The One Question That Stops Self-Sabotage

Okay, so this is me pulling back the curtain on the public speaking anxiety and self-doubt that almost made me say no to the biggest talk of my career. I'm taking you through the whole mental spiral, the panic before I walked on stage, and the sneaky way my own brain turned on me when I started caring too much what everyone would think.

If you've ever had a big opportunity land in your lap and felt yourself wanting to shrink back or turn it down, you'll see a lot of yourself in this. I get honest about what was really going on in my head, and the tiny decision at midnight that I almost didn't make.

In this episode:

• What it actually felt like to prep for a 360-degree stage in another country with people watching from every angle
• The moment stage fright turned into a full panic attack right before I walked on
• The advice two seasoned coaches gave me that I decided to ignore
• The question that quietly hijacked my head and changed how I saw the whole thing
• What it feels like to worry that you're a fraud, and what I did with that fear
• How to tell your own voice apart from the fear of what other people think
• What I do when I don't trust myself right before something big and scary
• What I keep reminding myself about discomfort and the comfort zone when I want to quit
• The midnight moment that almost didn't happen, and why I'm so glad it did

If you've ever turned down something you really wanted because you were scared of what people might think, this one's for you.

Transcript

It’s midnight, and I’m in the Lone Hotel nightclub in Croatia at the VIP table for speakers. The place is packed, and the music is really loud. I’m not normally a club person, but I was invited to take a turn as a DJ, which is why I’m there.

My conference organizer pushes her way through the crowd to me and yells, you’re up next!

I freeze for a second, and then I yell back, oh no I’m not going up there. I’m really exhausted, so I think you’re gonna have to skip me.

She says, are you sure?

I say, yep.

I watch her turn and leave, and I’m immediately hit with this wave of oh shit, what the F did I just do?

This moment in the nightclub pretty much sums up my entire experience in Croatia. I was a speaker at DK Festival, and it was interesting because I knew it represented this huge opportunity for me, but I had so much freaking resistance.

I learned a lot of things about myself on this trip. So if you've ever ever had opportunities come your way and turned them down or you really struggle with taking that next step in your life or your career, then you might enjoy this episode because I'm showing you the mental spiral happening behind the scenes for me and yet how I managed to still get my ass on stage and get it done. I hope listening to this episode helps you take one step closer to what you want, too.

You’re listening to This Is How You Think, the show that remodels your mindset. I’m your host Jule Kim. Let’s dive in.

When I first got the invite from the conference organizer through LinkedIn, I was pretty thrilled. I asked my friend Chris if he's heard about the event and it turns out he'd already spoken there, so he immediately said, you should do it. This is going to help you skyrocket your speaking career. Don't even think about it, just say yes.

So I did. And what's really interesting now that I look back on this experience is that it felt big but also expected, like this is the trajectory and the type of stage I'm supposed to be on. Maybe you think I’m delusional - I’ve always wanted to hit the big stages.

But then the organizer tells me that this conference is NOT like other conferences, and that my talk needed to be innovative.

The venue also had a 360 stage, vs all of the conventional stages I’ve been on before which are at the front of the room, but in a 360 the audience sits all the way around the stage, which honestly really freaked me the hell out, because no matter what direction you're facing, somebody is going to be staring at your ass, right? 

Anyway, I thought okay, how can I make this innovative, like what does that even mean? So I reach out to Chris and he tells me that he once saw a speaker there, James Victore, who at one point apparently had the whole room singing Purple Rain with him. And I was like, holy shit, that IS pretty different. Yikes. How do I even do something like that?

I think hearing this example started to build some serious anxiety for me. And also, I haven’t been to that many conferences, so I haven't seen that many speakers live. I have no idea what other people do, and in all the events that I've spoken at, it's just been what I thought would be interesting, like something to spice it up a bit. But then, with the organizer telling me it has to be innovative, I was just like, fuck, what do I do?

I end up deciding I’m gonna lean into my gift, because I really like to design fun exercises specifically for the workshops I give. So I'm designing a couple of brand new exercises, and then I decide to bring in a prop, but then I'm worried. Am I gonna veer into cultural appropriation? I don’t want that.

Eventually I create a rough draft of my talk, and I do a dry run in front of a group the week before the event. The bad news is this run is a total failure, because at the event I only have 30 minutes, and the dry run took frickin 90 minutes, so I was like, oh my god, I'm in trouble.

I also showed my talk to two storytelling coaches I know, who are both really experienced with presentations, and they both strongly recommended that I dial down the audience participation. I’m not gonna lie – I struggled with that. Like, I really struggled, because on the one hand I don't want to be that asshole that asks somebody for their advice and then I don't take the advice. 

But on the other hand, I’ve never been a fan of any kind of event where the person just talks at you non-stop from the stage. Personally I get bored, because unless you're a super gifted speaker, and very charismatic, like you better have some frickin Dr Martin Luther King level mojo if you want to hold somebody's attention like that. 

Lord knows I don’t have that, which is why I like to get on the same level with the audience and have them talk with me. It’s why I design exercises and games for the audience, because that's what's fun for me too. So for these coaches to tell me to cut out the audience participation, I had a really hard time with that.

But I know why they were recommending this, since 30 minutes is not that much time, and I agree. They wanted me to play it safe, especially after what I went through when I spoke at the Seattle Sports Commission where I was the opening speaker last year, whereas at DK Festival I was the closing speaker. And btw I know I said 30 minutes is short, but my slot at the Sports Commission was only nine minutes, and I remember thinking, oh my god, are you kidding me, like what do I even have time to share in nine minutes?

