Breaking Barriers and Shattering Records

What happens when you replace "I can't" with "I can"?

Join me, Carmen Cauthen as I share my personal journey of overcoming self-imposed limitations by transforming fear into empowerment. Inspired by her upbringing, where "I can't" was never an option, I dive into the art of confronting fears head-on, from learning to spell to facing the daunting world of public speaking and podcasting. My stories are a testament to the incredible possibilities that open up when we challenge our own boundaries and refuse to let fear dictate our actions. 

In an inspiring episode, I also reveal the secrets behind a remarkable school fundraising initiative that shattered previous records. Drawing from the year the Hurricanes triumphed in the Stanley Cup, I illustrate how creativity and a refusal to be held back by doubt can lead to extraordinary success. With innovative auction items and inclusive tactics, the event raised $9,000, setting a new benchmark for what belief and perseverance can achieve.

Let my journey motivate you to banish the "I can't" mindset and tap into the limitless potential that lies within.

====================================
Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Unseen, unheard.
We've lived like that far toolong.
I'm Carmen Coffin and this isQuiet, no More.
You know, one of the words orphrases that I learned to hate

(00:22):
as a child was I can't.
I used to say it and thatdidn't go over very well.
We would hear, yes, you can itanyway.
Like if I said I can't spellthis word.
Well, you just didn't tell mymom and dad especially my dad

(00:55):
that you couldn't spellsomething, because that meant
that you were going to thedictionary or the encyclopedia
and you were going to sound itout until you spelled it
correctly.
They were not going to tell youhow to do it.
And don't bring it home spelledwrong from school, because that

(01:18):
would get you in just as muchtrouble.
But you know what I can't saysto me now that I'm an adult, or
after I became a parent, itreally says to me you're too
lazy to try.
Because one of the things that Itaught myself was that if I

(01:42):
can't and somebody else can,it's because I didn't put forth
the effort.
It doesn't mean I can do itperfectly, and there might be
something that I am not equippedor I don't have enough training
or I haven't learned enough todo, but especially in this day

(02:02):
and age where the Internet willteach you how to do just about
anything, I don't say I can'tanymore.
And a lot of times when I thinkabout that there's something
that I can't do, it's becauseI'm afraid to do it.
And why would I be afraid, Imean?

(02:28):
The next question after I can'tis well, why can't you?
Okay, I cannot be a surgeon.
I will not be a surgeon becauseI am not going to school to
learn how to do that.
It's not that I can't, it'sthat I don't have the desire to.
I don't want to learn how to.

(02:50):
That's just not my thing.
But it's not that I am unableto to.

(03:10):
I am not ignorant, I am notstupid, but it's not what I want
to do.
So I'm not going to tell you Ican't do it, because I probably
can if I want to, and I put mymind to it.
But sometimes we don't dothings that we could because
we're afraid that we'll fail ifwe try, and that's not an

(03:31):
acceptable excuse for me.
I would have told you five yearsago that I can't record a
podcast, but that wasn't true.
It took me about two and a halfyears to make up my mind to do
it really and truly, because Iwas afraid to put myself out

(03:53):
there.
But I have learned that I amcapable of oh so many things.
I didn't think I'd ever be ableto write a book.
I wanted to.
I wanted to write a book aboutmy mother, but I hadn't made the
effort to start.

(04:14):
And when someone asked me towrite the book, the first thing
I said to them was no, I don'twant to do that.
But do you know, I love writingand I love researching, and I
always have.
So that wasn't true.
One of the things that I havetaught my children and my

(04:35):
grandchildren is don't say youcan't.
And my grandchildren is don'tsay you can't, say I don't want
to learn to do that, or, if youthink you can't do something,

(04:56):
figure out what is the worstthing that could happen if you
try.
So the worst thing that couldhappen is that I could try and I
don't pass the test.
Okay, that doesn't mean youcan't.

(05:17):
That't is a big blocker fromyour dreams, from your hopes,
from things that you aspire todo, from things that you think
you can do.
It's a fear word.
It's not worth putting in yourvocabulary.

(05:46):
It's a waste.
You don't know what you can dountil you make the effort to try
.
And you can always back upafter you try.
Do you remember that littlepoem?
That little poem, the one thatmy parents made me learn?
If at first you don't succeed,try, try again.
You know that's what you dowhen you learn how to crawl when

(06:10):
you're a baby you try.
You start out with maybe oneleg on the ground, but you want
to move, you want to see, youwant to investigate what's going
on.
So you figure out how to scootforward.
And a lot of us scoot with oneleg and not two.
And then we put that other legdown and we start to crawl.

(06:34):
And eventually we see thatthings are higher than us and we
want to get to them.
So we start to grab hold andpull ourselves up.
And once we pull ourselves up,then we decide we want to see if

(06:54):
we can do what those otherpeople are doing that are
walking.
And so we try to take steps.
And do you know what happenswhen we take the steps?
We fall and then we bounce backup and we try it again until we
walk.
It's no different when you'rean adult and you're learning to

(07:17):
do something new.
You're trying, you're puttingone foot in front of the other
or one leg down, and you'recontinuing until you get to a
point where you have to do alittle extra stretching and you
pull, and then you pull yourselfup to the next rung, and then

(07:44):
you pull yourself up to the nextrung and then you decide to put
one whole foot out and theother and you walk.
I would never have thought thatI would go and speak in front of
people unless it was PTA.
I would never have thought thatI would have sung in front of
people when I was growing up butI was encouraged to and I

(08:05):
sounded okay.
I would never have thought thatI would write a book or that I
would be thinking about writingmore.
I would never have thoughtabout people would actually pay
me to speak because it wassomething that I would do for
free and I was devaluing who Iwas by doing that all of the

(08:31):
time.
So the word can't that's not inmy vocabulary and you need to
take it out of yours.
There might be some things thatyou can try to do that you won't
succeed at, but that doesn'tmean that you can't, and I don't

(08:53):
want you to limit yourself bysaying that you can't.
Sometimes it's just making achoice and we need to own our
choices.
We need to say that's somethingI choose not to do.

