Every Sunday, young Vernon Bush and his family would pile into the car and drive 150 miles to the church where his dad would preach. Like most churches of that time, there was a small gospel choir that Vernon dutifully blended into.

But Vernon had a secret…

He had a gift. He could sing. I mean really sing. But he didn’t want anyone else to know. He didn’t want to be the center of attention. Just wasn’t his m.o.. So for years, he just blended in. The way so many others with great gifts do. Because the unease of stepping into your gift, especially if you’re on the “gentle-spirited” side of the social spectrum and your gift will place you in the spotlight, is more than a bit terrifying.

So big was Vernon’s secret, even his parents were in the dark. Vernon knew he couldn’t just blend in for life, though. He couldn’t hold back something that could touch so many. No matter how nerve-wracking the thought of going public was.

So he made a sacred promise. To nobody but him. He would go public by the time he turned 13. It took all 13 years to honor that sacred promise. But early into his 13th year, the choir director asked if anyone wanted a solo. Vernon stepped forward. People were a bit puzzled, but Vernon had to keep the promise.

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August 28, 1963.

Standing before a crowd of 250,000, televised live on all three major television networks, Martin Luther King, Jr. did what, for most, would be unthinkable. But, until years later, nobody even knew what he’d done.

There’s an amazing story behind Martin Luther King’s epic I Have a Dream speech that’s rarely told.

It’s the story of faith, craft, attention and improvisation.

One that applies to the lives and dreams of every person who aspires to breath life into great adventures, movements, careers, art, businesses and relationships.

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial before a live and televised crowd of millions, Dr. King began to observe something unsettling. He had been delivering the speech as written, pausing regularly for dramatic effect, but more importantly, to see how his intended message was landing.

Some eleven minutes in, he realized he had a problem. The speech he’d prepared wasn’t landing the way it needed to. If he kept on message, some of the power of the moment, and the attention of the world, would have been lost. Right around then, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson shouted “Tell them about the dream, Martin.”

With that, Dr. King did what for so many would be the unthinkable…

He abandoned his plan. Mid-speech. He went off -message, without notice or intention.

Instead of the staid words and the original conclusion, he began to dance, teeing up what came to be known as one of the most powerful speeches ever given. The entire dream sequence wasn’t planned. It was added-in on the fly.

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In January, 2012, I had this crazy idea…

I’d just released my 2011 Annual Report, a 40 page document that took people deeply into my life, my businesses, learnings and aspirations (my 2012 Annual Report is coming soon, btw). I shared a struggle that was very personal. I stepped into my own vulnerability on a level that made me incredibly uncomfortable, and also took people deep into my business life.

Something magical happened…

That Annual Report exploded online. It was read and shared by thousands. The emails I received in response literally left me in tears for the better part of a few days.

But, here’s where it gets really interesting…

At the end of that Annual Report, I teased something I called Good Life Project.™ And I shared my 10 Commandments of Epic Business. They were built around a radically-different set of values and strategies, ones I’ve tapped to build and sell a number of successful companies, advise everyone from solo-professionals to Fortune 100s and write a few award-winning books.

Those 10 commandments took on a life of their own. They awakened people to the possibility that you could build a real, substantial business or career, while also building an extraordinary, connected, joyful life.

People wanted to know more…

They wanted to dive deeper into each, to discover the operating principles, strategies and tactics behind them.

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Resolutions don’t change bodies, minds, careers, businesses and lives, actions do.

But, without the right approach, it can be near impossible to take the actions needed to get where you’re desperate to go!

Behavior change—exercise, diet, meditation, changing careers or launching a business, writing a book, making art—it’s hard, really hard. Most people fail. Not because they’re incapable of doing what needs to be done, but because they don’t know how to do it right.

They don’t know where to find valid information. They don’t know who to trust. They don’t understand what it really takes to cultivate substantial progress and change. And they don’t know how to create the structures that absolutely must be in place to support the small daily behaviors that culminate in extraordinary change and achievement over time.

Here are 7 keys to successful behavior change and quest achievement:

1. Knowledge – You’ve got to know what the right behaviors, actions and decisions are. If you want to lose 50 pounds, you need to know what action will lead to that outcome. If you want to launch or build a world-changing venture, you need to know the steps that will make it happen (and more importantly the ones to avoid that’ll tear it down). If you’re trying to build a good life, you need to know what goes into that bucket and what needs to be tossed.

2. Support - On three levels, if possible: peer support, co-striver support and mentor support.

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You know that thing you’ve been saying you want to do but haven’t been doing because you’re not good enough to do it in public and you’re terrified of being judged?

Yeah, that thing. Your art. The one that’s so closely-aligned with the fiber of your being that it’d really hurt if people didn’t like it.

Well, what if you took a different approach? What if, like Taylor Guitars founder, Bob Taylor, you committed to making more bad stuff in the name of getting to the good stuff faster? What if, gulp, instead of iterating from junk to genius in the shadows, you did it in full view of the world?

What if, in fact, you announced to the world, “I’m going to learn something new, and I’m going to share it with you every day. And right now, I’m really bad at it, because I’m just beginning, so it’s supposed to be that way. But, I’m still going to show up, to practice, to create every single day and, no matter how good or bad it is, I’m going to share it with you. Because that’s how I’m going to go from crap to craft and I need to be accountable to you to ensure I am prolific enough to get there as fast as possible.”

