how a train journey went badly wrong…

or the myth of confident speakers

Too often we see super confident people in the world around us and we envy them for not feeling fear..  

But that is a myth, confident people feel fear too. Confidence is not an absence of fear, it’s about changing our relationship to fear and about focusing on something that’s more important than fear.

In his memoirs Barack Obama goes to the gym before a big speech to help work off his adrenaline. Oprah Winfrey felt incredibly anxious when she was speaking at the Golden Globes in 2018: “I must have been more nervous than I thought, because I’ve never had dry mouth before. In the middle of the speech, I thought, “I can’t move my gums.” I started to articulate because I was trying to get over my gums.’ And if you watch the speech, you can’t see this happening . 

I’m not comparing myself with Barack or Oprah at all but I have run over 700 courses about confidence so you may think that I should be sorted by now and fear free… 

A few weeks ago, I was in a railway carriage, full of families, when a group of 8 or 10 football fans in their twenties got on, started hassling women, swearing abusively and generally making everyone feel uncomfortable. I alerted the transport police by text because I didn’t fancy my chances in intervening as 62 year old white haired man. But then, believe it or not, they started singing about raping children. (It makes me well up just writing that.) 

Before I could even think about it, I’m getting out of my seat and marching half way down the carriage and getting close, I’m looking them in the eye, saying, in a very loud voice: 

“Do NOT sing about raping children, do NOT sing about raping children, how DARE you”.

And thankfully they shut up, went quiet, looked away. And they didn’t knife me (which I realised afterwards was a possibility).

One of the fundamental principles of my training work has always been about holding the safer space possible for people. So, there was no way their awful song was going to stand unchallenged, with families listening to this. But my point is that as I marched up to them, part of me knowing I could get into serious hassle, I wasn’t calm, but I was confident that I would do something (even if it didn’t work). My heart was racing, my ears ringing with adrenaline, my face no doubt bright red. And part of my body was saying “don’t do it!”. I was probably more scared in term of physical symptoms, than I’ve ever been while speaking. 

And I’m not sharing this story to say ‘ooh aren’t I brave?’ because, you know what, I didn’t actually have a choice, I just was propelled by something bigger than me. The key thing was that my values were stronger than my fear. This mattered so much to me, I had to intervene and stand up.

And that is what confident people do, they change their relationship to fear. They don’t let the fear stop them or be the reason to avoid doing what they believe in. And that skill and change of mindset doesn’t necessarily come overnight. I really believe confidence is a practice and on that train, I was able to draw on the practice I have had and to take what could have been quite a big risk. My focus wasn’t “what people will think of me doing this?”, or “will I get my words right?”. I felt the fear and did it anyway because it was important. And of course it wasn’t easy, it was massively unpleasant. But I accepted that as part of doing what had to be done. 

Luckily, the skills I teach make normal public speaking and communications far easier than dealing with football hooligans! But I always stress that speaking is not usually fear free, especially when it matters. And confident people learn to accept that fear as normal (it’s helpful for some people to see it as excitement). 

If we understand our anxiety better (how it distorts reality), understand audiences differently, we can grow our confidence which in turn changes our relationship to feeling fear when it naturally arises. We know it’s an uncomfortable but its part of doing what matters to us.

In the railway carriage my focus was on creating a safer space for the people in the carriage. It wasn’t about me at all. And it wasn’t about the fear. But hours later, when I got home, and the shock and the recognition of what might have happened, started to pulse through me I did start to cry. But crying is very human too. And that’s okay.