Now I don’t know what age you are, but you’ll have surely understood by now that age breeds experience and the older you get the more of a know-it-all you become – I would hope so anyway.
I am enjoying mid-life confidence it has to be said, and you’ll know that I have also run out of f’s to give, having read that bloke’s book ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***’ which is a good thing, is it not?
But sometimes, when the pressure’s on, the door to uncertainty can be left slightly ajar. The exit sign is lit up on otherwise good levels of confidence. Why?
Recall those experiences
Well, we quite often forget to recall our experiences and bring them to the front of our minds. It’s like being in a job interview, for yourself “can you talk about a time when you faced a similar situation?”. Erm…Unless you tune into those times and remind yourself that you overcame the problem or situation, you might find yourself feeling unsure.
For example, last week I found myself in an IMAX cinema for a staff conference. I had imagined I’d be speaking on a stage, but the reality was quite different. I could have let that new scenario take me under…
So, I dialled up some of the times I’d arrived at a venue to deliver a keynote and found the set up to nothing like I’d thought it would be (like the time a pantomime dame was MC-ing a business conference, which was totally unexpected).
But now having experienced all of that and dealt with it fine, I drew on those memories. I was calm, cool and ready for the big screen-small stage scenario…
Watch my video at the top of the page to see my disproportionately teeny tiny ‘stage’ for yourself.