I got the joke.

A few weeks ago, while I was getting prepared for a speaking event, I found out that someone quite famous (famous in the women’s leadership world, anyway) would be attending.

Let’s call that person Judith, for the sake of this post.

Here’s what I knew about Judith: she’s super smart, she’s well-known and well-connected, and she and I disagree about a LOT of things in the women’s empowerment conversation.

So my inner critic took all that in and started feeling really worried about what she’d think of the talk. I started feeling unprepared, less than, not my normal self.

During the speech, from time to time, I’d fall out of flow and stand outside my words, listening to them and imagining how they might sound to her. And of course in my mind the answer to that was always that they sounded incoherent, irrational, mundane.

Afterward, I went over to one of the hosts of the event and said I’d love to meet Judith – after all, despite all my worries, I did also have a lot of respect for her, and wanted to say hello. “Oh,” they said, “she couldn’t make it. Her son ended up getting sick and she needed to stay at home with him.”

It was the oddest moment. All that worry, for nothing. Based on nothing. I had been steeped in my fears about what she would think of the talk. I had imagined her presence in the room as I was talking – and her judgements, her criticism, even her scoffing at some of what I had said. And she was not in the room. All that imagining was simply that: imagining.

I immediately thought: Ok life, I get the joke.

The joke–or the lesson–was this. This was such a great metaphor for what I often do. Because special guest or not, when I’m writing something particularly vulnerable or risky, or when I’m giving a talk to a group that intimidates me, I often find my mind imagining, projecting, the most critical, skeptical, even mean view on my work.

And the truth is, that imagined voice, that judge, is almost never really in the room. It’s just that – imagined. Sure, there will be a range of responses to my work, but most of the time, the external criticism I encounter is so easy-peasy compared to what I fear, so deal-with-able, so just “it is what it is” – nothing like the big boogie-man my own fears make it out to be.

So maybe time to ask yourself – if you are not doing something because you imagine the harsh criticism that could come your way if you do it, or if your joy and full expression is diminished because you, like me, hold in your head what the skeptic would be saying about your work, ask yourself – how would I behave if I knew that voice was really, really, really not in the room? And then do that.

Love,

Tara

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