Hitchhiker

Over the summer, I attended a conference in Portland, Oregon, called The World Domination Summit that was all about being remarkable in a conventional world. I learned a whole lot of life lessons from many people who were willing to share their stores in the hopes of inspiring creativity and action in their audience. One of those stories made an especially powerful impact on me and the 3000 other people listening to IT, and that was the story of journalist Tess Vigeland. She was up on stage that day to give us a distinctly intimate glimpse into her life, her success, and the risk she'd taken in leaving her job. She didn't know it at the time, but she was also going to learn just how powerful inspiration can be, and how it would ultimately lead her to the very people she needed.

For those of you who are already familiar with talk radio, and perhaps even with one of its most prominent programs, Marketplace Money, you will already be familiar with Tess and the legacy she built for herself. Tess rose to prominence as the host of Marketplace Morning Report, and later as the host of Marketplace Money, a program which focuses on personal finance. When Marketplace called Tess in 2001 to offer her the job, she'd been dreaming of working for them for the past 11 years. All of her hard work had finally paid off; she'd arrived at her dream job. Throughout the time Tess worked for Marketplace, she earned a good salary, built a powerful reputation within the world of public broadcasting, and demanded a well-deserved respect from colleagues and listeners alike. Her job afforded her a remarkable life: she got to interview politicians, authors, and celebrities; she traveled around the country, writing for The New York Times; and she built a fan-base who recognized her by the sound of her voice alone.

But in November of 2012, Tess decided to walk away from it all. She had varied reasons for leaving: she'd grown weary of the subject of personal finance; she was restless and wanted to try something different; she'd been unhappy for a long time and had reached the point where she had too much stress and too little self-respect to stay.

Tess had decided to jump without a net; when she left Marketplace, she didn't have another job lined up.

"I left a sure thing for the vast unknown. And it was easily the most terrifying thing I've ever done."

Even so, she was confident in her ability and her reputation—she'd find another job. Making the decision to leave was the important step; something else would come along.

But it didn't. When Tess stood on stage and shared her story at WDS, it was July of 2013, and still nothing had come along. She'd tried; she did some freelance work and she'd just barely missed out on an opportunity with one of NPR's news programs, Weekends On All Things Considered. But she was still having a hard time figuring out what she was meant to do. The process of looking at other possibilities outside of public radio had turned out to be so much harder than she'd imagined. As a journalist and host on Marketplace, Tess had found her dream job. Now that she'd left it, she didn't know what she was going to do, or even what she wanted to do. She'd stopped dreaming, never thinking that she'd someday decide she wanted to do something else with her life. Everyone around her was supportive and encouraged her to find her passion, but inside she was paralyzed with fear. She was on a roller coaster of ups and downs, shifting between confidence and self-doubt, and she didn't know how to get off.

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Towards the end of her speech, Tess told us that she wasn't feeling very remarkable anymore. She'd decided that the only way to get back to remarkable was to redefine the meaning of the word. She had to redefine what success meant to her. And she wasn't going to tell us it was easy.

"Instead I'll tell you it has been terrifying, it has been awful, and it has been heartbreaking."

Tess left the stage with her biggest question still unanswered—what was she going to do next? But she'd engendered a level of inspiration and support from her audience that maybe she hadn't expected. On July 18, eleven days after giving her speech, Tess posted this message on Twitter:

One of the important lessons I learned at the conference was that we shouldn't be afraid to reach out and ask for help. Most people are more accessible than we think and are willing to offer their assistance. By sharing her story with us, Tess did just that. She appealed to 3000 listeners to help her figure out what was next, and she got the answer and help she needed. She is now in the process of writing a book for Random House based on the speech she gave at WDS in July.

There is so much to learn from Tess's story—how to succeed in your career; how to take risks; how to rediscover your passion; how to cope with fear of the unknown—but I think we can take the most important lesson from what Tess learned after giving her speech: you don't have to do it alone.

If you're interested in reading the entire speech, you can see it on Tess's web site here. If you want to see Tess live on stage at WDS, you can watch her give her speech here.

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