DAY 102: Embarrassment - Losing my comfort zone at work

Today I faced some points related to the pattern of embarrassment. It is such a great coincidence that the eqafe website just released new interviews about Embarrassment - Is it really so bad? so I will definitely check it out and cross reference.

The energetic experience that I went through many of you can probably relate to. I was doing something new at work - I was actually reading a text to an audience during a presentation - and that moment got stuck in my memory after the event has finished. In my mind I thought that that moment had been terrible, that my voice was breaking, sounded too childish, my accent and my English weren't perfect. Once the event ended, a massive judgment about my performance took over me and I thought that I was being under the spotlight by my colleague's eyes. In my mind, all the event had been great apart from my intervention.

WTF! Why and how am I capable of being so hard on myself? Why on earth did I manipulate this memory in a way that focus 90 minutes of production into 5 minutes? There was so much time and dedication to make the event happening and at the end I was not even grateful for myself?

One of the origins of my judgment has to do with my eagerness to correspond to the perfection painted by the mind of what a perfect oral intervention look like. However, such image usually comes along with rehearsals, with auto-queues, with practice and none of these elements were present today. I was doing that which I usually see other people doing and I thought it was easy... Today I realised that doing it is a different story. From a positive critical point, I could have been more relaxed in my reading, I could have reduced the length of the text to help people to understand it, I could also have skipped some of the points to avoid spamming. A good learning curve for me. However, this was not the approach I had during the day.

After the presentation, I was feeling so heavy within me, I just wanted to leave the place to avoid being looked at. Probably people would not even remember my intervention but my mind has this "fascinating" ability to make my things REALLY big. It is a self-speculation that separates me from others. Now, while writing, I can actually see that it would have been a good opportunity to ask for feedback from my colleagues to improve my performance next time. Also, I realised that I could have been satisfied that after a year of doing this job I am comfortable enough to take part in the event and to manage everything by my own. None of these interesting realizations were available in my mind during the day!

So here I will start opening the point of embarrassment within me and after this I will listen to the interview to see which other points I can consider to develop confidence within me unconditionally:

Self-Forgiveness on the language point:

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to see the challenge of public speaking in English as something too big for me and too risky.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to desire to pass an image of perfection and of maturity when speaking in English as I would usually feel when speaking in Portuguese.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to feel angry and frustrated within me for not being as comfortable in English as I am with the Portuguese.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to perceive public speaking as a risk for my reputation because I can easily make mistakes in English when I am not focused and when I try to go beyond what is written.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to participate in the polarity of wanting to represent success and then feel that I have failed in this mission that I imposed unto myself.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to desire to play with the words and the vocabulary in English as I like to do in Portuguese. I realise that this requires practice and requires time to build the vocabulary in me, just like it took me so many years to be fully confident and comfortable with the Portuguese language.

Self-Forgiveness on the memory manipulation:

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to hold on to the memory that I created in my own mind and to hold on to it because I felt as if I had lost my comfort zone.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to believe that I was going beyond my own self because I was doing something new and therefore I actually limited me in thinking that this was a big task for me.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to believe that I need to get distracted by my own memory that keeps me locked in the past and with this I do not allow myself to move on, to learn, to correct me.

I forgive myself for having accepted and allowed myself to participate in the desire to be strong and to let go off the past without actually looking at myself in self-honesty, investigate what is holding me back and take off the mask that I hide myself behind. I realise that I don't need to be this perfection for others and that such relationship to others and to myself is a separation. I exist here, not in the mind. So actually, this moment today was real but the memory isn't - so what is that should require my attention? Should I not rebirth from the ashes of the mind? All that the mind shows me  are the patterns that I am still holding myself to.

I will continue this point on my next blog.