Last week, one of my speaking nightmares came true.
Let’s begin with the photo below.
It was Thursday morning and my husband stopped by to wish me luck and took this photo (which he later posted to social media). I was pumping myself up before going live to speak with hundreds of people around the world:
For context, in addition to coaching, companies hire me to give talks and facilitate workshops on topics related to leadership, teamwork, and personal development. This particular talk was at my work alma mater, Accenture, on the topic of navigating change.
I was getting energized for the talk, shaking out the nerves by dancing (as I do before I go live or step onstage), and had just settled into my seat to test my lighting and internet connection. Everything worked great. I was ready to go!
Thirty minutes before my talk was about to begin, I joined the virtual call and this happened:
“No big deal”, I thought. The organizing team and I had just tested all my links two days before to make sure everything would work as planned. Surely, this was a small error we could fix in the 30 minutes we had left before the talk.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. I contacted the tech team for support. They scrambled to send me new dial-in invitations and suggest alternatives. “What if you restart your computer?” and “Try this link!”, they suggested.
I tried everything. Nothing worked.
At the T-15 minute mark, with no resolution in sight to get me into the call, my Garmin watch began to alert me of my increasingly elevated heart rate.
I ripped my watch off, annoyed. “I KNOW I’m stressed!”, I thought.
“Stress” doesn’t describe my emotion accurately. It was more of a growing panic.
Time kept ticking, but I didn’t give up. Neither did the organizing team, as they explored every option possible to grant me access to the meeting.
“People are starting to join the call,” one of them said.
I glanced at the clock. I was meant to start speaking in less than five minutes. I knew that there might be close to a thousand people joining this call.
“Don’t think about the people joining. Think about solving this problem!”, I thought to myself.
I restarted my computer, re-installed the calling app, logged in, logged out, and tried everything that the team and I could think of.
Two minutes to go and still nothing.
My heart was beating rapidly. My palms were sweating. I could have snapped a concrete bar into two with the tension in my jaw.
“This is one of my worst technology fears coming true,” I thought to myself.
You see, working in Corporate for many years taught me to fear the dark side of technology. The side where your biggest project doesn’t save after five hours of work, or where your computer crashes and you lose everything. Both have happened to me more than twice.
I’ve learned to fear the side of technology where it laughs in your face saying “You’re not the one in control here, I am!”
My fear of disappointing a highly valued client was about to come true: I would not be able to give my talk because the technology was in control, not me.
My heart sank as the team supporting me and I made the difficult decision to cancel the call and reschedule. This meant asking several hundreds of people around various time zones to reshuffle their plans.
I felt deeply responsible, helpless, and defeated. I was completely out of control and it didn’t feel good. All my preparation leading up to this one hour felt in vain as the team announced the change in plans.
As my body held on tightly to the moment’s tension, a thought emerged:
“I can fight this and beat myself up for not fixing the problem, or I can accept that I was never the one in control.”
With this thought, my shoulders relaxed a little bit. My body deflated. The rapid breathing slowed down. My hyper-focus on trying to solve the problem expanded into self-awareness.
What are you trying to control in your life that isn’t meant to be controlled?
Here’s an interesting paradox I learned in my coach training:
When we release the need to control, we gain the ultimate control.
You see, our need to control is born from a saboteur inside of us that wants us to believe that we can and should control every situation. It has us believe that we’re not “in” control, we’re “out” of control, and being “out of control” is bad.
This need for control generates extreme anxiety in us, like the one my watch was alerting me to.
In life, a need to control situations can hurt and intimidate others. Sure, it helps us do seemingly impossible tasks, but it also results in self-defeat and impatience when things don’t work our way.
When I realized that I wouldn’t be able to speak and deliver on my speaking commitment as planned, I knew I had a choice:
Choice 1: “I can fight this and beat myself up for not fixing the problem.”
Choice 2: “I can accept that I’m not the one in control.”
I chose the latter option. A few years ago, I might have chosen to beat myself, replaying events in my mind for clues on what I could have done better.
This time around, I chose to accept that this talk was not meant to happen as I had planned. Simply put, it was an illusion to think that I was in control.
When the cancelation was announced, several friends I know at the company texted me and sensed my disappointment.
One friend pointed out that the change in schedule might allow people that really need to hear my message to join me when they might not have been able to at the original time. I love that.
When we accept that we are not in control, we’re more easily able to see the gifts in our circumstances.
I was afraid I’d wake up with a guilt hangover the day after the canceled talk, replaying the events in my mind. Instead, I woke up calm, rested, and grateful for the gifts of this unideal circumstance.
By accepting that I’m simply not in control, I gained the ultimate gift: feeling calm and in control.
Where in your life can you release control?
As the wise Forrest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”
P.S. How is your need to control draining your energy? Let’s stop the energy drain now. Book a fifteen-minute chat with me here to explore how coaching can support you.