Karie was a cop. She was sitting in roll call — that daily assembly before officers hit the street — and her body was in the room, but her mind was somewhere else. She had been deliberating over a conference. A live, two-day event in New York City for women business owners. Speakers. Networking. Marie Forleo running the whole thing. The venue matched the ambition of the women inside it.
The price tag was the problem. More than she had ever spent on herself. She was scared to spend the money. Scared to travel to New York City alone and walk into a room where she didn’t know a single person. She had lived in her cop bubble for almost a decade. This was all so far outside of it. So she sat in roll call, turning it over. Weighing it. Talking herself out of it again.
Then she said something out loud to the cop sitting next to her.
He didn’t validate her concern about the money or the trepidation of showing up somewhere alone. He said two words. Do it. And something shifted — not because he inspired her, but because he had confidence in her that she didn’t have in herself. He made her feel like she was crazy not to go. She signed up right there, before the shift started, before her brain could reassemble its objections.
That single moment set off a chain of events that only gets triggered if you take the first step. At the Forleo event, she applied for a year-long mastermind. 144 women applied. 20 got in. Karie was one of them. She found her people. She knew it immediately. The part of her that had always felt pulled toward something else finally had somewhere to go. She left the police department and didn’t look back. That year led her to a Tony Robbins event, where she was paired with a stranger named Jim — an older Scottish gentleman. She was hoping for a stylish woman with good shoes. She got Jim. During their first conversation, Jim texted his friend: I have just met your future wife. Karie eventually took Jim up on his offer to visit Scotland. She met Bryan. She never came back. She now lives there with four daughters and a life she could not have architected from inside her old one. All because a cop said two words and gave her no runway to retreat.
Last month, Karie met my wife and me in Epernay, France. We made our way to Champagne Leclerc Briant for a tour. Our guide, Antonella, was generous with both her knowledge and the pours, and after the tour she left us alone in the cellar with the bottles and nowhere to be. That’s when Karie asked me what’s next.
I told her I had applied to a PhD program last year and opted out — read chickened out. Then I gave her all my reasons. The ROI question. The stages I’m already standing on. The book I’m supposed to be writing. The condo in Chicago that claimed the budget. I listed them out like they were airtight. Like they were the truth rather than what they actually were. Fear.
Karie listened to every excuse. And then she said something I couldn’t logic my way out of. She told me she didn’t think I’d ever regret doing it. But that she believed — genuinely believed — I would spend the rest of my life looking back at the moment I didn’t. She said this belongs to you. The title. The education. It’s yours. It doesn’t make sense for you to not do it. She wasn’t inspiring me. She was showing me the other end of the decision. The version of me who said no and had to live with it. And she made me feel like I was crazy not to do it. That cop was right about her. She was right about me.
Three glasses in, I pulled out the champagne rating card and wrote a contract on it — a promise to myself that I would apply. I signed my name. That night, I filled out the application from our Airbnb. The next morning, still in France, my phone rang. It was the university. We received your application. The summer term starts Monday. If you’re amenable, we’ll fast-track your review to admissions. That was five days away.
I didn’t have time to think. Do it. I said yes. Because I knew exactly what would happen if I went home first. The champagne would wear off. The excuses would reconvene. I would talk myself out of it with the same internal committee that had been running the same meeting for a year.
You know that committee. You have one too. It’s the voice that says the timing isn’t right. That you can’t afford it. That you’re already doing enough. That maybe next year makes more sense. That voice sounds like wisdom. It isn’t. It’s fear.
You have a thing. I know you do. A program you haven’t applied to. A business you haven’t launched. A conversation you keep rehearsing but never have. A dream that keeps showing back up no matter how many times you set it aside. And you have reasons. Good ones. Real ones. Money. Timing. Responsibility. People counting on you. You’ve organized those reasons into something that looks like a decision. It isn’t. It’s a stall.
Here’s the question Karie handed me without even knowing it. Not whether you can afford to do it. Not whether the timing is right. Not whether you’re ready. The only question that matters is this: who is the version of you that didn’t do it? Can you live with her? Can you look her in the eye ten years from now and tell her the reasons were worth it?
I couldn’t answer those questions in a way I could live with. So I signed the card.
Here’s what I know now. Courage is not the thing that gets you there. The removal of deliberation time is. The cop didn’t talk Karie into bravery. He closed the window before she could climb back out of it. Karie didn’t inspire me with a vision. She showed me the version of me I didn’t want to become. Fear doesn’t get conquered. It gets outrun.
Karie was for me what that cop was for her. She was the two words. She was the closed window. Which means this transmission doesn’t stop with me.
I have the champagne card. I’m framing it.
I’m currently buried in APA citations and more reading than I have hours in the day. I don’t know if I’ll finish. I’m not sure where this goes. But I’m on it. And the only reason I’m on it is because someone refused to let me off the hook long enough for my fear to talk me back to safety.
Now I’m refusing to let you off the hook.
You already know what the thing is. You’ve known for a while. Stop waiting for the perfect moment that is never coming. Stop letting fear overrun you.
Consider this your two words.
Do it.
