The one thing you need to do right before you walk on stage: You’re gonna love this

August 15th, 2014

Has this happened to you?

You’re about to give a speech. You start out feeling only slightly terrified, but as you draw closer to the Moment Of Truth, you convince yourself the audience is gonna hate it. You have mapped out every thought they could possibly have about you.

“She sucks. She shouldn’t be up there speaking. I’ve heard this before. She’s not saying anything new. Yawn. Boring. Who does she think she is anyway? What’s for dinner? Is this almost over?”

Your mind goes a million miles a minute…

“What was I thinking? This was the dumbest idea ever. Who am I to think I have something to say anyway? Should have prepared more. Should have taken that speech class in high school. Should have just stayed in the back of the room. Should have become a dentist.”

You start visualizing their response:

They roll their eyes. Their eyes start to droop. They check their watch. They check their phone. They check their teeth in the reflection of their phone. Any salad in there? No salad, but a text comes in and next thing you know they’re texting and that’s the end. The audience is gone. They hate it. They think you suck.

You’re doomed. The next hour is going to be Hell.

You haven’t even begun yet, but you’ve already convinced yourself you’ve failed.

There’s no way out.
Why even bother getting on stage?

Your mind is having a massive party of the self-bashing variety. The kind that grabs on to one thought and amplifies it. Like that horrible dance party you went to where the same incessant rhythm plays over and over and over and gets louder and louder and louder as the night goes on.

It feeds on itself. Each thought serves as compost for the next.

Or as my 15-year-old niece described to me, “It’s like dominoes lined up in a row. The minute one falls, each succeeding thought follows. Once the first one falls there’s no turning back.”

They hate me. They’re bored. I’m worthless. One domino after the next. You just sit there and watch them fall.

Here’s the thing:

You already know that’s useless, right? But you can’t turn it around.
You can’t pick up the dominoes once they start falling.

Or maybe you can. Maybe there is a way to stick your finger in the way of the next falling domino so the rest stay standing.

Here’s a simple thing you can say to interrupt the falling dominoes, or even to keep the first one from falling:

You’re gonna love this.

Before you step onto stage, or before you walk into a networking event, or give your 1 minute elevator speech, or do anything in which you are taking a risk and making yourself vulnerable. Or if the thought train starts taking you fast down the road to “I suck.”

…pause, open your heart, turn the corners of your mouth up, take a breath, receive the audience, and say in your mind, to them,

“You’re gonna love this.”

You are giving them the extraordinary gift of yourself.

Give it without apology
Give it generously.
Give it proudly.

All the other gobble-dy-goop gets in the way of you giving your gift.

And that’s a loss for all of us.

“You’re gonna love this” will cut right through the lies you’re telling yourself and bring you to your heart, which will bring your audience right to their heart–

which is just what they came for.

You’re gonna love this.
You are so gonna love this.