I am your proof.
This goes out to in honour of all those niggling genius ideas that won’t leave your head, that dream you have that is still unrealized, that one thing you have always felt called to try but still haven’t.
As I realized at the top of the week, mighty dividends are paid when you make the investment of faith in yourself, and what you believe you ought to do with your life.
I was excited to interview Alan Frew, best known as the frontman of Glass Tiger, the superband whose meteoric rise in the 80’s left me, a teenager just dropping out of high school, whose dad had just died, filled with Canadian pride at a time I was proud of very little. For the first time in as long as I knew, Canada was home to something truly cool. Glass Tiger charted on Billboard alongside Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen. They toured Europe with Tina Turner. They were beloved worldwide, and every song they released was perfect pop, beautifully produced, and even in the typing of this I am transported back to the emotional stickiness of that time, like how you smell a fragrance and it triggers clear memories.
My life then was not what it was now. I was unpopular at school, was bullied daily, and my dad’s alcoholism had a profound effect on me that continued long after he died. I had little self-esteem, zero knowing back then that I would one day have a rich life beyond my fondest dreams, that I built myself from nothing. While I was blessed with always knowing what I wanted for myself, if you had told me, back then, that I would one day actually have a talk show and would be sitting opposite Alan Frew, I wouldn’t have been able to conceive of it. It would have felt too far, too distant, to not possible.
Despite having no game plan, no education, being technically unqualified to do what I do, it was my dream and I did it.
Which is why from the moment I met Frew Monday until the moment our taping was wrapped I was beside myself. Not in myself like I normally am. It felt like an out-of-body experience. I have sat down to interview people ranging from Lady Gaga to a convicted murderer, and my heart rate hasn’t budged. I’ve spoken to 5,000 people before and felt completely at home, and in my skin. I’ve shaken hands and posed for pics a couple of times with our new PM and felt totally chill.
Being in Frew’s presence – because he and his band were such a beacon to me way back when – filled me with such enormous gratitude and appreciation that I dared to reach for and continue to reach for that (and only that) which makes me happy. So overwhelmed by appreciation with Frew was I, that I lost my cool a few times. I forgot my own name once, the name of my show, once, and even (please let me live this down), coming back from commercial playing Frew’s version of Tears For Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’, LYP-SYNCHED TO HIM HIS OWN SONG.
Until I caught myself. Stopped myself.
This was a different kind of 80’s flashback attack.
If you do what you love, the Universe lights up a path for you, and then, as seen Monday, it reminds you in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink fashion how very right you are to do what makes you happy. It presents to you delicious signposts – like my beacon of cool from way back in the 80’s – right in front of you, for a great conversation. And then, that beacon takes it even further with a reminder for everyone of us who still has unfinished business where our dreams are concerned, saying, as Frew did: “You can continuously re-invent. The dream is never over. Unless you decide it’s over.” >Tweetable!
We are here to make dreams manifest. >Tweetable!
I am your proof.
Hear a six-minute preview of my in-depth conversation with the Canadian icon, below. We talk about live after his stroke last August, his new album 80290 Rewind, success, passion and living well. It airs in full Saturday at 3pm ET and encore at 8pm ET on SiriusXM Canada Talks 167 or hear it with your All Access Pass.
Image: Strut Entertainment
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- Related: How I Learned There Is No Death
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