Dotsie-- Not exhausted at all. Exhilarated! And, yup, Sugaree, I was surprised and thrilled.

Today I met with one of the men that I met at the function that left me with the feelings of self-doubt. I was waaaay off target on this one. I wonder how many more of those folk were perpetrating. (is that how u spell that?)

After an extensive conversation, I found that he was only trying a new market. He hadn't mastered it and was the success story that he was claiming in the front of new aquaintances. Hmmm, wonder how many more needed more work on themselves yet hid it??

I guess I could have gone in there with a pretentious mask of success. Surely I can speak the lango. My goodness! That would drive me more nuts to pretend like that. To me, that would be like a constant reminder that I HAVE NOT made it versus the real self I presented on a mission to a success story. Jeeze!

Sugar, a lot of success has to do with belief. You have to convince yourself before you can convince someone else. If there is no faith, no belief, no conviction, you can't sell it. No matter what "it" is. It sounds like this man has convinced himself (and done a good job, too!) that whatever "it" is, is a good thing; he now can convince others that "it" is a good thing, too. Does it look like exaggeration? When you dig beneath the surface, it probably is -- for now. But if his belief system is strong enough, eventually he will convince others, and his success becomes a self-fufilling prophecy. Success breeds success. There are a lot of books out there that describe this. Visualizing your success, acting as if it were already a fact, until it becomes a fact. Personally, I'm not very good at it. I'm more like you, I can't 'fake' it. But the real difference isn't real vs. fake; it's--Do I Believe Enough To Make It So? For me, personally, I need a few real successes that validate what I'm doing; then I can construct a success scenario. But not everyone is like me, a lot of people can construct success 'out of thin air'. Think of actors. They make us believe they are really cannibals, or pirates, or aliens. They are 'believeable' in their characters. Not the same? I think it is. They couldn't "sell" those characters to us, if they first didn't convince themselves. OK, that's enough, soapbox's getting shaky here.