What do you think might happen?

Yes, at first, you may well freak out. But, here’s the thing. We all suck in the beginning. We’re SUPPOSED to suck (with the rare exception of that freakish apriori artist savant friend we all love to hate to love).

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Love being able to start the year sharing 3 new books that’ll really make you think. On deck today are:

• The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin
• To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink
• Startup Life by Brad Feld & Amy Batchelor

My usual Drive-by book review format asks 3-questions:

• What is it?
• What makes it different?
• Why do you need it?

But this week, we’re going a step further and including 3 awesome videos to go along with the reviews.

First up is Seth Godin’s The Icarus Deception -

What is it? This book is Seth’s new rally cry to live into your own gifts, stop following industrialized, stamped out ideas about the right way to contribute to the world and start making art.

What makes it different? If you’ve been following Seth for any amount of time, you’ll see familiar themes, but what so powerful is the way he weaves them together with new ideas to create a compelling argument that inspires action. He gets into how society and business are evolving to a place where technology and robotics are replacing people in industry, leaving those who relied on mass-production jobs out of work.

There are no similar jobs to go back to, leaving us to return to the thing we did before the industrial revolution…contribute form a place of craft and meaning. Seth has also launched a very cool campaign and website – FlyCloserToTheSun.com – around the book that’s designed to start a movement and make it easier to share your art with the world.

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Most people look at entrepreneurship as a project.

You start with an idea, then turn it into something real, build a business around it. And all is well with the world.

But that’s the wrong approach. Because entrepreneurship, in the wild, doesn’t work that way.

What really happens is you get an idea, it may have some nugget of viability, maybe not. You dig deeper, do research, flesh it out, create prototypes, get feedback, dirty-test interest and value, find out you were dead wrong. So you start over, come up with a new variation, refine it, tweak it, put it into peoples’ hands, learn it’s even more off-course. You curse, kick, scream, fret, whine, run, meditate, breath, sing, dance, whine some more and try again.

Somewhere between iteration numbers 3 and 1,003, you either get proven so wrong that you realize the heart of the idea just didn’t have legs, or you get proven so right that everything starts to click, people show up, trade value for what you’ve created and you start to build something real. Until it all breaks again. Which it will, because even successful businesses and ideas outgrow the structure, processes and even people who gave rise to them.

Entrepreneurship isn’t a discrete event or even a project. Truth is…

Entrepreneurship is a practice.

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Back in my lawyer days at the Securities & Exchange Commission, I got pretty good at taking investigative testimony. So, the powers that be started assigning me to the newbies to help them develop the “craft” of investigative conversation. Which was pretty funny, because at that point, I was only a few years in.

Now these conversations were a bit different than most. They happened in small, interior offices, often caked with decades of paint over cinderblock. Under the din of fluorescent lights and the click-clack of a court reporter, witnesses would come to bare their souls under the veil of secrecy.

Our invited guests were people about whom we were informally or sometimes formally “inquiring” and, if they had any smarts, even the ones who were innocent came with counsel.

Our job was to get to the truth. Fierce preparation, laser-focused listening and responsive questioning were the main tools of our craft. You couldn’t get to where we needed to get without all three.

But, one of the things I learned early on was the first item was the one you had to walk away from to allow the second two to work their magic.

One day, I ended up alongside a young enforcement attorney to whom I’d been assigned at the last minute. We’d taken a flight to Chicago to take testimony from the CEO of a public company. As I’d learn on the plane, she’d prepared for more than a month. Wonderful, I thought, this should be an easy day for me.

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Step into life. Engage on a level that strips illusion.

See so clearly the possibility beyond the haze.

Breath it in. Live it out.

Long enough for its essence to bind your DNA.

It becomes you. A vein opens.

Then you transmit.

Pure. Unadulterated. Jazz.

You cannot create change in others.

Until you embody the truth you seek to inspire.

Transcendent. Tethers on the dock.

Even then, you don’t deem.

You feel. You live.

You channel.

You radiate light.

You hold the door open.

We fly. You and I.

Ever look at someone who seems to be fearless, on top of the world, massively sccuessful, relentlessly confident and focused…and wonder how they got that way?

It’s so easy to assume away their success. Oh, well THEY never had to struggle the way I do. THEY were born into luxury, money, influence. THEY never had to deal with heartbreak, having no clue what they wanted to do with their lives, paying the rent, feeling good. THEY were born lucky!

Except, with rare exception…THEY WEREN’T!

Assuming THEY’VE got something you don’t is almost always an excuse for inaction. For not wanting to experience the uncertainty and risk of judgment and failure that comes from stepping into a new adventure that matters so much it’d hurt a lot to fail.

Take my friend, Marie Forleo. Right now, she sits atop a rapidly-growing multimillion business, on a mission to inspire and educate women to take control of their lives and, more specifically, build businesses and careers that matter. To them and to others. She produces and stars in an award-winning web-show, Marie TV, that’s watched by a ginormous audience every week.

Looking at her on camera and on stage, she so confident, playful and at-ease in her own skin, you’d figure she just HAS to be one of THOSE people. But, again, you’d be wrong.

Yes, she’s smart. Very smart. But Marie didn’t come from money, or advantage. She wasn’t hyper-connected and for a solid chunk of her life, she had no real clue what she wanted to do.

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