Here’s a tip for those of you who suffer from stage fright. I’m just like you, or at least I used to be just like you. I had a ton of stage fright in my teens and 20s. Absolutely hated to be looked at, to be the center of attention. Hated the idea of getting up in front of the room and being forced to talk and have people listen to me. But on the counter side of that, I always wanted to be somebody who could make a difference to people. I wanted to be somebody who provided value to people. For the longest time, I thought the way to do that would be to like put out art, to make movies, and put it out in front of audiences and have that be the thing that would make the difference to my audience. But what I discovered is that there’s a tremendous value to being the thing that makes the difference to an audience to actually seeing your words make a difference in the moment. Now, so one of the big things that I did to shift myself and create a new version of myself in front of an audience is I started to think about the whole challenge of speaking in a different way. I used to think about it like it was all about me. I was sort of the star of the show in my head and that freaked me out. What I came to recognize is that idea was totally in my way. And I started to think of this whole experience, this whole event as not being about me, but being about my audience. I started to create a story in my head where the main character of the story wasn’t me. The main character was them. They’re in a particular place right now that’s less than ideal and they want to be in a better place which shifted me into a different role. Instead of the story being about me, I became in my head a hero of the story who was there to make a positive difference to my audience. When I started to do that, it shifted the way that I thought about the whole job of speaking. And I started to look at my audience not as people who want to judge me, but people that I can make a positive difference for. [Music]
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