I did a TEDx talk on Saturday.

I should probably tell you that me and public speaking have had an inconsistent run and because of that, I’ve found it hard to trust myself. And I’ve been thinking about why, because when you actually look at it, the phrase makes no sense. We speak in public constantly. I never shut up. I talk all day long — to clients, to my kids, to women lying in freezing rivers with a camera pointed at them.

So it isn’t the speaking. It’s the being perceived.

It’s the moment several people look at you at once and you feel it land. Someone asks your opinion when you weren’t ready and suddenly there are eyes on you and your brain kicks in and your ego kicks in and you become aware that you are being judged. That’s the scary part. Not the words. The watching.

Which means good public speaking is the same thing as any kind of visibility: it’s when being observed doesn’t change what you say.

Maybe at first it changes how you say it. You might be more playful in a room you know. But the goal -the actual goal- is that being perceived doesn’t alter one single thing about you. Not your personality. Not your delivery. Not your phrasing. You say it the way you’d say it to your best friend.

That was my whole intention for the stage. Not to perform. To be exactly as I am when I’m talking to someone I trust about the things that matter most to me in the world. Actually to be honest I wanted to enjoy it, although someone did tell me that was far fetched.

One week before, I was a mess

I want to be honest about this bit, because I think the tidy version is useless to anyone.

In the weeks running up to it I was in full comparison mode. And by the way I pride myself in not doing this. But when fear kicks in, it kicks into all the shadows right. Everyone else seemed to know their lines. Word perfect. Literally, Meanwhile I was rewriting my script every single day. Perfectionism was kicking in, self sabby was kicking in. Every day a new version. I was annoying myself big time.

With a week to go, I took three hours on my own, the first proper solitude I’d had all summer holidays. And I sat with it and I was literally crying, talking to God, or my subconscious, or my inner critic who thankfully isn’t as vicious to me as she used to be. Whoever it was, this came back:

You could get up there and talk about anything and it would still be great. So get up there and talk around what you want to talk around. The only way you can fail is by not getting up there.

And that was it. I had given myself permission to just ramble and know that that would still be fine.

So I used cue cards

I messaged our mentor afterwards and told her the truth: the talk I’d give on Friday would be different to the talk I’d give on Saturday, which would be different again on Sunday. That’s just how I’m built. So I was going to use cue cards and deliver the points I wanted to deliver.

We had a practice run the day before and I tried it without them. I missed whole chunks.

And I decided I’d rather know I’d said everything I came to say than look like I knew it by heart. Because I didn’t know it by heart. I couldn’t. I can’t say anything the same way twice.

If I bake a cake, it’s slightly different every time. Same core ingredients, but in summer there might be lavender in it, and if I’m feeling zingy, lemon. That’s just how I am. And I’ve stopped having a problem with being that way a while ago and i needed to give my talk the same persmission slip.

What it actually felt like

I enjoyed it.

That’s the bit I’m most pleased about. Not that it was flawless, it wasn’t, I did the first bit in a very dodgy order, but I was comfortable up there, and I did my best, and it didn’t feel that different from talking to my best friend. Woooohooooo.

The human design weather that weekend was sitting in the crown. Inspiration. The lightning bolt. And the thing about the crown is that it’s blocked by fear and it opens with trust.

Which is the whole of visibility, really.

Do you trust yourself. Do you trust your story. Are you clear on your values. Are you clear on what you’re actually saying. Do you believe it.

Because if you believe it, it’s your truth — and then it stops mattering what anyone in the room thinks of it. It only matters what you think of it.

And when I realised that, fear didn’t get me the same way it had been.

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The talk goes live on the TEDx YouTube channel soon. I’ll share it here the moment it does.