1000 word Wednesday - Feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Fear is a really important part of our lives. In its extreme form it is innately connected to survival, that gut feeling or intuition when fight, flight or freeze needs to kick in but we can also let it run, or ruin, the most basic part of our lives. The fear of failure, the fear of feeling stupid, the fear of being picked on, the fear of being rejected. Fear of heights, of water, of spiders, I won’t list them all but they are all rational fears to us as individuals, if not a little perplexing to those who are ok with all of the above and more.

Back in my business days, when things hadn’t quite turned out the way I had expected, I lost my confidence in life and confidence in my own abilities to succeed. In that lack of confidence lay a huge fear of rejection, of looking stupid and out of those fears was a fear of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a speech or merely in meetings, speaking about information which I knew a lot about so I avoided those situations like the plague. I would say no an awful lot, because I could, but it wasn’t actually doing me any good, until I moved to the then Government funded business support agency, Business Link.

I started in 2003 as a Business Advisor thinking that I’d be seeing companies on a one-to-one basis. Giving them advice on what the Government could offer in support or grants and connecting them with other businesses that would be beneficial to both parties. It all started well and after 3 weeks of learning on the job I attended my first networking meeting. I wrote about this in a recent blog, about my Boss’s Boss telling me that I had to give a 1-minute elevator pitch about Business Link, and I was terrified but, on this occasion, I didn’t have a choice. I was thrown in at the deep end and it was sink or swim. Fortunately I swam, all be it doggy paddle, and I stuttered my way through the longest 60 seconds of my life with sweaty palms and a heart racing faster than it would do on Everest 13 years later. But I did it.

By the end of my 5 years with MKOB Business Link I was organising seminars, speaking to large audiences and also doing a lot less stuttering. Move forward quite a few years and I still remember that first networking event whenever I am feeling nervous or fearful about doing a talk. It’s so much easier talking about your own life and if people put their bums on seats then they are ready to listen to a good story.

Quite a few years ago I read Rebecca Stephen’s book ‘On Top of the World’ (it’s very good!) and have always held onto one of her quotes ‘Your eyes are like a camera lens. Focus on what’s important’. I’ve used this ever since in my leading and instructing, helping get fearful clients through tricky situations and it really helps to focus their efforts. I’ve also used it myself on my own major dislike of heights and exposure, putting a lid on those fears and making them a rational safety mechanism rather than ‘conquering’ them but in the context of talks, I also still use this quote when I’m speaking to audiences but also when I’m about to go on.

When I started public speaking in 2015, pre-Everest, and the subsequent earlier talks, I used to think that I’d lost an audience’s attention if they went quiet or stopped shifting in their seats but in fact, it was quite the opposite. Taking the audience on a journey of emotions from how I used to be a no saying, height hating, comfort loving sofa surfer through an earthquake on the world’s highest mountain and onto whatever was happening at the time meant that they experienced many ups and downs, just as I did and their attention was evident rather than the opposite.

Roll onto now and our lockdown talks and they are a completely different kettle of fish. As I was sat in my kitchen on my own last night with my world map behind me, laptop raised on a Tupperware pot, I felt that fear again. I was doing my first online talk and I thought that I was not going to get the connection with the audience that I was used when they were in the room with me. I could see my great friend Pete Barty shifting on his sofa but I knew that he was interested rather than bored. I could see members of the Fareham Crusaders Running Club drinking their beers or cups of tea, I could see the expression on organiser James’s face when I showed the first crevasse/ladder video and could feel the tension when I showed the avalanche video at EBC from 25th April 2015. I could also feel the audience relax when we got to lighter times and their frustration when Carstensz was cancelled for the 3rd time. I could see some of it, feel some of it and just because I was behind a screen and not standing in front of them myself, it didn’t mean it meant any less, it was just different.

I may look confident but some of the fears still bubble under the surface. I’m not that comfortable in social situations when I’m not in work mode. I could probably train harder but fear failure. I most definitely don’t encourage chatter when I like someone for the fear of rejection. I sometimes feel like running away but as with anything that has gone on in my past, running away doesn’t move you forward.

If you are asked to do a talk online, please say yes! If you are asked it means that people are interested in what you have to say, they really want to hear your story. Yes, it’s scary to start with but that particular side of fear is a good thing. It keeps you sharp and on top of your game, and it means that you put more into it.

Here’s to feeling the fear and doing it anyway!