Day 338: The joy of doing what scares you

Okay, I had NO idea THAT would be the title of today’s blog post.  But there it was, flowing from the tips of my fingers, unexpectedly.

I had lots of other possible titles in mind, as I typed the title of today’s post, but that one just appeared, like magic.

I’ll tell you what I DID know, about today’s blog post. I knew it would relate to what I’m doing today: giving a presentation about my therapy groups to people I don’t know.

Last week, to help myself prepare for today’s presentation,  I wrote this here post, about saying “SHUT UP!” to unhelpful, self-critical thoughts. Unhelpful, self-critical thoughts tend to rush in when I’m doing something new, when I’m taking a risk, when I’m doing something that scares me.  Am I alone in that?  (I know I’m not.)

So why the title of today’s post? Because I’ve definitely known the joy of facing and doing something that scares me, including these experiences:

• Living away from home, for the first time, when I went away to college.
• Traveling across the U.S. by bus, and seeing my country for the first time.
• Leaving my country for the first time, to spend two weeks in Mexico.
• Teaching a course, in Communications, to a bunch of college freshmen.
• Giving a lecture, about my love of movies, to a giant room of people.
• Performing my own stand-up comedy routine, at an Open Mic night.
• Planning and giving myself a 60th birthday party.

For each of those, joy was there, but so was fear. And part of the preparation, for everything on that list, included negative self-talk — doubts about myself and my capabilities.

When I’ve done presentations before about my therapy groups — and I’ve done several over the past two years — joy, fear, and negative self-talk have all been there, too.

As I’ve said to my boyfriend Michael, I seem to always include an “I SUCK!” step, when preparing for things that scare me.  I’ve said, “I wish I could skip that step! But maybe I can’t.  Maybe I believe that step helps me prepare.”

You know what?  I skipped that step entirely, this week, thanks to my own SHUT UP! blog post.

Part of me still believes the “I SUCK!” step is a necessary part of preparing and giving a good presentation.  But I’m not listening to that, either. The movie-quoted SHUT UPs, from last week’s post, are still ringing in my ears.

Here they are again, just in case anybody needs them today:

But what about the possibility that my old belief is correct: that I HAVE to go through the “I SUCK!” step, in order to do a good job?

TIme will tell, my dear readers, and very soon.

Let’s see if I can find an image, quickly, to end this post, so I can prepare for my presentation.

Here are the two most recent photos on my iPhone:

Those are meals Michael prepared for me and my son, this week, and they included things he had never done before.

I sure hope he skipped the “I SUCK!” step.  Because those meals were DELICIOUS.

Thanks to mewlists.com (again, for the video), to Michael, and to all my readers, who definitely do NOT suck, even when doing something new or scary.