Years ago, I was speaking to several hundred business women at a luncheon in Raleigh, NC when one of my greatest professional fears unfolded as I stood on stage. To be clear, I have never been afraid of public speaking. I’m a talker. In fact, my mom has often joked that I talked so much as a kid that she would play a game with me to see how long I could go without talking. Two minutes was my record. But the one thing I sometimes feared was that I might forget a talking point.
I remember the scene vividly – the coral and cream tweed suit I was wearing, the month and year (October 2003), the energy of the women in that room. My talk was going great. The audience was engaged. They laughed. They took notes. Everything you want to happen when you are the keynote was happening that day. Maybe I became overly confident. Maybe I got distracted. I’m not sure the culprit, but in mid-sentence in the midst of telling a story that would make a really profound point, “Poof!” My thought vanished into thin air. I looked at the faces of the women seated at a center table directly in front of the stage. Their faces were filled with anticipation. They were listening. Some were nodding and smiling. They were ready for my next point …. But I didn’t have one. For a few seconds I kept talking. I used a couple of filler sentences thinking if I just kept talking, I’d recapture my thought and no one would notice. But nope. Nothing.
This had never happened before, and amazingly, in hundreds of speeches since then, it has never happened again. So I didn’t have a game plan for this. I had to think quickly. I was on a stage alone standing in front of 400 women whose sole job in that moment was to listen to me. There was no time to confer with a girlfriend or run back to my seat and find my notes. I pondered the thought of abandoning the story altogether and jumping to my next point. It would be choppy, but hey, by the end of the speech, they would probably forget.
But something in me said, “Just tell them the truth.” So, with a smile and a laugh, I blurted out, “This is going to sound crazy, but I just totally lost my train of thought. What was I saying?”
For about three seconds, there was a pause as they processed that I was, in fact, not joking. Then, to my amazement and utter delight, at least 30 women around the room started laughing and yelling the answer to me from the audience! No judgment. Only help. They were rooting for me. And several said afterwards, “I loved that you just admitted that you didn’t remember what you were saying. It was so real.”
In my years of studying, writing and speaking about resilience, one of my favorite hallmarks of resilience is this: Resilience requires authenticity. In the moments when we most believe we need to “have it together” and do things perfectly, it is our willingness to admit that perhaps we don’t have the answer that becomes our saving grace. Giving ourselves permission to be imperfect opens the door to connect authentically with others. It lets them in, helps them see a little of themselves and it helps them see how they can help you. You don’t have go it alone.
You don’t have to be perfect to be successful. You just have to keep bouncing back. And it’s easier to do when you admit there’s something to bounce back from.
My challenge to you this week:
Admit your challenge, mistake or bump in the road! Reach out for help to get back on track.
Journaling assignment:
In what way(s) are you pretending something is ok that simply isn’t? What would it look like to be authentic in this situation? When will you take a step in that direction?
More Resources:
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