Hey Everyone!

Welcome to my old blog. My new blog can be found at http://takethestairsspeaker.blogstream.com. It includes the regular updates on my Take The Stairs World Tour!

If you haven't heard yet, I'm climbing the 10 tallest buildings in the world in 2009 to raise money for charity. More importantly we're trying to get 50,000 people to make a public committment to Take The Stairs more in their everyday life!

People who sign up for the tour will also be invited to join me on the dates when I climb the giant buildings but they certainly don't have to. They do have to Take The Stairs more in their everyday lives.

Join the Take The Stairs Tour:
Click Here

Find out more:
Take The Stairs Website

“Faith provides Protection in times of Fear. Faith provides Peace in times of Frustration. Faith provides Perspective in times of Failure.”

This line taken from my championship speech proves once again that the person who needed to hear the message of Faith over the last 9 months was me. Faith was not only the message of my championship speech but the lesson of my journey. It was a journey that started on 8/26/05 where Faith brought me comfort after my near-death car accident with a cow. Then Faith continuously brought me Peace in the months and months of Frustration trying to prepare for the World Championship of Public Speaking. Now, sadly as of 8/26/06, I am relying once again on Faith, only this time it is to provide Perspective as to why I have failed, because this past Saturday I lost in the final round in the 2006 World Championship of Public Speaking.

Faith has to somehow provide an answer for “why” after 9 months of living and breathing 1 goal, 1 focus, 1 purpose; after 104 free speeches; after over 200 complete speech revisions; and literally after over 1000 evaluations I find myself-at least this time around- among the masses who dreamt largely, and dared greatly but found themselves in the end falling short of the ultimate achievement. (And, to add injury to insult I find myself with an intense case of food poisoning over the last 56 hours.)

While I had Faith from the beginning, 10/27/05, the hours immediately preceding the championship seemed to hint that things were not going to fall into place for me. Starting with uncontrollable airport hassles, a horribly unlucky draw of speaking order (#2 of 10), and capped off with incredibly intense speaking competition.

I honestly didn’t think it was possible to do everything in my power to prepare, put all of my energy and effort into something, and to pour my heart and soul out on stage and to still get beaten straight up, but that’s exactly what happened. Ed Hearn from Region 5 wrote a brilliant speech called “Bouncing Back” which used his childhood inflatable punching bag as an analogy for the persistence it takes to be successful at life. No matter how you sliced it Ed’s speech definitely deserved to win.

Many people are curious to know if I will try for the championship again. At this point I would have to say no. It’s not that this journey hasn’t been worth it, but originally when I started I thought that maybe if I was able to pull this off, it would be my big break. It didn’t take much research to figure out that that was not the case because as my favorite joke goes: “I’m one of 10 finalists for the World Championship of Public Speaking. It’s a lot like American Idol-except nobody cares.” My friend and mentor Eric was once again proven correct by saying that the person who I would become in the process would be invaluable, but the title and the trophy really aren’t that important. I will have to find something big to pursue next, but I’m not sure what it is yet…

The FAITH FIGHT: Are you Disciplined enough to maintain your Faith even in moments where you are not able to understand why things have turned out differently than how you have planned? For me the only way I can do this is to remind myself that Faith is what got me started on my journey, it’s what brought me here thus far, and even though I can’t understand why it has happened I have to trust that it is only to prepare me for something better. I don’t think it is wrong to let God know that you’re upset with him or to even scream in frustration. Ultimately though, we have to reach a point where we say “I am not able to see the whole picture of what God has planned and I believe that he cares enough about me that he will not let me bathe in failure for long but instead he will someday soon raise me up once again.” In other words, “you make plans but you don’t decide.”

Do you have a topic you would like to see me write about? Do you have thoughts on one of my previous posts? Do you have tips for all of us for staying Disciplined? What areas of your life are you or aren’t you currently being Disciplined? Please post your thoughts, you will get a response. RoryVaden is a 24 year old youth motivational speaker and comedian who talks to high school and college students about interpreting the messages of pop culture and incorporating more personal Discipline into their lives.

