To negotiate is to set, reset and push boundaries, to see yourself in control of your situations, and to act in good faith.

Faith starts from within.

Speaking of which, I’ll let you in on a secret.

I pray sometimes as I walk, to no god in particular, but to myself.

I pray,
Please help me be persistent and disciplined.
Please help me create, do, and serve.
Please help me see that the answers are within me.

I pray for the strength to counter the voice of doubt and judgment with intuition and compassion. To continue to push boundaries when the next step forward seems to fall in the dark, only to land in the light.

With my negotiation coaching, I walk the tension between self-actualization and material achievement. The former follows the latter. To ask is to take initiative; to be rewarded is its positive outcome.

What binds the two is confidence, the belief and trust that one can do. What underlies belief and trust is faith.

So I try to build faith by praying.

I’ve been praying because I’ve been doing things outside my comfort zone. I’ll keep praying as I push forward the boundaries of what I do.

See, back in April, Coach Jennie of Audacity Rules asked me to be bold, within an hour of meeting me. She asked me to present a webinar on negotiation for the Hungry Entrepreneurs, a group of moxilicious doers and makers.

The first flash of thought when she asked me was, “but I’m not qualified.” The Itty Bitty Shitty Committee reared its ugly head. The second flash of thought was to squelch doubt and accept this juicy challenge, my first webinar.

Last month, I gave another webinar for the Daily Muse readers on the topic of negotiating a raise at work.

Can I just tell you I was a nervous, anxious wreck in the days leading up to the event? To have this webinar advertised to the entire Daily Muse readership (a subscriber base of about 30,000 as of July 2013) felt like coming out for me – as a negotiation coach, as someone with an unconventional approach, and another upstart.

I came face-to-face with my impostor syndrome, the irrational fear of being found out a fake fortified with webinar anxiety. Which is ironic because the first thing I tell anyone when it comes to negotiating is to not be afraid.

I have to walk the talk. So I mustered my faith, went for a long run, and trusted that I would deliver.

In the end, both webinars went really well, allowing me to reach more than hundred young professionals with my message (and potentially more as the recordings live on).

This is just the beginning. I want to be bolder and reach bigger audiences. Plus I missed the live, face-to-face interaction that a workshop allows.

This coming Tuesday, I’m taking the message live in a hands-on workshop geared towards freelancers, solopreneurs, self-starters who work for themselves. I’ll be trying some new methods and challenging attendees to communicate their value.

Let’s dream big and ask boldly.