Before you get carried away and start googling ‘The Adyblady
Experience’ or something like that, be assured that it was not my very own show
(that was canned before it got on the air). Instead it was as a contestant on
an extremely popular quiz show called ‘In It To Win It’. Although recorded in
advance, it straddles the national lottery draws, and Dale ‘wild in the aisles’
Winton is host. While sat at home, watching it I never suspected that I would
be one of the people in the tv looking out; even when I applied I thought the
possibility as remote as the gadgets that change station on the TV; when I got
the phone call to tell me ‘you’re on!!!’ I began to get an inkling of a vague
notion that sometime in the future I would be sat in my front room, watching
myself!
The very basic plot of the show is that you hopefully get to
ask a few questions, you hopefully get to ask a final question to win some
money, and you hopefully go home holding a cheque for a nice tidy sum. The
three contestant outcomes are…..
1. You win a share of the pot (anything from a few grand, to a cool £100,000
2. You get a multiple choice question to win a share of the pot wrong, and go home with squat
3. You sit on stage for the entire show, get asked no questions....and then go home with squat
Not only did I get outcome number three; I had to watch while each of the other four contestants took home over sixteen grand apiece. One could not help but feel a little, shall we say….singled-out!
So why am I telling you this? I suppose you might think – knowing how it turned out – that I regret the decision to apply in the first place; but you couldn’t be farther from the truth. Okay, the result was unfortunate and a bit upsetting for a time; but I am pleased to say that the whole experience was utterly brilliant. I got to meet Dale, I got to meet my fellow contestants who were all worthy winners, I got to be on telly; and more than anything else I got the respect of so many people for behaving with dignity and integrity (is that the same thing?). People who I had lost touch with even sought me out on social networking sites just to commiserate with me. Now all that is reward in itself, and although the prize money has surely run out for my fellow contestant, my prized memories are just as vivid.
So I don’t regret going, as I knew what could happen; both the good and the bad. It is this process which I use whenever I am faced with a big choice. If the best happens; top banana, but I am not seduced by success to such an extent that it blinds me to the fact that the dream might not come true. I accepted that what happened, might happen; and I also knew myself well enough to know that I could take it and still enjoy the experience. I know me well enough to be honest to myself about myself; so failure turned out not to be a shock to the system, failure turned out to still be enjoyable; failure, in the end, turned out not to be a failure at all.
Incidentally, I’m not saying that if you realised failure
was something which would devastate you it is not worth the attempt; but
admitting what your reaction would be allows you to make a fully-informed
decision as to whether it is worth the risk.
There are so many things I have taken with me from that day;
the ovation I got from the studio audience, the director who put her arm round
me and said ‘don’t take this the wrong way, but I knew that of all the people
this might have happened to; you would be the one to handle it best’; and
finally the father of one of my fellow contestants who shook my hand with a
smile, looked me straight in the eye and said ‘you are destined for something
special’.One thing is for sure; I made the right decision.
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