If we truly got to hear all of the Discipline stories of the celebrities I think it would be so uplifting to the world, but we don’t. Why? Lots or reasons probably. One reason that is particularly important and one that is a phenomenon is called the ego disease. It happens when the general public doesn’t get to see your Discipline, they only see you’re outcome. Then, once you are recognized for your accomplishment, a transformation takes place in the mind of the performer.

The instant fame syndrome is such a curious and powerful phenomenon. There are now 2 small ways that I have experienced this. The first time was at Southwestern, and the second is happening now with Toastmasters. What happens is this; you put your heart and soul into a cause. You pay the price, you do all the behind the scenes work, and suddenly one day you are recognized in a huge way. People come up to you with eyes of amazement; they look at you as some kind of superhero, a God, a mystical person who has been given abilities that most people have not. You are somehow the chosen one, the lucky one, the fateful one.

The near impossible feat for every top performer or person that this happens to is to reject this praise. When you have really put everything you have into championing a cause or a mission and it finally comes to pass, you’re already naturally starving ego lusts to be recognized. Here’s the ultimately sad thing: people give you praise and encouragement when you least need it; when you’re on top.

When that happens enough times you actually start to think that you are a celebrity, part chosen one, deserving of all, the fateful one. This is what people are talking about when they say success goes to your head. It happens because people look at you with these adoring appreciative and sometimes worshiping eyes that you start to believe you are chosen and deserving somehow. The truth is though, that you’re not. You’re nothing. You are a self conscious scared little boy or girl who constantly worries about what other people think, just like you’ve always been. You’re afraid, you feel alone but now you have your little groupies telling you otherwise and it feels so good to believe them. It becomes a drug and it infects your mind.

The reality is that you got to where you are by Discipline. By paying the price, by doing what others were not willing to do. NOT because you are chosen, lucky, fateful, or somehow deserving of worship. Keeping this perspective is what it means to be humble. Anyone who has ever tasted this celebrity feeling understands that it is foe because when you leave that group you feel all your power and confidence flood away. It was a sad day when I realized I was no longer the big man on campus anymore at high school (when I went to college). Then once the new young generation moved in at Southwestern I was a “has-been” superstar just like all the rest. Here’s the thing with the World Championship of Public Speaking: whether I win or lose, the reality is that nobody really cares-except maybe Toastmasters, my family, and me. Put me in a room full of truly the greatest speakers and comedians in the world and I’m nothing. I’m a joke, I don’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as most of them. Yet in certain situations around certain people my ego will be pampered with adoring eyes. This type of recognition is a lustful drug that has a dangerous impact on your perspective.

DISCIPLINE TAKE AWAY I say all that to say this (as my mentor always says). You are not your accomplishments. You are not your awards. You are not your ego or the attention that you receive from others. That is all false. You are the Discipline that you have developed; you derive self worth from the rent that you have paid to get where you are in whatever you do, at any age of your life. That is something to be proud of, which is what makes you better than every man you meet in some way and not as good as every man you meet in another. That balances out to “you are as good as every man you meet but no better.” Let not an accomplishment, an award, a title, or a bunch of groupies ever determine your value. They are false and they will not go with you into the deepest and darkest places of your life.

Do you have a topic you would like to see me write about? Do you have thoughts on one of my previous posts? Do you have tips for all of us for staying Disciplined? What areas of your life are you or aren’t you currently being Disciplined? Please post your thoughts, you will get a response. RoryVaden is a 23 year old youth motivational speaker and comedian who talks to high school and college aged kids about interpreting the messages of pop culture and incorporating more personal Discipline into their lives.

