Laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling in my bedroom at the Stanford Convalesce Home (now the Ronald McDonald House, across from the Stanford Mall in Palo Alto), a seven-year-old boy suffering from acute asthma. Struggling to breathe, I wondered if I would make it. My body was weak, but my mind was strong. My hero was Superman, but I also identified with his alter ego, Clark Kent. I imagined drawing my frail body into a phone booth and then emerging “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive.” Still, it would not be my body but my imagination, intuition, creativity, and lack of fear that would drive my future.

Looking back at my life, which is something I do often these days, I realize that the most critical factor in my professional life was having confidence in myself. I have realized that others will sense if you genuinely believe in yourself. When I learned to do horse whispering, I discovered that horses do not know how big you are; they just know how big you think you are.