How To Get The Big Picture
While everybody’s different, we all have common areas where we’re most likely to feel “in the zone” or “in our element.”
For most of us, that’s whenever we’re doing something familiar, something that we’ve done well in the past.
If you’ve been playing the piano and doing recitals since you were in grade school, for example, playing a medium difficult piece in front of strangers is probably no big deal.
Other people would be terrified of sitting down at the piano in a hotel lobby and playing “chopsticks.”
Once I was watching this TV show with an old roommate of mine. It was this guy trying to break some record with the Rubik’s Cube.
My roommate told me he could NEVER perform like that in front of people, even if it was something he did very well.
He said all that attention and focus on him would make it impossible for him to perform.
This is also pretty common. Something you’re good at, but you’ve never really done it in front of others.
This can be anything from cooking to typing to balancing a broom on your nose. Most of us feel a lot more pressure, and a lot less confident, when we’re the center of social attention.
Content Stays With Content
There’s something about being at the center of social attention that makes most of us shake in our boots.
There are basically two ways of getting over this fear. One is content based, one is structurally based.
The content way is like the guy with the piano. Just practice whatever skill you want to practice, and get plenty of practice doing it in front of others.
You can do this with pretty much any skill. If you can find a way to practice that skill in front of others, you’ll do pretty good.
Except it generally won’t translate into other skills that need to be done in front of others.
Playing the piano in front of others won’t help you become a better speaker.
Unless you attack this from a structural level.
Instead of simply focusing on any particular skill, just focus on feeling a general sense of confidence in any social group, especially unknown social groups.
This is the great thing about our brains. It’s very good at generalizing. Once you learn to tie on pair of shoes, you can tie all the shoes on Earth.
So when you learn to simply be confident in social situations, anything you choose to do socially (create relationships, make sales, juggle on a unicycle) will seem easy and familiar.