Face Your Fears—And Breathe

On Saturday morning, I was terrified. Absolutely petrified.

How was I possibly going to answer the phone three times on stage? How?

The familiar downward-spiral thinking set in—I can't do it, how am I going to live through this, it's going to be a disaster, etc. Complete and utter panic overwhelmed me.

Then for some reason I decided to focus on my breath and take everything moment by moment. Amazingly and seemingly out of nowhere, I started to think more positively and the downward spiral was broken.

There was suddenly hope. The panicky feeling went away and I felt like I might actually live through it.

Well, I did live through it. I stuttered on hello on two of the three phone calls, but no one seemed bothered.

The instructor's feedback wasn't great. His exact words were "not bad."

It doesn't matter, though. I did it, and I survived. And the "not bad" had nothing to do with my speech. Apparently two of the imaginary callers weren't different enough.

And so, he's asked me to do it again this Saturday.

It's strange, though. I'm not nearly as scared or as worried about my speech as I was last week.

I guess facing your fears really does reduce them. Plus, now I know to just . . . breathe.