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My mission is to remind my audiences, clients and readers that they have the power to move forward in their lives.  This is my mission because, whereas I felt stuck in my life for so long, I now feel great joy in its place with the energy and drive to keep moving forward.  I find myself achieving things that I never thought possible for me.

 I now know that one of the main reasons I used to feel so stuck was because my main plan in life was to hope for luck and miracles and serendipity and then WAIT for them to arrive.

To this day, I still believe that luck happens, that miracles are real, and that serendipity occurs, BUT I no longer believe in WAITING for them to arrive.

Have you heard the one about Ron and Joe waiting for the train to take them from Iowa to Cincinnati? 

Ron and Joe were excited to travel to Cincinnati to see their favorite band perform, so they arrived to catch the train nice and early.  They enjoyed waiting for the first  few hours because that gave them an excuse to reminisce about old times when they were in grade school together.  But when the hours turned into days and the days turned into months they started to get antsy, then angry, then they fell into despair.

One day, Cindy was out for a walk and noticed these two gentlemen looking completely destitute.  She was curious, so she asked them what they were doing.  

Ron said weakly, “Waiting for the train to take us to Cincinnati but IT ISN’T COMING.”  

Cindy looked from Ron to Joe and then from Joe to Ron with a look of utter disbelief and said, “You know you all are in the middle of a cow pasture twenty miles from the nearest train station right?”

It was then that Joe mustered up all his energy and got indignant, “Well, just so you know stranger, we are busy developing our SUPER POWERS TO magically bring the train to Cincinnati right through here.  Further more just so you KNOW, it will magically stop and pick us up.”

Cindy simply shook her head and walked away, not having any idea what to say to that.


As ridiculous as that story sounds, if I’m honest with myself, I admit, I’ve spent many hours, days, months and even years metaphorically waiting with Ron and Joe for super powers to magically come to me.

Maybe you’ve waited there as well, with Ron, and Joe, and me? Waiting for something unlikely to happen without a little magic, yet getting antsy and angry when it didn’t show up as your mind had scheduled it?

I would imagine we all have fallen into that trap at points in our lives, (although I’ve never taken a survey on this point.)

I’m not sure why I spent so much time waiting.  Maybe, I thought my speech impediment held magical superpowers that would come eventually.

However after decades of waiting, I regretfully submit the following list to you-   

10 Superpowers my speech impediment doesn’t give me

  • 10 The power to fly by flapping my arms
  • 9 The power to be 10 places at once
  • 8.5 The power to accurately predict Super Bowls (maybe the Celtics or the Cubs will win the next one)
  • 8 The power to win at bingo every time I play
  • 7 The power to throw a paper airplane to the moon and back
  • 6 The power to eat 25 monster cookies a day without gaining weight (it’s a bummer)
  • 5 The Power to make 5 million dollars appear in my bank account as I write this
  • 4 The power of immortality
  • 3 The power to never feel sad
  • 2 The power to never feel lonely
  • 1 The power to save everyone in the world from suffering.

How often do you, like me, spend time wishing you had the power to change something that has an extremely low likelihood of changing?

We could spend our whole lives standing around with Ron and Joe waiting for those magic superpowers to create an inner-dimensional portal for that train travel through, arrive in the cow pasture, and deliver us to Cincinnati.

But by then the concert will be over.

Hoping for things that have an extremely low likelihood of changing can distract us from focusing on our miraculous capacity to hope for the things we can change.

Both You and I have the superpower to take micro steps and then bigger steps, when the time is right, towards what we want in life.

This superpower of taking consistent steps forward, may not be as glamorous as wearing a cape and flying around or pulling bunnies out of your hat every five minutes,

but the super power of taking consistent steps forward, repeatedly, can reinforce in all of us that we have the power to make our life better, even if just a little bit each day.

At that point, when luck, magic, miracles and serendipity come into your life you are already moving in the direction necessary to meet them.

Moral of the story:  You are your own greatest Superpower, so USE your power and create the life you want, one micro step at a time.


JASON FREEMAN is a Professional Speaker and the proud owner of a Speech Impediment.  He is also the author of “Awkwardly Awesome: Embracing My Imperfect Best” and a Perseverance Coach.

He excites and encourages his audience to break through the barriers of their own limitations using a method he created, called “doing your Imperfect Best ™”.

His Imperfect TEDx Talk can be viewed here.

Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash