Get Over Yourself

It is natural to want to avoid embarrassment and criticism. I don’t know anyone who enjoys those things.

This prevents us from jumping into situations before knowing how it will all work out. We remain in our comfort zones to avoid potential embarrassment or criticism.

One thing I enjoy when I talk with owners of small businesses is that these individuals are different. They are often willing to get outside of their comfort zone as they build their business.

They are willing to take risks. They take financial risks but they also have to risk who they are. They have to risk failing. They have to risk alienating people that they care about and respect.

What I’ve learned is that we all have to be willing to face embarrassment and criticism if we want to improve. We have to put ourselves out there. We have to be willing to fall flat on our face. Like the small business owner, we have to be willing to take a risk to get better.

Yet most never achieve their potential. They are too busy protecting their ego from any sort of embarrassment or criticism. They don’t realize they have to accept those when venturing into unchartered territory.

Years ago I joined a Toastmasters group. This is a group that meets to help each member get better at public speaking. Members give speeches each week. We would give constructive feedback for members to improve. We would ring a bell every time someone said a filler word like “ah” or “um”.

This was nerve racking. It is difficult communicating while analyzing your own words as they flow out of your mouth. But this bell helped us to realize the errors in our speaking so we could improve.

Often it meant making mistakes before we could improve. Sometimes I would get to Toastmasters and stutter through every sentence.

It was almost as if I regressed. I could feel the eyes on me. I knew the thoughts flowing through everyone’s mind wasn’t about how great my speaking was.

But it was during those times that I actually learned the most. I was learning how to proceed when embarrassed. Every ding of the bell was a reminder of the criticism present when I wasn’t doing my best work.

Initially I wanted it to end. This made it worse. I would panic. I would make more mistakes. I would say things that didn’t make sense.

Emotions would be flowing. I would be angry and sad. I would be nervous and confident at the same time.

But over time, I started to realize that this is part of the process of getting better. I had to experience this to know how to get through it.

Finally, I started to realize my self-perceived importance wasn’t real. I was trying to protect myself but didn’t have as much to protect as I thought.

I started to say, “who cares what they think of me, it is about me doing what I know is right and getting better.”

Whenever a difficult speech came up, I got panicked and started down the path of public self-destruction. Then I learned to always do the same thing. I would stop and breathe. At first it was awkward as I did this in front of everyone. But then I started to realize that I could pause and take a breath between topics. Instead of it being a strange pause it actually helped reinforce my last point.

As I learned this new technique, I started to realize that most of the time I just had to get over myself. I couldn’t be in protective mode. I had to be in adventure mode.

I had to look at each moment of struggle as opportunity. If I could get past this, then the next time I face a similar challenge I will be able to look back and gain confidence. I got past this obstacle already so I knew I would be ok this time too.

That is the key to improvement. We have to be willing to take the risk of humiliation to be less humiliated in the future. We have to put our self out there and get over the fact that we could fail and it might hurt.

But being afraid isn’t a reason to avoid these situations. We will never grow to the person we are meant to be if we can't handle embarrassment and criticism once in a while.