(09:13):
Not, I can't do that.
Yeah, you can.
I've had people tell me oh,you're so creative and I
couldn't do that, I can't dothat.
Well, they don't know where mycreativity came from.
Some things I learned to dowhen I was a kid, some things I

(09:39):
promise you.
I did a Google search andwatched some videos and figured
out how to do it.
You know why?
Because I wanted to.
I don't let things tell me thatI can't, and I remember very
well when people would tell methat I couldn't.

(10:01):
In fact, here's a great storywhen I was PTA president at an
elementary school, the schoolhad a history of having a silent
auction every year to raisefunds, and the person who was
supposed to be in charge of itthe year I was PTA president I

(10:28):
knew she was going through adivorce and I didn't see where
she'd have time to do it.
But the VP who was in charge ofvolunteers, promised me that
she'd do it, it'd be no problem,and I said okay, and that event
normally happened in April.
Well, in January, the VP ofvolunteers came to me and said
you know, she's not going to beable to do it.
And I just looked at her andshe said we'll just have to

(10:52):
cancel it.
Well, that was the bigfundraiser for the school year.
I'm still a black woman.
I'm always going to be a blackwoman.
So if something is not going tohappen on my watch, it needs to
be because I don't want it tohappen.
I don't want to get blamed forsomething happening or not
happening that I could haveavoided.

(11:13):
And so I said and so I saidwell, I'll just handle it.
And what she said next pissedme off.
She said well, I don't know ifyou've ever been to an auction
or not.
Well, what did that have to dowith it?

(11:34):
I had been to four of them atthat school.
I had been to one when I was achild in Lake St Catherine,
vermont, and I knew you neededan auctioneer and you needed
stuff to auction off.
So I decided that I was going togo visit all the PTA auctions

(11:58):
that were going on for the nextcouple of weeks.
And I did, and I saw what itlooked like they were doing and
I thought OK, I'll go online andI'll check it out a little bit
more.
And so I did.
And I figured out we neededdocuments because we needed to
put out auction sheets, weneeded stuff to auction off, but

(12:21):
we had to use the ID number forthe school or for the PTA.
So I created all thesedocuments online and I put them
in my car and every time I wouldstop somewhere, I would go to
businesses and I would say I'mPTA president for this school

(12:42):
and we're hosting a silentauction, and I'd tell them the
date, I'd give them all theinformation they needed, and I
can't think of a single companythat told me no.
And so I ended up with tons ofstuff.
I went online and I searchedfor silent auction gifts and
companies just popped up thatsaid that they were giving away

(13:06):
things.
You know, if you had the rightdocumentation and I had the
right documentation I had stuffcoming to my house.
I had a friend who worked forDisney.
He sent some stuff from hiscompany.
I had all kinds of stuff.
And then I thought about allthose options.
I had been to all thosefundraisers I had been to in the

(13:28):
past.
We very rarely had the blackchildren there who were bused in
and so I was like how can weget that to happen?
And how can we get blackparents to come?
You know, their children comeon a bus.
They don't always have a way toget here.
I talked to the teachers.
One of the teachers said shewas going to get the bus from

(13:49):
her church.
She went and picked up studentsand parents.
I talked to some other folk.
It was the year that theHurricanes had won the Stanley
Cup.
We got some signed banners fromthe folks with the Hurricanes.
We had live auctions, we hadsilent auctions.

(14:10):
I made sure we had something sothat every child could go buy
something with their own money.
So we had a room of used toysand kids could come and buy
something for $2 or less.
And then I thought you know,our silent auctions are always.
I couldn't afford to buy stuff.

(14:32):
So I made sure that we hadthings that were produced by the
classrooms, things that weregifts from businesses, things
that didn't have to be combined.
We had some big gifts but somesmall.
And I told my best friend Isaid this is going to be the

(14:52):
best damn spring fling they everhave.
And it was.
We raised $9,000 that year,which was more than any other
activity had raised for thatpart of the year.
The school was full, it waspacked, the library was taken

(15:13):
over by the silent auction andthen we had some folks who
decided they would be theauctioneers and auction off the
stuff.
But you know, if I had followedthe first instinct, we wouldn't
have had that event, we wouldn'thave made that amount of money
for school that year, because Ihad never done it before.

(15:35):
I would have said I can't, Iwould have been afraid, but I
don't say that, I don't use thatword.
And so I learned that I don'thave to be silent If I want to
learn how to do something.
I can, and so I don't use theword I can't.

(16:00):
And because I don't use thewords I can, and so I don't use
the word I can't, and because Idon't use the words I can't, I'm
not silent anymore.
You've been listening to Quietno More, where I share my

(16:20):
journey, so you can be quiet nomore.
Let's connect atwwwcarmencawthoncom.