I learned a lot this past weekend from a very humbling experience.
I had the honor of doing a few Reset Breaks at the IASB Convention in New Orleans. This is some of the top speakers bureau agents, owners and employees in the world. Therefore, it can be a really intimidating audience to say the least. They’ve seen and heard it all. From celebrities to CEO’s to authors, they have new information coming at them daily and get to hear all the top speakers in the world.
Somehow I got lost and forgot what I was doing this for in the first place. I made it all about me. I was concerned if they would like it or not. Had they heard of anything like this before or would what I would be doing be new and fresh for them? I’ve got to make it fun, funny, serious, important and have them feel refreshed and re-energized at the same time. Is it dumb that I’m opening the conference wearing a dress and heels even though we are doing some stretching exercises? And the thoughts go on and on…
It’s no surprise to me that with all of these thoughts running through my mind that the first break I did out of three I had a moment where I froze up a bit. I forgot all of the wonderful statistics I wanted to share and was wishing that I had slides like I normally do. I’ve been in this industry since 2003, so I know many of the audience members. I also know now that you can’t possibly prepare yourself enough for this audience. No visualization or preparation cut it for me because I was ready. But, the minute I saw certain people and owners of these top bureaus in the audience the more I froze up and forgot all the things I wanted to say.
It was truly one of the scariest moments of my life that seemed like it lasted an absolute eternity.
I ended up nervously pulling it together somehow and kept going, but it wasn’t easy. And luckily, before my 3rd break, I had an incredible conversation with one of the other speakers. I was reminded of why I was there in the first place and that somehow along the way I had lost the whole reason of why I’m so passionate about this work in the first place.
I had made it all about me vs. all about them and what they could take from it. It’s why I’m in the business is to help people live their lives to their fullest potential and taking care of ourselves is in line with one of the big things I like to be teaching. Here I was having that opportunity to some of the most influential people out there and I lost track of why I was there because I let my nerves get the best of me.
The good news is I was able to switch to that mentality before my last break and even better news is now I’m pretty sure I could speak in front of the President of the United States and all of the top level CEO’s in the world and it would seem like a piece of cake. At least I’m well prepared for anything that comes along in the future 😉
Have you been humbled lately and if so, what did you learn from it? Or do you maybe need to be a bit more humble around a certain area and perhaps even ask someone for help?