One of my favorite Ted Talks of all time is titled Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator by Tim Urban. Being a master procrastinator myself, I appreciate his description of how my brain is different from a non-procrastinator. Please, take a moment to view the video if you haven’t already. This post will mean so much more if you do.
His sense of humor cracks me up but whenever I watch the video (which I’ve done multiple times) I find myself getting serious at the end when he describes the type of procrastination that happens when there’s no deadlines. Life goals and bucket list items that remain untouched because you never began. He surmises that for this reason we all have a bit of procrastinator in us.
And while I agree that some of it might be procrastination (I’ll go back to school when the kids are older, I’ll learn to fly when things settle down at my job, I’d love to advance but I just don’t have the time) I think a major part of that issue is fear. Fear that you may do something to throw your life so off course that you mess with what is “just fine.” Wherever you are is so much more comfortable than where you might be. There are very few things more powerful at stopping us in our tracks than the unknown, even if that unknown promises to be something amazing.
I’ve spoken randomly on this blog of my public speaking fear. I have a feeling that when I speak and admit the fear to people that they think I might be lying. After all, I’m literally standing right in front of them speaking with what seems to be “confidence”. But, if you watch me closely you’ll see all the tell tale signs of someone who is fighting through nervousness to the point of nausea. Over many years, multiple pieces of feedback, watching myself on video, learning breathing techniques, and taking hold of something that seems so uncontrollable, I have learned to control it. I put my hands behind my back or on my hips so I don’t ring my hands. I go into the bathroom before speaking to take a deep breath. That’s where I recognize my fear and put it in the corner. I know it’s there, I’ll just deal with it after.
This is a tactic that I started on my own without anyone telling me to do it. At first, I had to fake it until I made it. So, I’m writing this blog post to tell you that if you wait for your fear to go away, it probably never will. When people say, “Get over your fear so you can move on” this implies that there is a way to completely defeat fears. If you think you can’t do whatever it is until you move past your fear, you may never try what you were afraid of. And as much as I fear public speaking, I rejoice in just the chance that I may change the mindset or the thinking of someone in the audience which in turn creates a healthier piece of the education ecosystem I am so determined to support. I fight my fear for just the chance of creating a change. A new way of thinking. A new opportunity.
So whether you call it procrastination or fear, there is so much opportunity in moving beyond each of those blockades. Soon after watching the master procrastinator video, I fell upon a video of a 12-year-old little girl who was on America’s Got Talent. She was signing Aretha Franklin and to her utter dismay, Simon stops her in the middle and asks her to sing acapella, in front of the whole audience, which she clearly was not expecting. When you watch the video, her face goes through so many emotions in a short period of time, all of which you may have also felt if you have ever been challenged and scared. But, at 12-years-old, on television, in front of an audience, she takes a few deep breaths and belts out Think. And sometimes I think that when we are trying so hard to be great teachers to our students, there are so many life lessons, like taking control of a situation and addressing you fears, that they could be teaching us if we really paid attention.