Many people, including leaders and aspiring leaders, struggle to reach their peak potential. They set goals and fall short, battle stage fright during important presentations or avoid speaking altogether, and feel trapped by negative habits and mindsets that hold them back. Traditional goal-setting often lacks the deep emotional commitment required for real success. This leaves people frustrated and stuck in the same disempowering patterns, unable to advance in their careers or personal lives.
Enter Matthew Cossolotto, known as The Empowerment Pro. He offers a bold, five-word solution: Success is an inside job! For Cossolotto, it’s more than a slogan; it’s a philosophy of life. With a career spanning executive communications for NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Fortune 100 leaders, Cossolotto developed his Personal Empowerment Programs (PEPTalks) and his Triad Empowerment System. This system focuses on three empowering pillars: the power of making promises (PromisePower), public speaking skills (PodiumPower), and the seven habits of success (HabitForce). In this interview, we discuss his trilogy of books – including his new release Harness Your PromisePower with a foreword by Jack Canfield – and explore how a series of empowering mindset shifts can transform individual lives and make a positive difference in the world.
Q: Your background includes writing speeches for top officials at NATO and the U.S. House of Representatives. How did those high-pressure environments shape your Triad Empowerment System?
Matthew Cossolotto: The first thing that comes to mind is almost too obvious to mention, but I don’t think it’s talked about often enough. I include public speaking skills in the Triad Empowerment System because – wait for it – leaders speak. Leaders speak and followers listen. That’s just how the world works. So if you’re a leader or an aspiring leader, speaking effectively is an indispensable success skill. But I also think of it as a personal empowerment tool. So, I include public speaking as one of the three essential “power tools” in my Triad Empowerment System. All three are critical for anyone wishing to reach their peak potential professionally and in life more generally.
Throughout my career as a senior-level speechwriter and speech coach, I’ve seen up close how important speaking skills are for anyone in a leadership role and for anyone who aspires to be a leader. In my book – The Joy of Public Speaking – I write about the Inner Game and the Outer Game of public speaking. I believe it’s critical to address the Inner Game first. So, I focus on things like turning stage fright into stage delight and the gentle art of mental joyjitsu. Maybe we can come back to these ideas later in our conversation.
I’ve also seen the importance of the other two pillars of the Triad – Promises and Habits – over the years. The most effective leaders keep their promises and seem to know instinctively that certain habits of thought and behavior lead to successful outcomes. I’d love to go into more detail about all three elements of the Triad. I’ll just say here that these three pillars are part of my overarching idea – I guess you could call it a slogan or a tagline: “Success Is An Inside Job.” What goes on between the ears – our habits of thought – determines whether we succeed or fall short. So in all of my programs, I focus on the mindset shifts that lead to peak performance. I think of this as the “technology of personal change and achievement.” That’s what the Triad Empowerment System is all about.
Q: You often say a promise is like a "goal on steroids." With Jack Canfield providing the foreword to your new book, Harness Your PromisePower, could you explain the G.P.S. Success Formula and why promises work better than traditional goals?
Matthew Cossolotto: First of all, I want to underscore how proud I am that Jack Canfield contributed the foreword to my book. He has been an inspiration to millions of people around the world – including me – for a few decades now. I’m truly honored to have Jack’s enthusiastic endorsement of my PromisePower ideas and initiatives.
I’m glad that you’ve asked about Jack Canfield’s foreword and the G.P.S. Success Formula in the same question. This gives me the opportunity to quote a few lines from Jack’s foreword because he writes about goals and promises. Canfield writes:
“Matthew makes the point that ‘a promise is like a goal on steroids.’ I heartily agree. As a firm believer in the power of goal setting, I applaud this refinement to the goal-setting imperative. Turning certain goals into promises – especially when publicly declared or with conviction to an important person in your life – takes goal setting to the next level.”
I just want to underscore here the significance of having Jack Canfield – who is such a renowned proponent of the importance of goal setting – embrace the refinement I suggest about turning important goals into heartfelt promises. Jack goes on to expand on this topic a little later in the foreword. I hope you don’t mind if I quote a full paragraph from Jack Canfield:
“Not all our goals are of equal importance or equal urgency. What Matthew suggests is very much on-target: People should get into the habit of turning some of their goals into heartfelt promises. This is Matthew’s ingenious “G.P.S. Success Formula” in action: From Goals to Promises = Success. Just like the GPS system in a car keeps us on track and moving in the right direction, the same is true of Matthew’s G.P.S. Success Formula.”
