The Power of Fear

So first up, the virtual talk. This experience really took me by surprise – I teach a lot of workshops and so I didn’t think this would feel any different. Therefore I was completely unprepared for quite how difficult giving a solo virtual talk is – I have immense admiration now for anyone who does this.

First of all, there is the pressure of having an hour to fill, taking up people’s valuable time and not feeling quite certain if you are doing a good job. In my in-person workshops the sessions are much longer (and more expensive for attendees!), so why was it so much worse virtually. The issue was, I couldn’t see anyone’s faces… all I could see was the number of participants. Being totally honest, a lot less people joined the talk than had signed up (maybe 20% joined!). So from the get-go, I felt immediately a bit concerned about whether I should start the talk or give people more time to join - it threw me from the very beginning and made it hard to get into my stride. During the session, I could see participant numbers going up and down, and it was hard to talk whilst in my head I was getting into a negative cycle of “why are people dropping off”, or “god, I am so boring”. The moment the talk finished I just burst into tears. It all sounds mad and totally melodramatic, but it was overwhelming emotionally.

The thing is, I wasn’t prepared for how it might feel and I went into a major negative thought cycle… damning myself. That was our first studio talk (you can watch it here and see if you can tell how afraid I was!) and if we hadn’t already had the second one scheduled with guests and tickets sold, I am not sure if I would have ever done another. However, below I have copied some of the feedback we got after the talk – this is not to brag, but to show how all that fear and emotion I was experiencing, clearly didn’t come through for those who joined. I am so glad to those who took the time the message as they genuinely seemed to really enjoy it!

My top piece of advice for anyone giving a virtual talk… do not look at the participant numbers EVER when you are doing a live talk. People have to drop off for all sorts of reasons – they might have a child, or internet issues or have only ever been able to sign up for the first 30 minutes. Don’t let the negative thoughts win!

I went into the second talk we did giving myself a major pep talk first – and whilst it helped that I had two guests with me so I felt less exposed – I also just thought positively. I thought about how much I enjoy joining other people’s virtual talks, and so those who have joined mine are probably just are enjoying it too. The upshot is, it made me present better – I was more confident and less apologetic – which in turn probably made those listening feel a bit more reassured and comfortable. In actual fact, when the talk finished, I was buzzing and since then we have scheduled two more!

For someone who is pretty confident when giving in person talks or running workshops (hopefully you’ll agree if you have been to one!), I have a bizarre level of social anxiety. I think it has gotten worse over the last few years of running my own business (particularly during the first year in Covid when I was pretty much alone working the flat the whole time). After years in corporate advisory roles where you are working in teams and thrown together with all sorts of different people every day, it’s a major shift going into the total isolation of starting your own business (no one prepares you for that!).

If you have been following on Instagram, you’ll maybe have seen that a few weeks ago the mini-MBA programme I got onto (Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses) kicked off. After 2 weeks of virtual sessions, the week before last we had our first residential in Oxford. I was feeling totally ready for it until the day before when we received a message from the course coordinators saying “if you fancy it, when you arrive come and join everyone for a drink in the bar”. For some reason, I just felt this overwhelming fear. I didn’t know anyone and I hate walking into that environment – clammy palms, rotten tummy, saying silly things – all those classic signs of being nervous.

When I got to Paddington Station to get the train up to Oxford, I couldn’t have been more delighted than to see there were signal failures and all trains out of Paddington were cancelled. Never has someone so joyfully been told by a conductor it will take a few hours before the trains restart. Uh oh… there go those drinks!

The thing is, there is not just one way from London to Oxford. About 10 minutes down the road is Marylebone station, from which trains to Oxford were running perfectly. I knew this, the train guards knew this and all the other people who did go to the drinks and travelled from London clearly knew it too. However, I let the fear win and I instead of going an alternative route to Oxford, I sat in Paddington Station in the cold for 2 hours.

The next day on the residential, lots of people had already met at the drinks. And whilst it didn’t matter hugely that I hadn’t been there, I didn’t have the same immediate easy rapport they had built. One of the main reasons for doing this training programme at all is to help build a network and not feel quite so alone in my journey. Sitting cowardly in a train station rather than meeting all those inspiring people, was just plain silly.

Finally, the one which seems most classically to be a scary experience, was my off-piste ski course. I am very lucky to have been skiing since I was young and so I am quite a good skier by now, but I am not a skier who ever really goes out of their comfort zone. Enter stage right… my husband Harry. Harry is not an overly experienced skier, but he is absolutely determined to be good and totally fearless.

A few years ago, he went on a trip to the UCPA (French youth hostel association) to do an off-piste ski course and ever since has been singing its praises. So this year, I wanted to go with him so we can both improve our skiing together, but in all honesty, it’s a holiday I was dreading. I haven’t been in a group environment for skiing since I was about 8 years old, and had all these fears of not being good enough, getting moved out of the group, holding everyone up, or hurting myself. All quite reasonable fears!

For the first few days, I went into it all with the attitude of just needing to get through it. The days were long, starting before 9AM and finishing after 5PM with just one break. As you are doing quite a bit of walking and off-the-beaten-track runs, you only probably have about 6 or 7 runs in the day. So each morning, after the first run I would be thinking, “great, just get through the next run and then there are only likely to be 4 more, then the day will be over and there will just be tomorrow….” And on and on it goes. I was so tense the whole time that at the end of the day everything hurt – agony not caused by the exercise alone but largely caused by how afraid and tense I was.

On the fourth day, I cracked and after the first run, I bailed. It was a sunny day, so whilst the rest of the group went off skiing, I went and lay on a deckchair with a glass of wine in the sun. And I felt absolutely dreadful. The moment I sat down, I knew I had made the wrong decision – I felt ashamed of myself for letting my fear win, I felt embarrassed for having abandoned the group and I felt jealousy thinking of them all having fun, doing those challenging runs together. In that moment, I realised I had a choice. There is absolutely no reason I have to do this ridiculously intense course, but through walking away, I realised that whilst I didn’t have to, I wanted to be the person that kept going. I wanted to be the person who enjoyed it.

So, I made a pact to myself that the following day, whatever happened and no matter how many times I fell, I would see the day through to the end and I would just try as best as I could to enjoy it. The following day was a revelation – the last day of the holiday was the first day I genuinely enjoyed it. Whilst I feel sad that the revelation came late in the trip… next year we will definitely be back.

So, what’s the point of all this reflection (and reasonably high level of self-flagellation). I wanted to share these experiences as it’s been a period of quite a profound level of self-discovery. Parts of this account I am proud of (getting back on my skis!) and parts of it I am not. But I have learnt three main things:

When approaching things that scare us, attitude is everything. Our ski instructor Alex gave one bit of advice which has stuck with me – he said skiing is 10% technique, 30% fitness and 60% mentality. Whilst fitness isn’t so important in other aspects of life, I think 60% of everything being mentality it probably pretty bang on. I need to choose to be positive and not let the negative thoughts in.

Letting the fear win and bailing felt 100x worse than going through with the scary activity. Next time I need to remember that however scared I may feel, I’ll feel worse if I give up.

Don’t overwhelm myself – try prepare as much as possible for how I might feel in a particular circumstance and be kind to myself if it does feel emotionally overwhelming. The last few months I feel I have put myself through the wringer a bit and for every day spent outside of my comfort zone, I think I’ve earned a few days back inside it to find the energy again.

So here I am – crawling back into my comfort zone to recharge batteries before deciding what activity to scare myself with next!