Speaking Old

In 2017,  I was sitting in a conference room with my boss and 3 outside vendors talking about the weather. When 1 pm struck my boss said, “Let’s just go around the room and introduce ourselves. Serban! Why don’t you start!”

Do you remember a time when you had a deer-in-the-headlights moment? That was me at 1.01 pm. My heart started beating really fast, my palms instantly started sweating, and my face went pale. I froze! After what felt like an eternity, which most likely was 10 seconds, my shaking lips started murmuring my name and role in the group. I wanted to hide under the table in a fetal position.

Why is it that we have this fear of speaking in front of people? When many eyeballs are on us, why do we freeze? I had no clue at that time, but one thing I knew for sure was that I never wanted to go through that experience again. 

You see, I’ve never been the talker. I’m an introvert!  I like to listen more than to talk. I often find myself asking questions just so I don’t have to say much. I was this way for as long as I can remember. It could be because I was a shy kid growing up. Even in school, in Romania, I never had to do any kind of presentation in front of the class. It wasn’t a thing back then.  It could be that one time in 8th grade I was called into the principal’s office because I called one of the teachers “fat”. My recollection of the events was me saying, “Could you move to the side so I can see what is written on the whiteboard?” Nevertheless, I learned that words can be powerful, and I must choose them wisely. So I chose to use them scarcely. Until one day! That 2017 meeting day!

I walked out of that room, embarrassed, but also angry. I wanted to put this fear to rest.

At the same time, by chance, call it “synchronicity,” a friend of mine recommended a book called Mindset by Carol Dweck. It was the necessary catalyst to have me believe in a growth mindset, which meant that if I want to do anything in my life, if I want to get better at anything, including speaking, I need to put in the effort, practice, and in a long enough timeline, I would be able to accomplish anything I set my mind too. My mission became: to remove the fear of speaking in front of others!

With this newfound belief, I embarked on a journey to eliminate my fear of public speaking and to become a better communicator. What I did not realize at the time was this journey was also the new path I was setting for my life as a whole. I joined a Toastmasters Club at my work, where they teach you communication and leadership, and I made a point to speak every week in the meeting. It was terrifying. My first speech, The Ice Braker, which is a 5-minute speech took me 2 months to prepare it. The fear and anxiety were constantly there. A battle inside my head was raging each time. One voice, full of fear, wanted me to sit down and not say anything, bringing back the memory of that meeting, but another voice was saying, “You can do anything you set your mind to! Including speaking.” At first, my fear was screaming loud and strong, where my belief was hardly whispering, “You can do it!” But as the book said, in due time, with consistency and intention, my fear started diminishing and my belief grew stronger and stronger.

I remember, in mid-2018, I found myself in a Project Management Meeting that was held at a local Denny’s. We were in a side room with about 40 people. I was, as always, quietly sitting in the back, just watching the presentation. What I was not expecting was at the end of the meeting the moderator to yell out, “Who’s new to this meeting? Could you introduce yourself?”. – I froze. As my heart started beating faster, – I thought to myself, “Oh no! not again!”. To my amazement, I got up, said my name, why I was there, with calm and composure. It was the first time I’d spoken to a group outside my Toastmaster club and the very first time I told myself, “It wasn’t that bad!”. I don’t remember what was talked about in that meeting, nor the people, but I clearly remember walking away ecstatic about the progress I made in my speaking journey.

The more I participated in TM, the more my fear and insecurity started turning into excitement, energy, and enthusiasm. I started reading books about how to speak better, how to have a presence on the stage, watched online videos of other speakers, and learned about the power of storytelling.

I have learned how much stories can influence a person. This leads me to point out that movies are nothing but well-crafted stories. They entertain us, they teach us, but they also capture our attention and influence us. Even more, I’ve learned that stories are a part of our everyday life. We tell ourselves stories about how we are not good enough to do something or we’re the best at something else. I realized that for most of my life, I was telling myself the story that I’m not good at speaking. But with my new journey, I realized that we have the power to create whichever stories we want for ourselves for our future. Which led me to the question, if speaking was giving me the belief that I am capable of overcoming one of the biggest fears people have, what else am I capable of? I’ve started applying this notion of growth and constant progress in my health, my career, and my relationships. Soon to find out that I have the power to redefine the stories in every aspect of my life. And with practice,  perseverance, and a long enough timeline I can do extraordinary things in all areas of my life. Which made me wonder, what’s next that I’ll discover?

In early 2019, I was participating in the Toastmasters International Contest, where members from the hundreds of the Toastmaster clubs in the state participate by delivering prepared speeches. There are judges and committees that organize these contests, and you go from club level, competing against members of your club, to competing at the area level against winners from other 5 or so clubs. Then you compete in the division against the winners of the other areas and so on. I was at the Area contest. For the first time in my life, I was doing a speech outside my own club, and those feelings of not being enough emerged again. Panic and anxiety were creeping in while I was sitting on my bench in this 100-person filled training room. Nevertheless, like always, I moved forward! I learned to push past the discomfort. I did my speech. I even messed up my last closing line. What dawned on me after my speech was a feeling of excitement and energy that I’d never felt before. It was exhilarating. The fear was still there, but there was also a thrill. I won first place at the Area level. I was very happy. It was during that moment that I realized that speaking was no longer a fear of mine, but rather it has transformed into something I was passionate about. Can you believe it? I was passionate about speaking! So often what we fear the most, once faced head-on, turns into our strength. And this was the case for me.

After the contest was over and the meeting was adjourned an older gentleman came up to me, with watery eyes and shook my hand. I was taken aback. He said: “Your speech moved me! Thank you!” I didn’t realize until that day that what I have to say can have that much influence on someone, nor did I ever think that I could do such a thing. I knew that Robert Brown said, “if you can speak you can influence. If you can influence, you can change lives.” That day, that gentleman made me believe it. And I came to the 2nd conclusion of that monumental day: speaking is not just a passion, I can turn speaking into a calling, where it is not just for my benefit, but rather for the benefit of others. How would it be if I can share my own journeys and struggles, tell my stories so that others can see themselves overcoming their struggles and achieving their impossible journey? That was an exciting thought to ponder.

It was at that moment that the older gentleman unknowingly impacted me. With just those words he influenced me to define a purpose for my life: to become a professional speaker and to help change others’ lives for the better by sharing empowering stories.

I have come a long way from that 2017 meeting. Yet not fully gone, I have conquered the fear of speaking in front of others, but there is still a long way to go. Nelson Mandela said, “After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.” But such is life, and that is what makes things interesting. We all have our hills to climb. But if there is something I have learned from overcoming my fear of public speaking is that there are a lot of similarities to overcoming other obstacles in life. It takes: 

• A mindset shift
• Believing that it can be done
• A willingness to face our fears, instead of running away from them
• Getting outside our comfort zone, and pushing ourselves into the growth zone
• Consistency and dedication, that 1% improvement each day contributes to the long-term success
• And so much more. 

Today, in my day-to-day job, I no longer hide from meetings, I run them. I no longer fear talking in front of strangers, but rather look for any opportunity to do so. And I especially look to inspire and motivate anyone who has trouble finding their way in life, or if they don’t know how to reach that next level, how to overcome fear and rise above the common and become uncommon. It is my purpose in life to share the lessons that I learned so that I can empower others the way speaking and others empowered me. I look to change people’s perspectives and share with them a new way of looking at things that can make them face their own fears and insecurities and become what Les Brown calls “the better version of ourselves.”

Speaking has changed my life, and now I speak to change others.