So why do we do this, why do we wait? I think a large part of it has to do with pop culture. It’s what we see on TV. We see the lottery winners, the game show contestants, the publisher clearing house give a way, the awards shows. We hear about Lebron James, Carrie Underwood, Dr. Dre discovering Eminem, and whoever the next big star is and we think “see it happened for them, why hasn’t it happened to me.” Why do you think American Idol is the biggest television show in history! Every single person who watches the show is living vicariously through the contestants in some way. It has tapped into some of our most vulnerable and intimate personal desires, the desire to be discovered.

Wake up! That’s not the real world! Remember that 99.9% of what we see on TV is .1% of what is happening in the world. Even if that “lucky break” did happen, it wouldn’t change anything about you. Why? Because you didn’t do anything to deserve it, you were just lucky, so by definition you don’t have the power to reproduce it. I think that the reality probably is (I don’t know because I’m just a normal dude) that the “instant overnight lucky coincidental big break” that we see on TV isn’t instant or lucky or fate at all for most celebrities. It was the net present value of all the actions of DISCIPLINE that person had taken in their life all piling up so big that it happened for them! Their dream came true. Winning the lottery is not a dream come true.

I’ve had my fair share of good things happen. My full ride scholarship, winning the student excellence award at Southwestern, getting selected for commercials, meeting someone like Eric Chester, and recently advancing to the World Championship of Public speaking. These may look like big breaks to some, at times they even do to me. But the fact is that I worked harder than anyone else when no one was watching, when no one cared, when no one noticed except me. Then I have 500 adults come up to me after winning the regional championship and they look at me like I’m some kind of child prodigy. Like I was destined it for it, it was given to me, that I caught a “lucky break!”

Now to you and most of the average American citizens this isn’t a big deal, but to Toastmasters I’m a celebrity! But Prodigy? The chosen one? Lucky break? Fate? YEAH RIGHT! They didn’t see me performing for 20 clubs in 14 days, they weren’t there when I was delivering a speech in the back of a Perkins restaurant to 4 people. They weren’t there when I was crying in my car because I felt like I was going to blow the opportunity of a lifetime. They weren’t there when I was watching film of my horrible speech at 4 am in the morning. Neither we’re you! And when it comes to celebrities, neither were any of us!

I believe that when we see celebrities on TV it is the equivalent of seeing a valedictorian crowned at high school graduation, or a team being given some sort of championship, or someone winning American Idol. All we see is the finished product, we don’t see everything that went into it; we don’t understand the kind of commitment it takes to accomplish something like that. It can do a couple of things to us. First, we can think, “I could never do that” which is BS and completely disempowering to our life. Or, we think “why haven’t I been discovered yet, why haven’t I caught my big break?” Which is even more BS and ultimately sadder because it means we wait around forever and then we finally settle on the best thing that comes our way. If you are lucky enough to encounter success, to accomplish your dream then you will face an even bigger challenge, find out what it is next time…

DETERMINED DISCIPLINE What is the cure then to finding our big break? How do we change this? DISCIPLINE! You go after the things you want, you sprint after them. Even if you don’t know you’re going in the right direction, you take off full blast with a commitment that you are going to put in whatever it takes to make this work. You go “all in” to something that you don’t know is going to work out, but you pay the price. You stop waiting for people to discover you and you go get them! What do I mean by get them? You call them, email them, fly to meet them, you sell out to your dream and you go after it like nobody’s business. What will start to happen is that you, as a bi-product, will accomplish things that people have no choice but to notice. I believe that a person that is this committed, this fueled by passion is one of the most powerful forces in the world. When someone decides on their purpose, (not finds it because if you really look you know deep down what you want more than anything) they go full launch and there isn’t a force strong enough in the world to stop them.

Do you have a topic you would like to see me write about? Do you have thoughts on one of my previous posts? Do you have tips for all of us for staying Disciplined? What areas of your life are you or aren’t you currently being Disciplined? Please post your thoughts, you will get a response. RoryVaden is a 23 year old youth motivational speaker and comedian who talks to high school and college aged kids about interpreting the messages of pop culture and incorporating more personal Discipline into their lives.

