Finding the superhero within to get beyond fear
Tapping into a different view of yourself can sometimes be just enough to push you through or hold you up in those times of absolute terror like small talk or public speaking.
I'm no stranger to the corners and walls of conference halls, I flower quite well there, thank you. But sometimes I have to pull myself from those safe spaces to get things done.
I tend to get worn out easily by small talk and those first few minutes of social interaction with new people. I have to protect my social battery quite often from being depleted and going into a crash mode.
This makes owning a business and getting on calls with new people really interesting. I have to key myself up to find ways to break in and talk to total strangers and build trust out of the gate.
You’d probably never guess that I hate small talk on these calls, or perhaps even in person. It’s been something I absolutely just had to work at, but the path wasn’t easy.
One day, I just had to…but ‘I’ didn’t.
I was once at a conference years ago and was handed a bunch of fliers and told ‘talk to people, give these out, make sure they come to our booth’. For some people this would be a totally easy thing to do. For me, my little squirrel brain panicked. This was my JOB, apparently, and I had to deliver.
So what did I do?
Other than start sweating, I pretended most of me wasn’t even there. I don’t entirely recommend a self-induced social blackout but it worked well for those five minutes I had to pull in strangers very quickly, hand them a thing, and get them to meet later at the conference booth we had.
In this out of body experience, I just pretended I was someone else. Different name, personality, all of it. I almost decided in those split seconds to take on a different accent but I didn’t want to mess that up, so I stayed with my own.
So…what exactly made this work?
What I didn’t know was that I was essentially disassociating my own self with the outcome. If I failed at this attempt, it wasn’t me. It was Samantha with the flyers. I could always try again with another mind trick and try again.
I kept not being ‘me’. But also very much myself.
I’ve since pushed myself to do this is an entirely different way. I used to dress up as Wonder Woman and just go out. It wasn’t me, exactly, I was playing a role. I was in costume, and I was with a friend who was dressed like Captain America. I still acted like me, talked like me - unless someone asked me what I was doing then I’d say something to throw them off like “just got off work”.
We did it out of fear. And a bit of a dare.
It all started because I took him to a networking event because he was job seeking. He completely froze. Like, unable to function froze. I picked up the slack in conversations, but we both left exhausted.
We went for beers after and talked about what happened, what he felt like when it happened. I was able to talk through how I was able to talk to people, and went into the explanation of the booth example I gave above.
He always seemed so outgoing, so it seemed so out of character. This is a guy that will dress like a banana and go get tacos, or go on a date in a unicorn onesie. But told me a secret - it was easier in a costume.
Like many other oddball plans we came up with over the years, we decided we’d challenge ourselves by ‘suiting up’ as superheroes.
Soon after, Captain and I were seen all over town: going to the grocery store, at the Women’s March, a kid’s birthday that a neighbor asked us to stop by for, at a festival, at the ATM, just walking around town, going to happy hour.
Your ‘alternate you’ can inspire others.
We were often a hit with young and old alike. We often got compliments from parents that we made their child’s day.
What did I learn from this? It’s ok to push yourself into a different zone of being to get beyond what scares you. If putting on a persona that you are a superhero, or taking on that presentation or pitch with a different ‘name’ and vibe to get it over with works, do it.
Maybe you can’t exactly suit up like we did for that presentation but you can do it in your head. Sometimes you can actually suit up, as I did on Halloween once - I showed up on the first call of the day with sword, shield and all.
We’ve all got an inner superhero.
So as a person looking for a job, or setting up a meeting with someone new, sometimes thinking of a persona to do that in helps get you past the first few minutes.
Sometimes just tackling a day that you know will be difficult is easier this way.
Superhero persona mindset helps to compartmentalize what we’re doing, push us to be uncomfortable in a way that we normally might not be able to, and trick ourselves into giving energy into situations that take a lot of it.
If you want to learn more about comfort zones, check out understanding your comfort zone.