What I can’t do

Here’s what I know:

▶ I can’t make you feel calm before a talk.

▶ I can’t make you look forward to presenting to a big audience. 

▶ I can’t take away your nervousness.

I can’t do any of that.

But I CAN do this: 

1) I can help you understand that the anxiety and stress you might feel before a presentation is NOT a sign of your being unprepared / a bad public speaker / or lacking in some way.

2) I can also help you understand that NOT feeling anxiety and stress (aka feeling calm and relaxed) before a talk is NOT necessarily a sign of your being prepared or a good public speaker.

Pre-talk anxiety and stress will remain regardless of whether we work together - because they are not really the problem.

➡ The real problem is what we do with them.

➡ What we think they mean.

➡ What we let them do to us.

And despite MY KNOWING this, I still catch myself thinking they signal a flaw in me. It comes at me when I’m planning a workshop or keynote.

But I can do this, and I DO do this. And it’s hard. It’s hard for me.

What can I look forward to? What can I promise for others who are at the same place?

🥕 To get more comfortable with the discomfort.

🥕 To remember we inherited hyper-protective brains from our ancestors. 

🥕 To remind ourselves that nerves are just excitement without an outlet.

And,

🥕 To find the JOY in the doing the hard thing. And to feel those split seconds of grace and connection of being alive and having something to say.

Nothing else I know gives this kind of feeling.

But it's hard.