Edition #4: The Secret to Making the Leap

Welcome to the Hail Mary Friday Club, where we explore how to live with more boldness, courage, and joy…and then every Friday we go out and do something about it!

“You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps”

- David Lloyd George, British Prime Minister 1916-1922

The Problem: Fear of the Unknown

How do I jump when I’m not sure what’s on the other side?

It’s no secret we don’t like uncertainty.  The insurance industry is one of the largest in the world.  Whether it’s our lives, our homes, or our valuables, we pay big bucks to roll them up in bubble wrap.

Just in case there was any doubt, scientists hooked humans up to an electric shock machine and discovered that we prefer large doses of predictable pain over small doses of unpredictable pain.  

Which sounds crazy, but makes perfect sense when you understand how uncertainty triggers the panic button in your brain (Edition 3 tells you how to turn it off!)

But even if it makes sense, it’s still a problem because it stops us from leaping towards the thing we really want. We tell ourselves, “I’ll wait until I know what’s on the other side.”

But sometimes you can’t know until you jump. And if uncertainty isn’t going anywhere, then we have to find a way to jump with it!

The Solution: Have a Dress Rehearsal

Make the unknown as familiar as you can

Prime Minister David Lloyd George is right: you can’t cross a chasm in small baby steps.  There are times when your only option is to leap and go from not doing the thing, to doing the thing.

I can’t tell you that it’s easy. But there are ways to increase your confidence and likelihood of success.

Sticking with the chasm example, there are lots of practical things you can do to avoid descending into the pit:

• Work on your speed for the run up 

• Throw in some plyometric training for the take off 

• Figure out how wide the chasm is 

• And of course, a dress rehearsal: Mark out the distance on a field. If you can clear it there, you can clear the real thing.

We will never remove all uncertainty, but we can certainly give ourselves a fighting chance and make that leap with confidence.

The Application: Tedx Dress Rehearsals

How to prepare for a big speech

I’m assuming most of us don’t have to leap literal chasms in our daily lives. So let’s move to something a little more relatable, like standing in front of people and needing to say something clever and interesting.

In 2019, I was invited to speak at Tedx London Women. There are a lot of amazing reasons to do a Tedx talk, but one of the best is the speaker training you receive.  As a brand, Tedx has a reputation to maintain and they are very invested in you not dying a slow, awkward death on their stage.

No notes are allowed. And the organisers know from experience that at least one of us will blank on stage.  So we are trained to deal with it:

If you can’t remember your next line, take a deep breath and buy some time. Calmly walk to the side of the stage, take a sip of water, and by the time you walk back, the words will be there. The audience will never know!

As someone who blanked spectacularly in the dress rehearsal, I can confirm this technique really does work! I finished swallowing, and the words came back.

And despite the horrible experience of blanking, I took to the stage with confidence, knowing that I had months of rehearsals behind me. And even if I did blank again, it would be fine because I knew how to deal with it.

The result: It was my best delivery ever.  No magic.  No luck.  No X-factor.  Just good preparation.   

What’s something bold, scary and exciting you can do on Friday?

And if that thing currently feels too scary, what’s something you can do to make it feel more familiar?  Stay bold and I’ll catch you in your inbox on Sept 25th!
- Stef 👽

PS. Did you know that since 2007, seven falling fatalities have occured while tourists tried to take the perfect Grand Canyon photo? I promise I was further from the edge in the photo than I look!