I like to talk to you about something that’s really interesting that was brought up to me recently. It’s about facing your fears. Now, somebody said to me that fear, the word ‘fear’ is actually, if you break it down and look at it, it’s called False Evidence Appearing Real.
Well, that’s what we do. We tell ourselves a story. It kinda reminds me about a story when I first started to speak. Now I know you say, well you know how to speak you were born and you know how to speak. I’m talking about professional speaking or speaking to a group or speaking to people.
And what happened was, back in the 70s, around 1975, 76, I met a gentlemen by the name of Jim Rowan. Jim was an absolutely amazing motivational, inspirational speaker. I had the pleasure of actually spending personal time with him, he actually coached me ‘cos I was in his coaching program, which was very expensive at the time.
However, I thought it was gonna be fantastic. And I saw Jim up on stage and I got really inspired and he was so eloquent, he was so fantastic, the message was so strong and I thought, I’d like to be a speaker. So I went up to him and I said “Jim,” actually I called him Mr Rowan back then, and I said, “I’d like to become a speaker” and he said “Go ahead”. I’m like, what do you mean, go ahead? He goes, “speak.” I said, “Well, what do ya mean?” He goes, “Just go, find people and speak and just speak and see who will listen and just do it.”
So around 1975, that same time, I had an opportunity with the company that I was working with to do a presentation to a group of people and we had a big group of people at that time and to me that was a huge group, about 50, 60 people in the room. And I practiced my presentation, I got ready, I did everything that I was supposed to do to just get prepared and it came the moment of speaking and so the guy in the front of the room announced me “and here is Alex Szinegh” and I was in the back of the room, super nervous, my hands were sweating.
As a matter of fact I can almost feel my hands sweating, I think I went back about 50 plus years. Anyways, so I walk up to the front of the room, I turn around, I looked at this group of 50 set of eyes, so there’s a hundred eyeballs looking at me and I went “Hi, my name is Alex Szinegh, thank you.” and I walked off. And I was petrified, I was so scared. I just didn’t know what to do.
But I wanted to pursue it, I wanted to do it and I went to a lotta seminars, I watched a lot of speakers, I saw a whole bunch of people speak in front of a room and I kept getting inspired, I wanted to learn more about it.
Bob Procter, he’s very famous now for The Secret. I knew him personally, I spent lots of time with him. I went through his training programs and his courses and I watched these people do that, what I really wanted to do and I just wasn’t sure I can do it. And the way I got into it was almost by accident, I kept going to this seminar we did in our company on a weekly basis and the guy that was supposed to do it, Mike Edwards who’s a great, great guy, he’s a very good speaker, he was coming from Montreal to Toronto and he got caught in a snow storm and his plane didn’t come in.
Now we had about 150 people in the room and the only person that has practice and sat through every one of Mike’s seminars was me. So my boss came to me, the president of the company, and said “Szinegh, you’re up.” And I’m like “you gotta be kidding me, I can’t do this.” He goes, “OK, you know what Mike says, some of the things, go ahead, just tell me his presentation.” I could literally do it word for word.
So he goes, “You’re gonna have to go up there and you’re just gonna have to do that thing.” I walked up to the front of the room and I was amazed what happened because they actually videoed it at that time and I was amazed at how well I did and from that moment on, you know what? I just continued and got better and better and better. I kept videoing all of my seminars, anything that I did in front of the camera ‘cos I wanted to see myself, I wanted to see can I really speak, can I inspire people, can I help people? ‘Cos that’s what I really wanted to do.
But you know what, if it wasn’t for Mike getting stuck on that airplane I don’t know what woulda happened, it mighta taken me years more. But here’s the thing, you need to face your fears. Sometimes you have to go through all of that in order to get to the other side and become the person you wanna be.
So all I can say to you is this: Whatever you wanna do, don’t let that little chatter in the back of your brain keep telling you. ‘Cos Jim Rowan used to say to me about just going for what you want, he was very big on not allowing the garbage and the negativity in your brain messing you up.
As a matter of fact he said to me one day, he was telling a story and he said, ‘cos we were talking about negativity, we were talking about facing your fears and how we were affected by other people, he goes, “sometimes people around you just dump garbage in your brain.” And I go, “what do you mean?” He goes, “Here’s what happens, think about it.” You’re at home, it’s five o’clock, the doorbell goes. You go up to the door, you look outside and you see your best buddy standing out there.
So you open the door and your best friend has a big container of stinky, rotten garbage and he dumps it into your living room, turns around and walks away. What are you gonna do? Well, I’m not gonna be happy, I’ll clean it up. So I cleaned it all up.
Well, next day, five o’clock, the doorbell goes. You look outside, your best friend is standing out there, you open the door, there he is again with a big, big container of garbage and he dumps it into your room. Well, you’re not happy again and you clean it up. He walks away, you clean it up. Third day, five o’clock, the doorbell goes. You look outside and guess who’s standing there, your best friend. Are you gonna open the door? Well, obviously not.
Guess what, so then why are you listening to all the people with all the negativity they’re tryna dump into your brain. Shut the door, don’t let it in. So fear is like that, it tells you stories, it does things to your brain. You tell yourself all about what you can’t do. You know what? Just power through it.
So anyways, I just thought I’d share this story with you because it helped me and I think back on it. As a matter of fact, the sweatiness is gone from my hand because I feel more relaxed as I got to the end of the story. I hope this helps, take care, I will see you soon.
