When I was a kid one of my favourite things to do was pretend I was Fred Penner. For those of you that are unfamiliar, Fred Penner is a legendary Family and Children’s Entertainer who may be best known for his album, The Cat Came Back. At the age of five I would stand on the living room couch with a plunger stick as my microphone and a Fisher Price guitar and pretend I was Fred in concert. I remember going to watch Fred perform at my parent’s company Christmas party and then would go and see him at The Children’s Festival. This man has a magic about him and at the time I couldn’t really name it but I sure could feel it. Years later in grade seven, once again, Fred had a major impact on my life. I was asked to perform a song in front of my school in the gymnasium and decided to perform “The Cat Came Back”. I remember looking out at all the students singing along and thinking, ‘this is what I want to do for the rest of my life”. I...

Have you ever had the experience of putting yourself out on there on the line, risking it all for your dream of what you really want- only to get the answer back that it is a “NO”? If you are anything like me you have probably experienced at least twenty of these “no’s” for every “yes” that has happened in your life. Whether it is in our careers or our relationships with others, rejection can really hurt us on all levels. Nobody enjoys being told “no” for an answer. It is amazing how many of my decisions in life have been a dance around avoiding the experience of this two-letter combination in the alphabet N-O! The words NO have scared me and made me seize up at times only to realize that in the end this answer was a gift. 

I have spent most of my life pursuing my dream of being a musician and a motivational speaker. It is a tough, competitive business and almost everyday I experience rejection when I put myself out...