Well, I sure needed something that afternoon. It’s not that I was devoid of confidence, but my energy level had taken a nosedive. I just did not have the old knock-’em-dead spirit. And by this point I had only five minutes to find it. OK, Gail, I thought, why don’t you try singing something? I had just passed an attractive young man on the street who said, as he walked by, “Love your suit!” And maybe that’s what did it, but the perfect song popped into my head. It was from Funny Girl, and I had heard Barbra Streisand sing it a million years before. I started singing it under my breath: “I’m the greatest star. I am by far, but no one knows it.” And then I got to those killer words that set me right up, that got my adrenaline flowing, that reminded me I was the right person at the right place at the right time to knock ’em dead. My voice got stronger and people glanced at me curiously, but I didn’t care. “Looking down you’ll never see me. Try the sky, ’cause that’ll be me!”

That did it, all right. I was no longer walking; I was strutting, I was smiling, I was bursting with energy. I was unstoppable. About 20 minutes into our meeting, that editor said, “You know what, Gail? We really want to buy your book. We love your energy!” Now I sing my song every time I walk into a challenging, ego-on-the-line situation. And it always works. Oh, I don’t mean I always make the sale. But I always bring my best self into the room — whether it’s an interview, a presentation, or a cocktail party filled with people I don’t know.

Actually, I’m so committed to the idea of “finding your song” that I urge everyone I know to find theirs. One of my favorite clients, a marketing executive who faces enormous challenges in her new position, sings “I Will Survive,” by Gloria Gaynor, every morning on the way to work. (Funny, a lot of women I know have chosen that song.) Another wonderful young woman, who had been out of work for a long time, sang Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” — at the top of her lungs — on the way to the interview that nailed the job of her dreams. She told me afterward, “They had to hire me. They had no choice. I was so hot, I was irresistible.” I’m working with a woman in her 50s whose husband recently left her for someone else. As part of a self-reinvention program, she has chosen as her song “Too Many Fish in the Sea,” by the Marvelettes (“short ones, tall ones, fine ones, kind ones”). Her husband’s departure is turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to her.