Your Biggest Fear
People used to think that public speaking was a fate worse than death. The truth is that we aren’t afraid to speak in public. We’re afraid of being judged in public.
We aren’t just afraid of being judged, our biggest fear – OUR BIGGEST FEAR – is that of being ostracized, cut off from the tribe we so desperately want to belong to.
Look at teenagers. They all go through it – they want so much to stand out and be seen as independent all the while worried about being cut out of the “in” group.
And now you, dear #DynamicLeader, get to step into a new mindset. What if, instead of being afraid of losing the tribe you belong to, you realize that anyone who judges you harshly isn’t part of YOUR tribe! You choose with whom you surround yourself.
One of my High-Performance clients and I spoke of this just a few days ago:
If people reject my message, they’re not rejecting me.
They’re just not in my tribe.
What would it take for you to think that way? You don’t need to belong. It was Groucho Marx who said, “I do not want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”
Let that sink in.
You don’t have to conform – you don’t have to worry about belonging. You GET TO surround yourself with people who support you and challenge you to become a better version of yourself. That’s different than judging you. If you reject those that challenge you out of hand, you’re just being narcissistic. So don’t swing the pendulum that far. The point here is that you choose to be better. You get to be deliberate about how you engage with others and which others you choose to let in.
The biggest fear isn’t public speaking, it’s rejection. And if you realize that YOU are in control of who you allow to reject you or accept you, then your biggest fear isn’t that… it’s spiders or something… That’s a different thing altogether.
Get out there.
Be deliberately, actively, positively uplifting. You and one other and then one other and then one other. Your tribe, your culture of caring, it #StartsWithOne. You.
~ Dr P ~