THE COURAGE TO BE EXCEPTIONAL

Interesting.

I think

going back to just what you said a little bit earlier i think for me it was it's a case of just experience so it started off i got a teaching job and then the kind of things that like the opportunities came from that so i remember my first lecture ever it was just what you said i was just like just so focused on i just need to get to the end of this lecture it was awful but it's experience, isn't it? You do a lecture, you see what works, you see what doesn't work.

And then you go back to it.

The next time you get a bit better, you get a bit better.

But those first kind of that first year of you speaking, whether it's publicly in a classroom, whatever is really, really hard because you don't want to sound like an idiot.

You want to be likable.

You want people to think that you've kind of deserved to be there, but there is like a massive imposter syndrome around it.

And even me and Claire are, We were in Canada in June doing a talk.

We've talked together loads, and it's not to say that in the UK we feel less nervous, but when we were in Canada, there was definitely an element of pressure because we feel like we're in another country, so we have to perform extra.

And we were sat at the front, and it's almost like you are sitting there, you feel really vulnerable and really nervous, and then when it's your time to go on, the mask comes on, and it's a performative...

It can be quite performative, can't it? Where you feel like...

You're a persona.

You're like a different person.

But I've never really looked at it from... mirror in what you want them to feel in terms of like hormones and behavior and stuff like that

yeah it's you want you you when you when you start looking at you can actually break up your talk in the types of endorphins oxytocin dopamine that you want people to have that kind of thing so yeah and you when you start looking at it you'll know that naturally you do these things anyway So I naturally tilt my head like this when I'm talking.

Maybe that's my upbringing.

Maybe it's the fact I'm six foot four and I have to do that because most people are shorter than me.

But those are just the things I do.

Sometimes I have a bit of a cheeky laugh and I make myself giggle with things.

And I'm a little bit cheeky with jokes and some things about my competitors and talks.

So that gets the audience laughing a little bit as well.

So there's the endorphins that I'm admitting that.

So I think if you can do that, it doesn't matter if you're in Canada or Timbuktu, right? You can do, you can, you can get people, people hooked as long as they can, you know, obviously understand the language.

I think focusing on it and you know what, when I spent a weekend with David, he lives in a place called Westeros, which is now an orphan Stockholm.