Anxious Thoughts: The Ironic Mistake of Perfectionism.

Shout out to all the “A types” out there, who’ve been trained to believe that making a mistake is bad, and you should feel bad for making them. In fact, feel so bad, that you dedicate your life to avoiding the feeling of embarrassment. And what’s the furthest thing from embarrassment? Perfection. I mean, how can you feel bad for a mistake if you never make one?

Thing is, mistakes happen. And when you go into a situation expecting perfection, and you don’t get it (you say the wrong word, pause for over a second, breathe wrong), it’s even more jarring. So jarring, that you dread it even more next time. 

I’m bringing this up now, because we have our Fearless Presentations class starting this Thursday, so it’s on my mind. A lot of Public Speaking classes focus on helping you get better at presenting. (Obvs.) They try to teach the perfect way of standing and talking. (Or in Zoom world, sitting and talking.) But we like to come at it from the other side. We help you practice failing presentations. And teach you how to recover when things don’t go perfectly. 

Because it doesn’t matter how perfectly you learn to use your hands, voice, sentence structure, if every time you go to talk, you panic and blank because you fear everything might not go perfectly! 

It’s okay to be nervous, and make mistakes, and not be a perfect, formal, presentation robot. It’s okay to be human. Go into your next presentation confident. Not because you know you’re perfect. But because you know how to handle it, and recover, when you’re not. 

If you’re interested in classes, sign up today. If not, just promise to go a little easier on yourself. 

Anxious Thoughts: Positive Goals

For over a decade, my goal was to have less anxiety. So every second of every day, I did the things that would help me feel less anxious: meditation, therapy, self-help books, audio seminars, more therapy, breathing, all that good stuff. It helped. But I was also aware that even though I was focused on having less anxiety, I was still focusing on my anxiety. 

When I started doing improv, it introduced me to this other emotion called joy. One I’d forgotten, or didn’t know I had. We got along quite well. I noticed when I was laughing, I didn’t feel as anxious. Which was my goal! Same goal, different path. So now, instead of always trying to feel less anxiety, I do things that help me feel more joy.

Sound fun? Here's 365 ways to get you started.

Anxious Thoughts: New Year's Edition

The new year comes with a lot of pressure to be “better.” Earn more money, be less anxious, not eat the whole cake in one sitting. It feels like being enough isn’t good enough. There’s nothing wrong with growth, or goals, or resolutions, but always pushing to be better can often feel worse. So when you set your goals for 2021 (to dunk on a basketball net), know that they’re exactly that, goals. They’re not things that need to happen, or need to change, for you to be worthy and enough.