Overcoming The Fear – SWPP 2019
The Societies Convention 2019 in London was quite a week. After weeks, or maybe months of worrying about it, it finally happened. It’s no secret how stressed I was about public speaking and this was a make or break thing for me. Everyone keeps saying the more you do these the easier it gets, but after eight previous attempts, this one seemed more daunting than ever.
Of course, I don’t do things by half. In the space of exactly four weeks, I fitted in the following…
Received my books a few days before Xmas and sent out over 150 packages, and delivered dozens.
Moved flat.
Got through Christmas and New Year.
Prepared two 2 hour talks for London.
As well as dealing with the day to day running of the business. Not a bad hit rate to be honest, and no wonder I was stressed and also no wonder I was exhausted.
As I alluded to in my last blog, I have no idea why I am worried so much about these things, it is purely psychological. This mental barrier. Well, 2019 will go down as the year I overcame my fears. A mixture of good preparation, meditation, stopping alcohol, and just trying to take my own advice and believe in myself, all contributed to a situation I didn’t think possible. Yes I did both talks without feeling nervous at all. Obviously when you get ready to begin there is sure to be some nerves, or you wouldn’t be human, but I actually found my anxiety was non existent, particularly the second talk, which was the one worrying me most. The only slight nerves were on day one, and that was because I was talking from 1pm – 3pm and had far too long hanging about thinking. Day two saw me up at 9am, and that meant no time to stress. I expected to wake up feeling the usual fears, but it just didn’t happen.
So, I think I have turned a corner, and now need to keep the momentum going and do more of these things.
My talk on the North Coast 500 was fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it. Lots of fun, behind the scenes videos, images and stories. The wedding talk, which had grown from ten tips to fifty tips, was well received and I had a very good turnout. I had to go fast to finish as I was running out of time – unheard of!
It was a great convention. Smaller than previous years but so good to catch up with friends, old and new. I throughly enjoyed it and came back inspired, and have produced the most work ever in the week since.
Here’s me discussing getting to know the location – in this case Dunrobin castle.
Thank you to everyone who came to my talks – I really appreciate it!
