I seem to have embarked on a new career as a speaker. Wot? Moi! No sooner have I finishing giving a talk I've to start preparing another. At each talk there is usually one person in the audience who asks me afterwards if I will do a talk at their organisation. I must be doing something right. Great! I'm not saying this to brag. It's just that I've had so much trouble with shyness in the past that I can't help feeling flushed with pleasure each time I manage to come over as a competent and confident speaker.
It makes me wonder how many other things I've been held back from attempting in the past with thinking 'I can't do it. I'm simply not the kind of person who can do...' I suppose that's not a bad thing if it's informed by a heavy dose of realistic self-awareness. I mean, if I'd had the confidence to get up onto a stage and sing, it doesn't mean I should have done that. I really can't sing a note in tune. X-factor here I come - I think not! But, singing apart, perhaps there's a lot of things that maybe, just maybe, I could have done. If only I'd realised that years ago!
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About Me
- Jean
- Hi, I'm Jean. I'm fifty-something, married to Ian, and live in West Yorkshire. I'm a writer, and part-time mental health worker. My memoir 'The Dark Threads' is published by Accent Press. As a mixed-up, depressed teenager in 1968 I was heavily drugged, given electric shock treatment, reduced to a zombie and, by age 20, 'written off' as suffering from chronic schizophrenia (a misdiagnosis, evidence suggests). I managed to jump out of the net in 1974 and went on to build up a life for myself. Today life is good, good, good. I have a first-class BA (Hons) degree in Combined Studies (literature and psychology), and qualifications in counselling skills. 'The Dark Threads' is my first book. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Threads-Jean-Davison/dp/1906373590
4 comments:
That's a familiar feeling!
I'm glad you're pushing the boundaries now.
Brilliant, Jean! Well done! As a child I was crippling shy and if anybody'd said to me then that I'd not only do lots of public speaking but really enjoy it, I'd have fallen over with shock. So true, that we don't know what we can achieve until we try.
Maybe there's hope for me yet, as I'm convinced I'd be terrible at speaking in public!
It really is good to push the boundaries sometimes, but I think I would draw the line at singing too :o)
Miriam - Yes, pushing the boundaries is a great feeling.
Lorna - Yes, it gets really exciting to realise we don't know just what we can achieve until we try.
Karen - Public speaking is the last thing I'd have expected to be able to do. Or on second thoughts I'd better leave singing as the last thing.
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