It might be a better question to ask, “Why are you waiting?” I recently discovered something sad about myself. I’ve been waiting my whole life. This is fairly intimate here, but I write this because I assume everyone goes through this on some level. I’ve been waiting my whole life to be discovered. If I was at a job, I was waiting for my boss’s boss to walk in one day and finally recognize how compelling my work was to the organization and that I would somehow be begged to help run the company because of my obvious expertise. I’ve been waiting my whole life to finally catch my big break, to finally be discovered by some producer or director or agent who instantly saw the potential in me to be one of the world’s most famous celebrities. Sound stupid? It is. It is ridiculously stupid, but it’s the truth and my bet is that you do it too.

I know some people who call themselves “hopeless romantics,” they are people who think that they are just too nice to date most people. The truth is (and I’ve spent time here too) that they are waiting to be discovered. They want the man or woman of their dreams to somehow stumble curiously into their life, open up a conversation and instantly see all the levels and depths to their inner most being. They tell themselves “I’m too complex for most people to ever really get to know me.” What is that? It’s an excuse. All of these examples are excuses. They are rationalities that we make to ourselves so that we don’t have to work at getting noticed. We want someone else to notice us, and then we trick ourselves into thinking that we deserve that, that we have somehow earned it over the rest of the world. What ends up happening? You end up waiting.

You wait your whole career for your boss to walk by and say “wow you are so amazing, we need to promote you instantly and throw money at you.” You wander through the mall thinking, “maybe today is the day that I bump into someone famous and they instantly see my potential for celebrity glory.” A good student thinks “why aren’t there colleges throwing scholarships in my face trying desperately to recruit me to be a part of their school and someday be a famous alumni.” Romantics think “Maybe tonight the person I’ve been waiting for will finally walk up to me and instantly appreciate the depths of me.” A speaker/comedian thinks “I can’t believe my phone isn’t ringing off the hook from people who want to hire me to hear my message.” Again, if this sounds stupid, that’s because it is. The sad truth that I mentioned at the beginning is that I have had every one of these thoughts; in fact they have dominated a large part of my life.

They function as excuses to not have to take action. To not have to go out and meet the people you need to be successful. To not have to take chances on meeting someone who may be the person of your dreams. These create opportunities for us to sit around convincing ourselves that it is someone else’s responsibility to promote us, recognize us, fall in love with us, hire us, or whatever. Projected out over a lifetime, this leads to a life of settling; settling for the best thing that came around, “it wasn’t my dream, but it/he/she isn’t bad, so I’ll take it.” What kind of life is that? No wonder were not inspired to get up in the morning.

Discipline Ding Dong STOP IT! Stop waiting. Stop waiting for the right time, the right place, and the right circumstances. Stop waiting for someone else to do it for you. Truly listen to what you heart is calling, urging, begging you to take action on and start moving in that direction. Go now! Write down what it is you want, develop as much of the plan as you can see, then find someone who is living the life you want. Make them your best friend. Find out everything they know about how they got there. Listen to them. Don’t listen to the nega-tudes that you meet along the way, the people who have never done what you are trying to do and the people who are probably not going after what they want to do. The clock is ticking; you only have so many opportunities to go after your dream before you settle for something. Settling for something will cause you to settle for something else. Then settling becomes a habit. Then you are miserable and then you die. Sad? It is. It is also the reality for an unfortunate number of people, especially in this country.

Do you have a topic you would like to see me write about? Do you have thoughts on one of my previous posts? Do you have tips for all of us for staying Disciplined? What areas of your life are you or aren’t you currently being Disciplined? Please post your thoughts, you will get a response. RoryVaden is a 23 year old youth motivational speaker and comedian who talks to high school and college aged kids about interpreting the messages of pop culture and incorporating more personal Discipline into their lives.