Sail boldly into the squall of your own fears

My recurring nightmare is that I’m making a presentation in front of hundreds of people, but I realize that the slide deck I’m using is the wrong one. And I have no idea what picture is going to come on the screen next. 

Gulp. 

Just thinking about that moment makes me feel helpless and incompetent and unprofessional and completely out of control of my environment and myself. Scary. 

But what’s interesting is, that very scenario happened to me once. Five minutes into a workshop I was conducting for a group of sales managers, I looked over at my computer and realized, oh crap, that’s the wrong slide show. 

My stomach dropped to the floor. My skin flushed like a fat kid at recess. I couldn’t believe it was actually happening. And yet, for some reason, the panic wasn’t as paralyzing as I imagined. Fear wasn’t clawing around in my chest like a trapped animal trying to get out. Because the problem was an easy fix. 

You just casually walk over to the laptop, close one document and open another, and get on with the presentation. Nobody even has to notice. 

And so, that’s exactly what I did. And in the moment, I thought to myself, wow, that’s it? That’s what I’ve been losing sleep over for years? 

Funny how fear does to you. It fools you into believing that it’s as big as your ego says it is. Almost like a form of pretraumatic stress syndrome. The terror and great aversion and mental anguish that results from preparing for the worst before it actually happens. 

When the reality is, most of our fears are tissue paper thin. And all it takes is one courageous step to break through the story we’ve built up inside our heads and come out clean on the other side. 

Next time you worst nightmare become a reality, sail boldly into the squall of your own fears. Kick fear in the ass and lived to tell the tale. 

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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