08/16/2026
August 15, 1995.
Lisa sat across from me and I kept my hands under the table, picking at my nails.
She started it. I’d been telling her for weeks that she had to take Paul’s class. Paul’s the genius. Paul’s the one. I’m just the girl doing his PR, camped out on his couch tossing out titles while he worked the whiteboard.
Lisa Lessa and her favorite place to be…
She looked at me and said, “Why don’t you coach me?”
I laughed out loud. Me? I mean, come on. I’d quit college with three classes left. I had DUIs. I’d tried to end my life more than once.
A few months before that, after the cloud incident, Rev Joan had looked at me with those soft eyes of hers and said, “You got the call. That means you’re ready.”
I argued with her. I listed everything. The degree I didn’t have. The drinking. The years I’d rather not itemize. She just kept saying it back to me, calm as anything, like she was reading me the weather.
I didn’t believe her. Not one word.
So no, Lisa. Not me.
She wouldn’t let it go. She kept at me until I said yes, and I said yes the way you say yes when you’re hoping the other person will come to her senses.
So we started. Every week.
And after every single session, every one of them, I drove straight to Paul’s house.
I didn’t call. I ran to him.
“She said this. I said that. What now?”
He’d walk me through it at his kitchen table, papers everywhere, worksheets everywhere, ideas stacked on top of ideas. I’d write it down. I’d go back to Lisa the next week and do it again, and then I’d be at his door again. Six months of that. Six months of watching a woman actually change, actually get free, actually become someone she liked. And me driving home certain I’d fooled her one more time.
Then one day, mid-session, something started moving through me.
I don’t remember what Lisa said. I don’t remember what I said back. I remember the decision.
I didn’t know if I was right. I didn’t know if I was wrong. I didn’t know if she was going to laugh at me.
I said it anyway. I decided to trust the voice and let it come out of my mouth.
Lisa went still. She sat with it for a long minute. Then she looked at me and said, “How do you know that?”
I had nothing to give her. No book, no class, nothing Paul taught me at that kitchen table.
I knew it because I knew it.
Which scared me more than not knowing. Because… well… what if the voice didn’t come back next week?
So I got in my car and drove to Paul’s the way I always did. Pulled up out front. Engine off. Hands still on the wheel. Waiting to feel like a fraud so I’d know it was time to go in.
I sat there for a while.
Then I backed out and went home.
That’s the day. Not the day the ceiling opened. The day I drove away from Paul’s house and knew Rev Joan had been right the whole time.
I was ready.
She never said I’d feel ready. She said I was ready. Those are not the same thing, and it took me half a year knocking at Paul’s door to catch up to what she already knew.
Six months to pick up a call that had already been downloaded into me from a book floating on a cloud.
And once I picked it up that day with Lisa, I never put it down. I backed out of that driveway and I never went back. Not once.
1995, private clients. One at a time. Kitchen tables and borrowed offices.
1997, I started teaching. Then speaking, because somebody asked and I said yes before I could talk myself out of it.
2001, first book. First television show.
2003, second book. Second show.
And on it went. More books. More shows. And now it’s me writing to you, and you reading my words on what I guess is your phone. (This is my favorite part!)
Thirty-one years yesterday.
And you might think the six months of back and forth withering in self-doubt was the price.
Nope. Twenty years was the price.
1975 to 1995. From the day my parents died to the day I sat down across from Lisa picking at my nails. Twenty years of drinking. Twenty years of DUIs. Twenty years of acting invincible so nobody would look too close. Twenty years of not being able to say the word God out loud.
Six months at Paul’s door was the last little stretch of a road I’d been walking for two decades.
By the time Rev Joan told me I was ready, those twenty years had already made me ready. I just didn’t know that’s what they were doing.
You don’t get talked into being ready. You get ready by deciding you are.
Say it out loud. Before there’s one shred of evidence. Almost like casting a spell. Like believing in a miracle before you’ve seen one.
That’s what Rev Joan asked me to do that day in her office. Say it before it was true.
I couldn’t do it standing in front of her. It took six months of driving back and forth to Paul’s, sweating it out every week, sure I had to make something happen for Lisa or I’d be found out.
And going to Paul was the right thing to do.
I had no experience. He had all of it. There is nothing wrong with taking the wisdom of someone who knows more than you. That was a good decision and I’d make it again.
But somewhere in those six months, something else started happening.
I began to hear the difference between his voice and mine. He’d tell me what he would do, and I’d notice I saw it differently. His ideas were his. Mine were becoming mine.
It took six months before I said one of mine out loud.
Turns out that was me getting ready. I just thought it was me flailing.
So if you’re still driving to somebody else’s house. If you’re waiting on one more year, one more round, one more person to tell you it’s good before you’ll say it’s yours...
Go get the mentor. Take the training. I mean that. Learning from someone who knows more than you is how many of us start.
Just notice the day you stop learning from them and start hiding behind them. That’s the day you’re ready. It will not feel like it.
In that moment, I want you to know nothing has gone wrong. You’re exactly where I was.
That nervousness. Those nail picking moments… it’s all normal on the path to claiming the calling that’s calling you.
And whatever you think you still have to get through before you’re allowed to follow your purpose, you already went through it. That thing that just came to mind? That was it. That was your twenty years.
Then, say it out loud. Before you believe it.
And Lisa? She saw it before I did and refused to take my no. Rev Joan saw it before either of us.
Somebody’s going to be that for you. Somebody already has been, probably, and you laughed at her.
Go ahead and believe her.
Be Fearless,
xoRhonda
Besides the three certifications we created this last year — Tools, Wheels, and this October, Skills — here’s the one that makes me laugh.
I could not interrupt to save my life. Couldn’t do it. It came out harsh or it came out wimpy. Graceful it was not.
And now I’m teaching it. This Tuesday. Talk about a full circle moment.
If interrupting is hard for you, or you just want to get better at it, come join me https://fli.world/interrupt
Thirty-one years. I’ve had bigger ones. I don’t think I’ve had a prouder one.
https://rhondabritten.substack.com/p/how-to-know-youre-ready?r=7o5f6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
How to Step In Without Taking Over The Art of Graceful Interruption™ for coaches who know a session is drifting, but aren't sure when or how to intervene. A Live Coach Intensive with Rhonda Britten Tuesday, August 18, 2026 · 1pm to 4pm PT / 4pm to 7pm ET · $100 Emmy Award-winning life coach · 4...
