Hey there.

It was 1983, I was in all my buck-toothed, tomboy, frizzy-headed glory, and my junior high school had just announced the annual talent show.

By this point in my life (I was 12), I'd already made plans to move to New York, fill a rented apartment with plastic furniture (I have no explanation), and get famous on Broadway. I'd added "future star" to my loopy signature. I sang incessantly.

So, of course, I had to audition for this talent show.

I blame the audition judges for what happened next.

Friend, they should never have put me in the line-up.

It's not that I couldn't sing. The problem was the piece I'd selected.

"Maybe" from the musical Annie.

A capella.

Just me, standing on stage in front of hundreds of rabid, smelly children in various stages of puberty.

Singing a musical theater ballad.

In Def Leppard's heyday.

I got a few lines in... "Betcha they're young. Betcha they're smart"... when the laughter began.

By the time I got to "They'll be there calling me 'baby'...." there were boos.

I got booed off the stage.

I burst into tears and ran—corduroy pants swishing against my chunky thighs—behind the curtain. I vowed to never put myself in a spot like that again.

But of course I did, because kids are resilient creatures. They fall, get up, do it again. Fall, get up, do it again. Fall, get up, do it again.

When do we grownups lose our fall-get-up-do-it-again?

For many of us, I think it might be when we start giving more weight to what other people say about us than what we say about us. When we get booed off one too many stages.

Pep Talk #007: Get up. Do it again.

I'm not going to give you a fail-forward lecture. Instead, I just want you to think about this question: What would you still be doing today if you'd never been booed off the stage?

(I'm talking about something you want to be doing, of course. I'm terrible at golf. But because I think golf is, well, dumb, I'm not going to keep trying to play golf.)

Would you start a new/another business?
Would you put a new offer out into the world?
Would you pick up a hobby you'd decided was a waste of time?
Would you start emailing your list? (Ahem.)

What would you still be doing today if you'd never been booed off the stage?

Stomping and cheering for you,
Kell