When I was working at grocery store in college, I had to get on the loud speaker and say to a customer, “your order is ready”. Ok, doesn't that sound pretty simple and easy to do? Unfortunately it was much harder than I realized. When I started to speak, all that came out was your…blah, noise, blah..blah, noise, sounds. Imagine nothing sounding coherent that came out of my mouth. Words that had no meaning and no language from where they came.
It is all that came out. I died of embarrassment and horror. The failure was evident in my eyes. After that moment, I struggled to talk into a microphone or in public in any way.
Barely able to get words out...
After college, I had a job where we had meetings with several hundred people and I had to talk to them on stage. I would be sweating profusely and barely able to get any words out. My mouth would be so dry it felt like I was eating sand. Everyone would look at me and offer all kinds of remedies and none of them worked.
Fast forward to a year ago and I actually gave some talks (Syncing The Mind and Body Seminar). I was nervous, but I did it. It actually helped that in the job I had prior to this, I was training people almost every week in different cities. I was doing conference calls and several other things things where I was talking to strangers in situations that weren't comfortable.
I still get shy...
While these last experiences helped me, I still get shy and sometimes it is hard for me to speak in front of people. And yet, I want to teach! Figure that one out! At one time in my life, I was not afraid to talk and then that all changed.
I remember growing up as a kid where I was taught in some very physical ways, kids are to be seen and not heard. I remember a cousin that made fun of me when I tried to tell them something that I found made me happy. I remember the times I was beat because I didn't say the right thing at the right time. I remember when I tried to speak up and was met with punishment beyond belief.
Yet, I see myself as having failed several times in life and sometimes that just isn’t easy point to get back from. Sometimes these moments have really taken me down and sometimes they are just too hard to even want to take a glimpse through my eyes.
The one thing I know is that usually these events become a springboard to future growth. Yes, they may feel like failure in the beginning, but as I've found in my own life, things change. Sometimes I needed those low moments of failure to find the next step to the springboard that would launch me further into life.
#Failure
Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly
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