By the time you read this, my two-hour Monday presentation to a dozen high school administrators will be over. But at the time of this writing, thoughts of it consume me.
In the world of presentations, this one is not monumental. It’s not like I’m appearing before Congress. It’s just a small passionate workshop for an educational consultation company about effective teaching practices.
A normal person would prep for a few hours, maybe make up some index cards, do a couple of run-throughs. Do their best, and not stress out about it.
It’ll go fine, a normal person would say. Not the end of the world. Take the day off. You work too hard. You’ve already won, just by trying. Relax, enjoy. Stop taking everything so seriously.
Here’s to abnormalcy.
According to the book W1NNING by Tim Grover, when an individual strives for excellence in career, his head is always filled with a minefield of ideas and warnings and questions…and winning detonates them all at once.
Whether you are an elite athlete, the CEO of a company, a student who dreams of career success, or even just your average Joe (or Josephine) read W1NNING by Tim Grover. If you are obsessed with succeeding and improving, read it. I only read a few pages of W1NNING at a time, and they course through me like a shot of adrenalin. Grover’s words are so familiar and so powerful in my life, that I ingest them slowly and over time. If you are happy and content in your life, and desire no more than what you already have, Grover’s words will sound manic, and maybe bonkers. But if you want something so bad that the image burns you while you’re asleep, this book is up your alley.
Thoughts of winning keep fighting even when you’re asleep, preparing for the threat of imagined battles that haven’t happened yet. They might happen. They might not.
As the days lead up to the presentation, things that could go wrong fill my head. Much like an athlete who wants to perfect that shot, that move, that stroke, I want this presentation perfect. Seamless. I want it to resonate in my audience’s memory, to permeate their school year. I want them to tell my supervisors that it was the best presentation on teaching practices they have ever attended. That they’d like me to come back, and speak again.
(Note post-presentation: It was not perfect. It was not seamless. It did not resonate. It was not a disaster. It was mediocre. But I learned, man oh man, did I learn what not to do)
Thoughts of the presentation fill my head, even when I sleep. When I wake, I’m still exhausted, and when my eyes pop open, my mind crawls right back to thoughts of that presentation.
You go to bed tired and wake up tired because there’s a raging onslaught of chaos in your head, and there’s no nap that can erase that. The minute you wake up, you’re fighting again. Your mind is so overrun with conflict that you can’t even remember going to sleep (42).
People who see me ask me if I’m far away, because I seem distracted. I am. I’d love to relax, trust me. I try. But as I try to find peace and serenity, instead I am enmeshed in a wild mental war zone with smoke and explosions and screaming. Every time I diffuse a doubt or a fear about the presentation, another approaches.
When I begin to feel confident about tone and approach during my introduction, I begin to stress over research and feedback during group work. When I conquer that, I worry about overall timing and pace.
You’re fighting fires everywhere, and as soon as you extinguish one, another bursts into flames.
Winning loves that battle.
How much can you take? How far can I push you? Are you having fun yet?
Great video to watch:
Your mental battlefield is the command center of every decision you make. If you decide something is a problem, then it’s going to be a problem. Before a game or a meeting, you can think of all the ways you could screw up, or you can mentally walk through the details you’ll need to make it all work.
Winning doesn’t visit you in your dreams…it sees you in your nightmares.
Thoughts of doubt are fine, as long as they are a blueprint for improvement. Did I get this right? Can I do better? I know what to do, I need to make that happen. And they move in on those bombs, inspecting them from every angle, until they can extract and defuse them.
Forty-eight hours from now this presentation will be a thing of my past, but that won’t mean it’s over. It will simply be yet another diffused mine on the battlefield of my life that I will learn from, even if it goes as well as I’d like it to. And once it’s over, something else will take its place. A lesson to teach, a meeting to attend, a talk, a workout.
Have I done everything I can?
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