I thought a root canal was the most painful thing that would occur in my life last Monday, but then I got a swift kick in the teeth.

I was still talking funny, one side of my mouth drooping from numbness, when a dear friend laid the news on me as we sat in a café. He had just seen a recently published book whose premise pretty much parallels my book-in-progress. It took a while for it to sink in. The process in my head went something like this:

What a novel idea. Wish I’d thought of it. Wait, I had. I did. Oh, man.

Suddenly what came to mind – don’t ask why – was the scene in the movie Speed where the crazy Dennis Hopper character says to the intense Keanu Reeves' character, “Pop quiz, hotshot. There's a bomb on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below 50, it blows up. What do you do? What do you do?”

Indeed, when you’ve been working your butt off on something and it feels like someone beat you to the punch, what do you do?

Well, if you can follow this life coach’s jumpy mind yet again, I flashed back to a month ago when one of my clients wrote me an email saying his friend had seen his book idea in a store in Manhattan. He was pretty wigged out. Here’s what I wrote back to him:

Your book will kick its ass.

And now the shoe was on the other foot. What do you do, Nancy? What do you do? Did you mean what you said to your client? Do you really think there’s room for more than one of his book or your book or anybody’s book? What do you do?

Here’s the truth. I went to the gym in the morning. I obsessed about the book on the treadmill. Decided to write this column by the time I began my weight training. Then I obsessed some more. Still sweaty from the workout, I went to Barnes and Noble and read the guy’s book cover to cover. Enjoyed it. Bought it. Let it sink in.

I came home and talked to two very wise, indulgent friends about it. I remembered way back in my sports columnist days when I wondered aloud to my brother what I could possibly write about Michael Jordan’s retirement that would measure up to the big-time sports writers who had access to him, and my brother saying, “As long as you feel that way, you’ll never be big-time.” I took the advice to heart and wrote a column that made me proud.

With this infusion of wisdom, I began to see the lessons and the validation in this current book situation. I realized the advice to the client was right on target and that I needed to take it myself. I started to feel empowered by the whole scenario and even incorporated some of it into my book proposal-in-progress, recalling all the while the quote by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, “There are no original ideas. There are only original people.”

I’m an original. We’re all originals. Bravo. What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four little hours.

What do you do?

Walk your talk.

Even the pain from the root canal is subsiding.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.