And then phoned back to your office and asked if you do one-on-one work. And they said, yeah. And I said, oh, great. So that’s how I got there. Okay. Now, I know you’re referencing Band-Aids, but describe the problem as you were experiencing it. Avoidance. So I had reached a point, Jonathan, where whenever there was a public speaking opportunity coming up in my work, or if I had the chance to seek a public speaking opportunity, I would find a way to get out of it. And then if I couldn’t get out of it, then the only solution, the only thing that really worked for me was medication. And I probably came close to abusing the medication. Can you elaborate on that?
Sure. I would take two different types of things, one to really settle me down and one to deal with adrenaline. And I would go pretty far, pretty deep with that so that I had what I considered to be a safety net. And then I became reliant really upon that safety net. It was the only solution that I knew that could work, that I was confident would work. So when you were avoiding these public speaking scenarios, that is called, for the listeners, that is called a phobia. When anxiety gets to the point that there is avoidance, a phobia is present. How was this avoidance impacting you? I was really upset. I was angry with myself. So the whole notion of anger, although I hadn’t identified that, I didn’t understand enough about that, but I was very upset. I had found significant joy in this, and now I had lost this, and I hadn’t found any path back to that joy. And so with each passing opportunity, I just get more and more angry.
Can you describe for a moment the actual anxiety when you were not able to avoid when you had to be in front of a group? What was going on anticipatorily and what was going on when you were actually in front of the group? In anticipation, it would be a tightening of my throat and my chest. And so I would feel as if I would be blocked from being able to speak. That was the feeling that I had. Not a good feeling when it’s about the time to go up to speak. And then every time that I then got in front of a group, I would find a way to excel, again, fueled by the medication. So the medication gave me the bridge from the anticipation to the event. And I’d have people come up to me afterwards after various experiences of speaking at awards dinners where I’d be doing an award speech for one of my people, and they’d say, wow, that’s the best I’ve ever heard. And I wouldn’t even listen to that. I wouldn’t even hear that because I knew what had propelled me to that. I knew it was medication.
I knew I was faking it. I appreciate your honesty. I knew I was faking it. What would happen, let’s say you had an important presentation two weeks away and it was on the calendar. What would you experience knowing that you had this commitment two weeks down the road? Fear. I experienced fear initially, and then uncertainty. And then I would focus way much more on the negative outcome, which is so unlike me. I’m so optimistic and so really positive, glass half, more than half full with an outlook. But I would always focus on the prospect of the negative outcome. And then I’d work really hard. I’d obsess over preparation to the point where that would become another block in the sense that I was binding myself up with all of this preparation and memorization and all that stuff. And so none of that was good.
All right. Well, we have two more questions. Okay. The first one is where you’re at now. And the second one is how you got there. So first describe where you’re at now with the public speaking challenge. Beautiful piece and heading back in the direction of joy. And it’s an eerie feeling in the sense that it feels so good and it feels so natural that I almost don’t remember, which is a good thing, what it felt like before. So I’m not recalling any of those past experiences and any of those past thoughts. And I put this to multiple tests per your instruction, but I put it through to multiple tests. And one was just this past week when I did a two day workshop and it was total joy. And I could feel it in my bloodstream.
