A short story from the recent history books:

(maybe 7 or 8 years ago, can’t remember exactly)

This was back in the first iteration of my Lloyds Bank career.

I was sitting in a meeting room with my then Managing Director.  We were planning an offsite for our newly formed team. 

The offsite was a half-day out of the office with 60 or 70 colleagues from across the UK gathering for an afternoon of team-building, strategy updates and presentations.

At one point during the planning meeting my MD turned his head, looked me in the eye and said:

“Tom, we’ll need someone to present the performance of the business to the team.  How would you feel about doing that?”

“Sure” I replied with a smile.

While I might’ve been smiling on the outside, on the inside the butterflies had already begun.

Bear in mind that the offsite was still 2 months away.

But the thought of standing at the front of a room full of 60 or 70 MDs, industry heads, directors and assorted other big cheeses presenting income, balance sheet and various financial metrics filled me with dread.

Public speaking has never been a joy of mine.

And in the weeks leading up to the offsite, it became increasingly difficult to think about anything other than the presentation, what I would say and what could go wrong.

Even on weekends I’d be mentally transported to the offsite and the same thoughts would rattle around relentlessly in my head.

I ended up scripting, then rote learning, my whole presentation.

I thought this would calm my thoughts down.  But all it did was take me even more into my head and disconnect me further from whatever was going on in my day-to-day life.  

When it came down to it, the presentation went fine.

But looking back, it was clear that my approach to the offsite had led to a thoroughly unpleasant 8 weeks.

Now here’s the thing:

If someone at the time had said to me “Tom, you know you don’t need to think about that presentation as much as you are?”, I would’ve known on some level they were right.

But I don’t think it would’ve made the slightest bit of difference.

I still wouldn’t have known how to get less caught up in my head.

I’m now back at Lloyds in the exact same team I was in when I made that financial presentation.

As fate would have it, we had another team offsite four months ago.  And once again, my MD asked me to present the financial performance of the business to the team.

A curious case of déjà vu.

Only this time, I didn’t feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I was asked.

I didn’t script, then rote learn, the presentation.

And I didn’t spend the weeks leading up to the presentation in a fit of mental frenzy.

To be honest I barely gave it a second thought until a couple of days before.

That’s not to say there weren’t still some nerves.  There were.

But my experience of giving that presentation was like night & day compared to the previous time.  It didn’t take over my life like it did before.

So what changed?

In a nutshell:

I know now, unlike then, that there are no benefits whatsoever to getting all in my head about a presentation like this.

But it’s not an intellectual, logical or factual knowing.

It's a felt, experiential knowing instead.

And it means that, rather than actively reminding myself to get out of my head, my body just does it for me.  It happens automatically. 

This is a legitimate secret given how little I see this type of knowing talked about in books and podcasts.

Or anywhere else for that matter.

In case you’re wondering:

The best way I've found to gain this deeper, more certain knowing is through coaching.

And that’s because coaching isn’t an exercise in information gathering like reading a book or listening to a podcast.

Instead, it’s a two-way process of exploration, reflection and discovery.  A process which leads to genuine transformation and change.

If you’d like to find out more, I present the following link:

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

 - Tom