The simple answer to your question about why promises work better than traditional goals is this: A promise comes from the heart and is backed by strong emotion. Goals tend to be more cerebral, more brain-centered. Promises are heart centered. As I often say, you can change a goal, you can abandon a New Year’s resolution, but you can only break a promise. That’s a big difference. And most people are loath to break their promises.
Q: The Joy of Public Speaking tackles a fear that holds many professionals back. How do you help people move from "stage fright to stage delight" using what you call the gentle art of Mental Joyjitsu?
Matthew Cossolotto: The fear of public speaking is nearly universal in the human species. Surveys consistently show that roughly 75% of all people experience some level of anxiety, trepidation, or outright terror about public speaking. And I’m not sure about the other 25%. Are they being completely honest? A quote often attributed to Mark Twain goes like this: “There are two types of speakers in the world: those that are nervous and those that are liars.” Not sure if Twain actually said that, but I like the quote. So there are about six to maybe eight billion nervous speakers out there. I’m hoping some of my ideas reach them because far too many people have decided to avoid public speaking altogether. My mission is to reach out to as many people as I can and encourage them to speak up, to find their voices, and reach their peak potential.
In The Joy of Public Speaking and in my PodiumPower workshops and keynotes, I take people on a journey – from stage fright to stage delight. And I talk about the Gentle Art of Mental Joyjitsu. There are seven steps to joy – which I don’t have time to discuss in detail right now. Maybe I’ll just mention the first two steps because I think these two represent a huge leap forward in the right direction.
The first step is: “Always speak to an audience of one.” Never even think about the size of the audience. It’s always one… one person at a time. Your focus should ALWAYS be on one person at a time in the audience.
The second step follows closely after the first. “There’s no such thing as public speaking. They're just speaking.” So I recommend that we avoid the term “public” speaking. We should stop thinking of it as “public” speaking because that term stirs up lots of anxiety and apprehension. The fact is most of us speak quite comfortably, even joyfully, with other people every day – with our friends, family members, colleagues. We’re not nervous or terrified speaking with people most of the time.
These two steps should give your readers some idea of the kind of mindset shifts I think are necessary to move from stage fright to stage delight. We should play the mind game to win, not lose. I said it earlier: Success is an inside job. This is especially true with regard to speaking to audiences. Where does the fear of speaking come from? From our thoughts, right? We conjure up the fear. So we have the power to conjure up joy instead.
Q: The third book in your personal empowerment trilogy, Harness Your HabitForce, is due to be published in the coming months. In the book you write about the seven habits of FAILURE and SUCCESS. You also introduce something I find fascinating. You call it the "Ebenezer Effect." Can you explain what that is and how it helps people recognize and replace the seven habits of failure?
Matthew Cossolotto: Thanks for bringing this up. I think of it as one of the hidden gems in my books and speaking programs. It’s one of my favorite topics that I talk about in my PEPTalks. The Ebenezer Effect refers to Ebenezer Scrooge, of course. I can’t think of any other Ebenezer in the world. He’s the memorable miser in A Christmas Carol, the short story by Charles Dickens. Scrooge is a wealthy miser whose name has become virtually synonymous with words like "heartless,” “stingy,” "penny-pincher," "tightwad," and "money-grubber."
But I beg to differ. I think Scrooge should be hailed as one of the great role models for lightning-fast personal change. One message of the story, I think, is that people have the ability to change dramatically – even overnight – if they have the right motivation and if they believe rapid change is possible. I won’t go into the three spirits – past, present, and future – who visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve night. Suffice it to say here that Scrooge eventually comes face-to-face with his own tombstone, with his own mortality. This is a big shock to Scrooge. It becomes a catalyst for change. It’s not pleasant for Scrooge or anyone to face this reality. Scrooge desperately wants to change his ways, his attitudes, his mindsets. He asks the third spirit for another chance, exclaiming: "I am not the man I was. I will not be that wretched creature any longer."
That's the power of “The Ebenezer Effect." A key lesson here is that personal change can happen quite suddenly. Knowing this – embracing the power of the Ebenezer Effect – will help you make the mindset shifts needed to move from the disempowering FAILURE habits to the empowering SUCCESS habits I discuss in Harness Your HabitForce.
