People see me on stage and just assume that I don’t get nervous. The reality is that I am just as nervous as when I first gave my speech years ago when I started my speaking career.
When I look back at all the times that I got nervous, I can’t seem to recall a time when being nervous actually helped me.
I was in my final year of graduate school at the University of Chicago and Deloitte invited me to interview with them. I knew that I was right for the job BUT I got really nervous. I got so nervous that I fumbled the interviewer’s name and my responses were incoherent.
So how do I deal with it now? First, I cement the fact that it is a distractor and not an enabler. So when I do get nervous, I remind myself of that fact. Then, what I do is to channel that nervousness into energy and enthusiasm.
One of the things that I tell my kids when we go on rollercoasters is to scream. You initially start screaming out of fear but as you continue that fear turns into enthusiasm and even enjoyment.
So when I go on stage, I bring an enormous amount of energy to turn that nervousness into enthusiasm.
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