From Petrified to Presenting Poetry 🤯 📝

What is your biggest fear?

For me, it’s public speaking. It has been all my life.

But something amazing happened to me recently – something I still can’t quite believe.

If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you’ll know that I’ve been staying with a co-living/co-working company called Sun and Co. I’m in Javea at the moment (a super cute traditional Spanish town), but before that I spent a month at their pop-up event in the Basque Country in Northern Spain. 

Two days after I arrived in the Basque Country villa, I gave a skillshare entitled ‘Designing Your Life Purpose & Leaving A Lasting Legacy’.

I had slides, I had quotes, I had a script… and I was terrified.

If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you’ll know that I’ve been staying with a co-living/co-working company called Sun and Co. I’m in Javea at the moment (a super cute traditional Spanish town), but before that I spent a month at their pop-up event in the Basque Country in Northern Spain. 

I react to the idea of public speaking the same way most people react to the idea of jumping out of a plane with no parachute.

But I did it. I felt sick, and I thought it would go terribly wrong, but I did it anyway. I’d been dreading it ever since I got to the villa – in fact, ever since I knew I was going to do it, which was about two weeks earlier. 

And boy was I relieved when it was over. 

I was happy I’d got it done so early in the month, so I wouldn’t have to do any public speaking of any kind for the rest of my stay. No way was I going to put myself through that again.

But as the month continued, I did more and more things that were totally outside my comfort zone. 

I took part in masterminds and round table discussions, I attended workshops, I took part in (some rather strange) group exercises, I had a life coaching session – which, believe me, got VERY emotional – and I pushed myself to take part in anything and everything that made me feel awkward or uncomfortable.

I also made note of all the amazing things we were doing and, as we came to the end of our stay, I started writing a poem.

Now, I am not a poet. I’ve dabbled, but I’m not even sure if my ‘poem’ actually qualified as a poem. I just wanted to keep a written record of our time there, so I wouldn’t forget all the cool things we did. Just to keep for myself, and definitely not to show anyone else.

But as I wrote it, I kept thinking… I should share this with the others. And, believe me, this was not a normal thought for me.

Remember when I said public speaking was my number one fear? Well, the type of public speaking that terrifies me the most is the idea of reading my own work out to people – especially a poem, when I’m not a poet. 

My friend has been trying to get me to go to a local poetry night for years, where people read out their work in a pub, and it honestly sounded like the scariest thing ever. Needless to say, I never went.

So I ummed and ahhed about it, and right up until around 9 pm on our last night together, I still wasn’t sure if I was going to read my poem. After all, it’s pretty much my worst nightmare.

But then I realised something. 

I wasn’t actually terrified at the prospect of reading out my poem to this wonderful group of people. I wasn’t even nervous or worried about what they’d think. 

So, once everyone was sitting at the table on the deck, I asked Alex if he could turn his music off and said I had an announcement to make. 

I stood up, I read out my poem, and… I got a great reaction. There were laughs, some tears, a toast, and lots of hugging. It couldn’t have gone better.

And, as I sat down and continued drinking my lemon beer – something we all drank in the Basque Country – I marvelled at how unscary the whole thing had been.

A month previously, you couldn’t have paid me to stand up and read out a poem I’d written to a bunch of relative strangers. Now, it seemed like no big deal.

That’s the power of stepping outside our comfort zones and pushing ourselves to do things that normally scare us. In as little as a month, you can totally change the way you react to certain situations – and to fears that have plagued you your entire life.

And that feels pretty damn awesome.

So, I really encourage you to do something this week that scares you – and then keep doing that thing until it’s actually not such a big deal. It sounds hard, but – as with anything in life – the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

(Oh, and if you want to read my ‘poem’, just email me at jess@jessicagracecoleman.com and I’ll send it to you. It might not mean much without all the context, but I think it encapsulates co-living pretty well!)

That’s it for now – until next time, I’ll catch you on the flip side!

Jess xx

P.S. Stepping outside your comfort zone can only lead to bigger and better things!