TEDTalk Jitters

Tomorrow night I am doing a TEDTalk. I hope, as avid H3Daily readers, that you are familiar by now with the inspiring TEDTalk videos featured on ted.com. If not, stop reading this blog immediately, go to one of the links below (a few of my favorite TEDTalks) and familiarize yourself with what I’m being asked to do before reading on.

When I was asked to do a TEDTalk over a month ago, I gladly said yes. I was flattered by the invitation but quickly stored the task in the back of my mind since it seemed a distant responsibility. A week or two later Adam Martin, the genius behind TEDxHiltonHead, created a TEDxHiltonHead Facebook page. He then began uploading brief biographies of the event speakers, mine included. With great pride, I shared his posts on my Facebook page…letting all my friends know that I was a featured speaker at a ‘TED’ event. Oops. That was a mistake.

The comments steadily started posting. “Kudos to you.” “How exciting.” “Way to go!” “Congrats!” With each new post, my ego and insecurity grew in tandem.  My brain began a steady onslaught of conflicting messages. My TEDTalk could be amazing, life changing, career escalating. Seconds later the message was…I could ramble on, making no sense, as the entire world discovers I’m a big fake. Which message was I to believe? The possibility that my TEDTalk might just be fine, meaning not life altering in any way, seemed nonexistent.

As the TEDx event has come closer and my topic still remains rather unformulated, my dual brain has been careening out of control. Paralysis almost ensued. Today however, I heard myself in an H3 lecture giving advice to our guests that I needed to take myself. Let go of the attachment to an outcome and invest in the process. The process is where all the magic happens. The process is the place of change. The process is where all the lessons are learned.

The process is merely talking about something that I believe in strongly. It’s sharing what I know and not trying to dazzle anyone with some over-intellectualized topic that would make me appear erudite. If the outcome means that just one person hears something that they needed to hear, then my talk was a success. What that means for now is that all I have to do is the next right thing. That goes for all endeavors in life. Invest in the process, let go of the outcome, and do the next right thing.

So here I go – doing the next right thing (which means actually working on my TEDTalk). See you tomorrow night!

 

Some of my favorite TED Talk links:

Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Genius

http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Brene Brow: The Power of Vulnerability

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Elizabeth Gilbert: Your Elusive Creative Genius

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html