⛅️ Head in the Clouds, Part Two
“The biggest obstacle we face, in performance and in life, is self-centeredness.”
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Catch up on part one here first:
“The biggest obstacle we face, in performance and in life, is self-centeredness.”
—Jim Murphy, Inner Excellence
Where we left off . . .
The stack of index cards sitting in my lap taunted me, reminding me how many of the new additions to my keynote I had yet to memorize, with just two days remaining. This flight meant crossing a threshold; the event no longer an abstraction six months away, but now imminent.
Every time I flubbed a flashcard, my nerves soured. I wasn’t ready.
After boarding, in that quick last-minute window before take-off, I scanned for new podcast episodes to download. One leapt from the queue. Could this episode change the outcome of the event? Could it change my life?
I tired of “peak performance” as a topic of interest many years ago. Something about the way podcast bros saturated the listening market with this notion by interviewing—let’s be honest—mostly men about how to constantly be better (the best!) wore me out.
At a certain point, I stopped striving for constant peak—obsessed with measuring good, better, best—I just wanted to do the best I could do, surrendering at every step to whatever was in the highest good for all involved. I was not obsessed with winning everything, or even being the best at anything; I just wanted peace and equanimity while being of service to others, whatever that looked like.
So it surprised even me that, on the morning of this nerve-wracking flight, the episode I chose to download from ’ 10% Happier podcast was called, “How to Perform Under Pressure—with Both Peace and Confidence,” featuring Jim Murphy, whose remarkable viral book sales story I shared in part one.1 The only word missing was peak, but it sure seemed implied.
It was the peace and confidence part that got me; that’s what I was craving going into the event. I’d been planning with the organizers for six months, bringing in three Pivot facilitators and working with them on their slides, stories and handouts; and writing a whole new post-pandemic portion for mine to bring it current.
Just one day earlier, in a not-unusual case of last-minute nerves, I sobbed to my husband that I was a fraud, set to give a Pivot keynote while failing to pivot my way out of our financial mess. I had lost my confidence, and I’m not someone who can conjure it out of thin air. Although I did do well at my last two in-person speaking gigs, I hadn’t spoken to this many people IRL in almost a decade.
I needed a shift, and I needed it badly. I did not want to step onto that stage feeling needy, nervous, or unprepared—aka the way I was already feeling on this flight. But I was only allowing those things in because I had forgotten something crucial:
This event was not about me.
Duh. This event was about them, the attendees who were traveling far and wide, many across state lines, to be there.
That’s when Jim shared eight words that washed the worries right out of my body.