’re not familiar with PostSecret, GO THERE NOW.  Seriously.  I’ll wait here until you come back.

Good?  Good.

The man who started this project, Frank Warren, is one of the great geniuses of our time and I was SO excited to see him in person.  I talk about his work a lot and have been wanting to catch one of his shows for several years.  During the live show, he shows some secrets that never made it onto the website or into the books and then he invites members of the audience to come to a microphone and share their secret publicly.

His work and my work are kind of like kissing cousins – helping people to share their stories and secrets so that the guilt/shame/whatever doesn’t hold them back anymore.  We go about it in very different ways, but ultimately the goal and the results are similar.

A couple of the things that stood out to me that night –

A young man who is about to graduate college said that now that he has a fancy degree, “I have to do something important with my life and that scares the shit out of me.”  Boy, can I relate!

A young woman – probably 20 or 21 years old – said that she makes lots of excuses to her family about why she doesn’t take care of her diabetes, but the real reason is that she wants to lose weight.  (Yes, I looked it up and diabetes can cause weight loss in some cases).  That young woman was incredibly brave to stand up and make her confession. I pray that she had people with her that night who love her and will help her take the next step on her journey.

And here’s my big secret from the evening – I expected Frank Warren to be a rock star presenter.  Given all that he has accomplished, I expected to be completely dazzled by his showmanship and charisma.  But he’s just a regular guy.  Don’t get me wrong – he was terrific.  But I talk myself into thinking that unless I’m a rock star speaker with the charisma of a Bill Clinton or an Iyanla Vanzant, I won’t make it in this business.  The truth is that people respond when I speak and that’s enough.  I can learn a lot from Frank Warren about just being me.  It’s okay to bring all of myself to the table and trust that it will be enough.

Thanks Frank.  Your work inspires me.