Now unfortunately, what made the Seattle event so hard was right before I went on I had a full-blown panic attack, it was insane. This wasn’t my first speaking event, but I've never experienced stage fright like that before in my entire life. The panic attack was real. I felt like I was about to have a heart attack and even my vision started going dark. 

But somehow through willpower and my God-given stubbornness, I was talking to myself like, “woman! You better pull it together, you cannot melt into a puddle right now, you have to get through this!”

A minute later I'm walking on stage. I do my best and I get through it. It seems like the reaction was pretty good but, honestly I don’t really remember because it was traumatic. I still carry a little bit of PTSD from it, and I know this because normally my memory recall is super sharp. I don't have a photographic memory, but it's really clear most of the time. But with this Sports Commission talk, I just remember flashes kind of like how they show you in the TV shows or the movies, like, when someone's on drugs and everything looks blurry and chaotic. Yeah, that’s my memory from that day.

It's because of that experience that I think the coaches were both telling me to keep it simple, like don't do anything special, you're already experiencing a lot of change right now in this kind of setup, it’s in a different country, the stage is new, you don't need the prop, you don't even need to have audience volunteers. Don't invite anybody on stage because it’s risky.

But I approach speaking events very differently, probably because I haven't been conditioned or taught that you have to speak a certain way, like it has to have parts A, B, C, D. I’m more like let’s sprinkle a little B, K, a star, the number 3, or a square, like whatever I think is cool.

Now, all the times in the past when I was preparing for any kind of event, I generally only needed two to three days to prep for them. I would build my slide deck, and I knew very clearly what I was going to talk about and I was really comfortable with that. 

But for Croatia, I started prepping for this more than a month before, and to be honest I don’t even know if that really helped because I was seriously spiraling. 

So somewhere in the past six months, I think because of what the organizer told me and then Chris telling me that I better get this right, I was feeling a lot of pressure, and then even worse, I started measuring myself to other people's expectations.

That’s when I was really in trouble because at some point the question shifted away from is this experience gonna be any good? And it turned into, am I gonna be any good? 

It’s really weird when I think about it because in the past, I’d always focused on showing up, having a good time, delivering a fabulous experience, while sharing what I knew. And I know this is gonna sound a little strange, but I didn't really care what other people thought of me, because that idea that people would evaluate or judge me didn't even cross my mind. I guess ignorance was bliss.

Anyway, after several days of getting this advice from the coaches, I finally decided I couldn’t do it. I knew it was risky, and maybe I was gonna be completely wrong and I would end up bombing on stage, but at least if I do that, I would have nobody but myself to blame, right? Like, if I fail, it wouldn’t be because I was so busy listening to other people instead of doing what I thought was right. 

So I brought the prop, I asked for an audience volunteer, brought them on stage, and… it worked out. Several people even told me they loved seeing the volunteer because it not only illustrated the teaching but it was a really fun way to lighten the mood in the room. 

And then it was finally over.

Was my presentation perfect? No, of course not. And in fact, I’ve already reworked it. But I got through this one, and I have photos and video from it. I know I gave it everything I had, and that was a-okay.

I think the only way I really got through this experience successfully despite all the doubts, and the spiraling, and being worried I was a terrible speaker or that people would think I was a fraud, the one thing that I kept asking myself was, is this what I want? Do I want to have a career as a public speaker? My answer was yes. 

Okay, so then the next question I asked myself was, does that matter more than all of this fear and anxiety of what people might think of me? And in my mind I see it like a seesaw, so it’s like which side is the heavier side? Future me or this fear? And every time I choose future me.

Because that’s the life I want, and I’m gonna keep choosing that, even though it feels really awful to feel terrified being in the arena vs being a spectator. That’s just how it goes, by definition leaving your comfort zone feels uncomfortable, and that was me. I felt so uncomfortable.

And the reason why I mention this because a lot of people for some reason think it’s so easy for me to put myself out there, and it’s not true. All the videos and content, the podcast, and the events I speak at, they're not comfortable or easy, especially as an introvert.

But I remind myself that you know what, all I can do, and all anyone can do, is put in the work and prepare and try to trust yourself. And if you can't trust yourself, then trust the people who asked you to come and do this. Trust that they know what they’re doing when they asked you, even if you don’t feel like it.

So, going back to the scene in the nightclub when I said no and then watched the organizer walk away, I instantly knew that if I didn't do this, I was gonna regret it. 10 minutes later I found her and said hey, is it too late? She says no. And then she says, can I ask what changed your mind? I reply, dude when am I ever going to get this chance again to be a DJ for a real club, with a real crowd? 

She smiles and says, exactly!

Soon enough it’s time for my DJ set. I go up there. I’m super sweaty, my palms are clammy and I’m hella awkward, but also I have a lot of fun. I have a moment thinking oh my gosh I must look so dumb up here, but then I shrug and decide that I’m gonna have this experience, because it’s mine, even if it’s uncomfortable. 

And side note: can I just say, it’s so wild setting the music and seeing it reflected in the crowd’s mood instantly? Like so freakin cool. I end up doing 8 or 9 songs, and then I leave the stage. I come down, and I'm shocked because there's all these people, my fellow speakers and my friends, high-fiving me. 

I would never have gotten to live or feel any of that if I’d let myself crumble under the judgment and expectations of other people. And I keep thinking, oh my gosh what a ride. I’m super grateful to my friends for supporting me through such a cool event, and I’m so glad I did it.

Lastly, there are opportunities out there calling your name. Get you some friends who’ll help you grab them, even when you’re scared. Especially when you’re scared.

Anyway, that's it for this week.

If you’re curious. I’ve posted pictures online if you want to check the links in the description. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to text me or send a message on LinkedIn. 

As always, thank you so much for listening, and remember, I believe in you. See you next time.