The 3 thoughts that will help you embrace your fear and put yourself out there

I am a proud introvert, so as you can imagine, my recent foray into the world of speaking has come with its challenges. 

Not so long ago, I spoke at a particular event that took quite a bit of mental and emotional preparation. It was a women’s all day event with the promise of nourishing the soul and helping one get intentional about their life. I had a 40 minute slot to ironically talk about ‘The Art of Putting Yourself Out There’ and shared the stage with a host of incredible speakers. 

As I took the microphone, the first thing I did was announce how nervous I was, and admit that I had spent too much time comparing myself to the other speakers in the lead up to the event. 

Rather than call the event organiser and tell her I had come down with a rare form of laryngitis, I shared with the audience the three thoughts that got me up onto the stage and I thought they might help you also-

• Life will never give you an opportunity you are not capable of fulfilling and/or learning from.

• If you have had an intuitive nudge to say yes to an opportunity, it means there is a higher purpose and it will lead you to where you need or want to go.

• You are the only person in this universe who can do what you do the way that you do it; say what you say the way that you say it; and see the world the way you see it through your lense of experience and through your story. There is no competition and comparing yourself to others is futile. 

The event was a huge success, I connected with so many incredible women and I am so happy I did not let my nerves, my introversion or my inner critic talk me out of it. 

Like everything else in life, fear and insecurity can at times be a positive metric. It can signal you are out of your comfort zone and therefore growing. To imagine going through life limited by outdated ideas of what you are capable of is more frightening to me than getting on stage. 

Though I spent the next day in bed with a book recovering, I felt nourished by the experience and confident I had grown. It reminds me of Susan Jeffer’s classic book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway, in the book, which was clearly ahead of its time, Jeffers claims the #1 Fear Truth is- The fear will never go away as long as you continue to grow! In her words “Every time you take a step into the unknown, you experience fear. There is no point in saying, "When I am no longer afraid, then I will do it." You'll be waiting for a long time. The fear is part of the package.”

The path to putting yourself out there and building your profile can be a scary experience for most people. The fear of rejection, criticism and disapproval can be paralysing. But here is the thing, if you have a message to share and growth is the result of feeling the fear and doing it anyway, isn’t the upside more valuable than the short term pain?

If the only person you can really depend on to be with you until the end is your future self, isn’t it worth choosing him or her over everything else? 

Whatever the stage looks like for you, whatever opportunity you might seek or whatever is beyond your comfort zone, I say go for it and trust the growth it will bring to you and who you are yet to become. As the ever wise and eloquent Ralph Waldo Emerson puts it, “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”