Q: When working with corporate clients in your workshops, what is the biggest mental block you see, and how do your Six Axioms of Personal Empowerment help them overcome it?
Matthew Cossolotto: It’s not easy to identify the single biggest mental block. I think perhaps the best place to start is with the first axiom, which deals with recognizing the importance of habits – or what I call HabitForce. This axiom states – in a quote from Aristotle – “We are what we repeatedly do.” If you don’t grasp this fundamental reality about the power of HabitForce, the next five axioms aren’t going to mean very much.
It helps to understand that HabitForce operates like a software program or a personal operating system, to use a familiar computer-related term. The trouble is this has never been explained to us and, to make matters worse, we were never issued a User’s Guide to our personal operating systems. That’s where Harness Your HabitForce comes in. It’s the User’s Guide that will help you understand how your personal operating system works. Most importantly, it’s a guide to help you change or reprogram your HabitForce so it works for you, not against you.
Without meaning to, I just covered a few of the Six Axioms. It would be helpful, I think, to include a graphic of the Six Axioms in the published version of this interview.
Also, I think the link to a recent Times LA cover story about my Gap and Snap concepts would be helpful to your readers.
Q: Looking at the full Triad Empowerment System, what is the one daily practice you recommend everyone start doing today to build a more promising future?
Matthew Cossolotto: That’s a great question. It’s very difficult to pick just one daily practice. If I’m forced to pick just one, I strongly suggest that everybody should start wearing a rubber band on their wrists. That might sound a little odd so let me explain. You see, this rubber band is in reality more than just an ordinary rubber band. It’s really what I like to call an Empower-Me Band. I often describe an Empower-Me Band as perhaps the greatest tool for personal change and achievement ever devised in human history. I might be exaggerating, but only slightly.
When worn on the wrist, the Empower-Me Band becomes a daily reminder of a goal or promise. I’ve been recommending this practice for a number of years and I was thrilled to see that basketball legend LeBron James has championed this idea too. I’m not suggesting that he learned about this Band idea from me. I’m just pointing out that he, too, wears a rubber band on his wrist. His Band carries a bold statement: “I PROMISE.” This acts as a constant reminder of the promise he made to uplift the community in Akron, Ohio, where he grew up.
But that’s not all an Empower-Me Band can do. It also serves as a tangible metaphor for HabitForce. In a relaxed state, it represents the comfort zone of your existing habits. This is a reminder that HabitForce can work for you or against you. It’s neutral. Stretching the Band creates tension, much like the discomfort created during the change process.
But wait! There’s more that an Empower-Me Band can do.! There’s also the SNAP effect. The Band can be snapped whenever the wearer notices a disempowering or negative thought. This gentle SNAP on the wrist is not meant as a punishment. It’s simply designed to create awareness. This SNAP creates a mental pause for a pivot, a moment to Recognize and Reject a negative thought and Replace it with a positive alternative. I write about these three Rs – Recognize, Reject, and Replace – in Harness Your HabitForce. This spurs the change process when you’re moving from FAILURE habits to their SUCCESS counterparts. Small steps and small snaps add up to big changes over time. This is a key aspect of the technology of personal change..
For more information about my Empower-Me Band, I would also point readers to a USA Wire story that goes into greater detail: https://usawire.com/matthew-cossolotto-empower-me/
In wrapping up, I would simply say that my personal empowerment books and speaking programs are designed to help leaders and aspiring leaders, teams, and organizations strengthen their habits, keep their promises, and boost their speaking skills all for a specific purpose – to reach their peak potential and make a positive difference in the world.
Rosen-Jones Photography
Editor’s Conclusion: Personal and professional growth requires more than just making a list of goals. It demands a shift in how we communicate, the promises we make to ourselves and others, and the daily habits we build. Cossolotto’s system shows that success truly is an inside job. By turning goals into unbreakable promises, making mindset shifts from disempowering to empowerment habits, and mastering the Inner Game of speaking, anyone can escape from their self-imposed limitations and reach their peak potential.
As the business world becomes more demanding, the ability to speak confidently and act decisively, with purpose and integrity, will only grow in importance. Leaders who embrace the Triad Empowerment System will find themselves better equipped to inspire others and achieve lasting success. Matthew Cossolotto provides the operating system needed to make that happen.
To learn more visit https://matthewcossolotto.com