There’s a poster on my office wall that I look at every morning. It’s Teddy Roosevelt’s speech called “The Man In the Arena”.

Roosevelt highlights the one who risks it all, who actually gets in the arena of life and dares to live and experience great achievement.

Towards the end of the speech, Roosevelt makes the contrast of the person in the arena with the ones who mock his failures, the ones sitting in the seats.

They haven’t risked anything. These are the ones Roosevelt calls the “cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

There are people in your life who are ready to mock your message.

They range from family members who don’t understand what you’re doing to complete strangers online who you will never meet in person and don’t know a thing about you.

These are the cold and timid souls in your life. They don’t know what it’s like to write a book. They don’t know how hard it can be to fill a mastermind group.

And, for many of them, they never will know that success or the taste of failure because they’re too scared to get out of their seats and step into the arena to risk it all for the sake of creating something extraordinary.

Why would any of us give them any of our time? We’re too busy fighting for what we know to be good and true and right and worth pursuing in life.

Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders is presented by Jon Cook, founder of Keynote Content. Jon and his team help thought leaders, namely speakers, coaches, and consultants, craft and share their messages to better serve their audiences. Connect with Jon and his team at Keynote Content by visiting keynotecontent.com. You can subscribe to the Keynote Clarity for Thought Leaders Flash Briefing by visiting bit.ly/KeynoteClarity and enabling it there. Then, all you have to say is, “Alexa, what’s my flash briefing?”