Pretending to be Confident
While recording conversations with bloggers for the podcast, a common theme in the hours or minutes before we get started always seems to be:
“I'm really nervous – I hope I don't mess this up”
Followed a little while later by:
“I really enjoyed that – I was nervous at the start, but then forgot all about it”.
Here's the thing – although the people I'm recording with think they are nervous, I have news for them – I'm nervous too. Although it might not come across in blog posts, or in the talky bits at the beginning and end of the podcast episodes, I was cripplingly shy when I was little, and a part of that has never left me.
I guess – like most other people – I figured out how to pretend – how to fool myself into sounding confident. I talked to a rugby referee recently, about our middle daughter's journey as a referee, and he said something that stuck in my head:
“It really doesn't matter if you're not sure about something – as long as it sounds like you're sure about it, and you remain consistent”.
Thankfully I seem to have cracked the whole “sounding like I know what I'm doing” thing. Of course I really have no clue, but the listener or reader doesn't know that. If I ever face a moment of self doubt these days, I remind myself that everybody else is making it up as they go along too.