I could just feel being back in the position that I was way back when, when this was all in a good place. So how’d I get there? Well, wait, one more question. Hold on. From zero to a hundred percent, the percentage that you believe you have resolved your public speaking anxiety problem? 90. 90? Yeah. Okay. I’d say 90. And I think that there’s, I want to keep another 10% out there because I want to keep learning more about making adrenaline my friend. And that’s part of the bridge to how I got here. So are we ready to transition to that part? Excellent. Go ahead. The breakthrough? Yeah. The breakthrough was, first of all, you not accepting any of my excuses or any of the things of the blocks that I was putting up, because as we’ve acknowledged, I was putting up some really significant blocks in terms of getting to the inner child and the inner self. And so you’re really good at this and you’re the best I’ve ever experienced at this. And so you broke through that stuff and you broke through it quick and you did it in a way that professional to professional, you did it. A lot of people talk down in these situations. They make you feel like you really are a child. And I don’t like that. And therefore I was going to really push back if that were the approach. And that isn’t your approach at all. Your approach is very straightforward. Hey, if this is what your goals are, this is how you’re going to have to get there and I’ll guide you there. But it ain’t going to be, this is more like bootcamp than it is a summer vacation. And that’s what I signed up for. So I signed up for, tell it like it is. I didn’t realize that I was going to be giving you the Heisman pushback all the time on the front end,
but then through your persistence and your very tuned in questioning and listening, you were able to get me to pull the guard down. So that was huge. And then the other notion, I think the real notion that I will carry forward every time is to accept adrenaline as my friend. And in fact, to in preparation and anticipation of a public speaking event, try to provoke it. And so I can say hello to it, deal with it, work with it and make it work. And that’s one of the basic principles that you always hear about public speaking, which is to try to turn the nervousness into a positive energy. Well, you taught me how to do that. Okay, well, hold on because I want to, I usually don’t do this, but you achieved your success in nine sessions with me. And I hate giving this kind of statistic because, you know, typically the person who listens to this will say, okay, so I have to do it in nine sessions. Yeah. Okay. Eight to beat, John. Well, you know, people need to understand that everybody has their own learning curve.
Okay. So learning curve depends on degree of the problem, person’s motivation, ability to integrate concepts, readiness to face fear, expressive ability. Okay. So in nine sessions, actually, you referenced the Heisman, you get the Heisman trophy. Just talk for a minute about your motivation, which was very, very high and your application of the key techniques to have achieved this in nine sessions. Joy. So the motivation is joy. When you have it and you lose it, you got to get it back. And I seek to make, I made money doing public speaking on the side, apart from my corporate life. I had a radio show as you do, or I had a show. And so I wanted to get back to that level of achievement and of professionalism in that area. I’m about to sign on with a speaker’s agency and I want to be able to deliver my voice. This is another point is that I had, I knew I had a voice, but I was suffocating it. I was suffocating it. No one else was.
And so you came in and you tapped that. You said, Hey, wait a minute, you got to let that voice out. And here’s how you let it out. And so the combination of my desire to let that voice out, because I knew I had something good to deliver. It wasn’t just when I’m called upon, can I speak? No, it’s a, I have a message and I want to deliver it, but shoot, I got this huge issue that I haven’t figured out how to deal with yet. You helped me get through that every step along the way. Once we got to the breakthrough about anger and adrenaline, every step along the way, I began to increase my motivation because my confidence was growing. And once, give me confidence. Once I get to confidence, then nothing’s going to hold me back. So I had a dream and you provided me with a clear path. I could see the path to accomplishing that dream, to getting back to that level. And so that, for me, the motivation was easy. And then I just had to follow your guidance and put multiple opportunities out there and go get them. And I did. I did them at the highest level in terms of the presentations and meetings that I set up. So I set up some high standards and I flew by them. So it felt good. Okay. And the final piece of advice that you will give to the listeners, many of whom will have experienced the same scenarios you have, and they will have looked for the magic. They will have looked for the easy way out. They will have looked for the way not to do the hard work. The final piece of advice is what?
Accept who you are and be yourself, and then dare to be yourself. So I wasn’t accepting who I was. So I wasn’t accepting that I had an undeveloped, a natural child within me. And that I fought all of that all along. My whole adult life I fought that. And so I had to accept that. And then I had to go play in that area and work in that area. And so I stopped comparing myself to others, other speakers, other people that I admired who did this kind of thing. And I focused on on me and the inner me. And then that process of acceptance is very powerful. Well, listen, John, I want to thank you very much for sharing your words of wisdom. I’m sure your words will help many people. I wanted to, because of all the good work that you did with me. So thank you for the opportunity. Well, thank you very much.
