How to Overcome The Crippling Insecurity and Fear That Keeps You From Hitting Publish
Become a confident creator
Summer of 2017. I’m sitting in the green room preparing to give a TEDx talk in front of a thousand people.
My heart is beating out of my chest — at least 190 beats per minute. I am paying zero attention to the speaker who’s currently on stage. It was like I literally couldn’t hear. My brain was clouded. It felt like I was in a soundproof room.
There was a speaker the year before who choked in the middle of giving his talk. He stood in silence for a full 10 minutes. The crowd just…stared at him. His demeanor continued to get worse and worse. Total failure.
I had rehearsed my lines several times before, though, so surely this wouldn’t happen to me. I was doing one last rehearsal in my head before I got on stage.
Then it happened…
I forgot the entire speech. I literally couldn’t remember a thing. F***!
“Please welcome our next speaker, Ayodeji Awosika!”
The stagehand looks at me “Ayo, you’re on. Go.”
Damn…
Where Your Fear of “Putting Yourself Out There Comes From”
You’re hard-wired to be afraid of putting yourself in risky situations. Some say it comes from your evolution.
If you said or did the wrong thing in front of the nomadic tribe, you’d be left for dead or the Tribe leader would come to smash your head in with a rock.
Regardless of where this fear comes from, it’s there.
Massive resistance happens when you’re going to expose yourself and be vulnerable, especially if it’s in front of stages.
The fear of public speaking is worse than death. Often, for most people, they’d literally rather die than avoid the risk of rejection or embarrassment.
There’s no easy solution for this, but it starts with this simple understanding.
Nothing physically harmful is going to happen to you.
You’re not going to die if you:
Post a tweet
Write a blog post
Shoot a YouTube video
Say hi to someone at a business conference
Send a DM to connect with an influencer in your niche
You will live and you’ll be just fine. Even for the guy who choked on stage giving his talk, his life went on. He was fine (more on him in a second).
Often, What You Think Will Happen is the Exact Opposite Of What You’ll Happen
You think that putting yourself out there in a major way will cause people to hate you and ridicule you.
Often, though, the opposite happens. The people who watch you do it will respect you because you had the guts to do what they wouldn’t.
One day, I was sitting in a coffee shop and I saw a pretty girl. I got up from my chair, walked over, sat down, and started talking to her.
After, I went back to my table. The guy sitting next to me said:
“I can’t believe you just…did that.”
Surely he’s had plenty of times where he wanted to go say hello but just didn’t.
I was at a conference once where I didn’t know many people. I just walked up to a table full of people, introduced myself, and started talking.
Again, one of the people said:
“Wow, I could never just go and do that.”
Nine times out of ten, people appreciate you taking the leap because they know how hard it is. It’s a sign of someone who is comfortable enough in their skin to do it, which means they're free.
This reminds me of a quote from Charles Bukowski:
“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.” ― Charles Bukowski
There are tons of people who’d like to meet someone but are afraid to go and say hi.
There are tons of people who’d like to create content, but they’re afraid to put it out there.
There are tons of people who’d like to learn how to sell and build a business, but they’re afraid to talk to customers.
If you decide to be that rare and free soul, in the long run, people will respect you for it.
They’ll respect you because they know you exhibited courage. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the act of being afraid and doing it anyway.
So, about that guy who choked…
The audience didn’t heckle him. Eventually, they started to cheer him on and encourage him to finish, which he did.
They understood how hard it was for him because they know how hard it would’ve been for them. Regardless of how well the talk went, he was willing to try to do what 99 percent of people won’t do.
The Most Euphoric Feeling in the World
The first few lines of my speech come out a bit nervously, but I got the words out there.
About a minute into the talk, I get a big laugh from the crowd. I’m reassured. I deliver the talk flawlessly. I spoke every single word I had rehearsed for months.
I calmed down partly because I knew I had done the work and given it my all. I’d already won just because I got on stage.
I remembered that I had done this several times before in my life. There was a contest prior to the talk where you were supposed to pitch your idea for two minutes.
I was scared shitless before giving that talk, but I gave it. After that speech, several people congratulated me and one person told me they found my nervousness endearing.
The talk I gave was about impostor syndrome. That feeling of not being talented enough or qualified enough to go out on a limb and do things like start a crazy project or build a business.
I said that the people who would thrive in the new economy are the ones who try new ways to build their careers instead of going the traditional route, which means, by definition, they’re probably going to feel like a fraud while doing it.
The line that got the laughs:
The future belongs to the impostors. The frauds will inherit the earth”
It’s true.
We’re living in the craziest timeline of human history where you can just build a creative career by creating stuff.
I do work I love, get paid for my ideas, and don’t have to listen to some boss, all because I continually put myself out there.
I’ve had many moments of total fear before completing the project:
Launching books
Writing blog posts
Creating products
Coaching others
To do it all, I continually remind myself that there’s a reward at the end of the project that no other feeling compares to.
Euphoria.
After I finished my talk, I received roaring applause. I was floating.
People came up to me and asked for autographs of my book, which they bought at the venue after my talk. Several people told me it was their favorite talk of the day. Someone left me a handwritten note telling me how I inspired them.
It felt good to both overcome my fears and help others to do the same.
There’s no feeling in the world that can match putting yourself out there, even if you’re nervous. There’s nothing like feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
The results don’t even matter.
The fact that you gave it a shot in the first place does.
Stop trying to not be afraid. It won’t work. Feel the fear, do it anyway, then store it in your memory back. The more you do this, the more you have reminders of how you won in the past, so you can win again.
Put your content out there.
Matter of fact, in the comments, post something you’ve published online and I’ll give it a look — a tweet, a blog post, a video, a podcast episode, whatever.
Show me you’re part of the movement of people who won’t let their fears keep them from achieving their creative dreams.
Links to cool stuff
Watch this webinar replay I co-hosted with Self-Publishing School to learn how to write a best-selling book
Take my free 5-day course that teaches you how to make a living writing on Medium
Buy my best-selling book - Real Help: An Honest Guide to Self-Improvement
Follow me on Twitter and Instagram because I create unique content on each platform
Great blog Ayo !!!
This is the blog I have written to share my introvert nature with the world - https://link.medium.com/SAvAd43tGub
Thank you for the opportunity. This is an article I wrote: Weight Loss Tips from a Curvy Girl
https://medium.com/practice-in-public/weight-loss-tips-from-a-curvy-girl-5c8f035bae86?sk=19f8b73396f4bd3924b74bc1a3165713