My 30-Year Intermission
Overcoming the Stage Fright That Almost Defined My Communication Career
Speaking early on to a chapter of Celebrate Recovery
“My words to each of you, although completely inadequate, are simple and heartfelt: Go live a purposeful, authentic, God-filled life. Don’t get so caught up in the “after” that you forget how to “become,” or why you started your journey to a better you in the first place. You have the ability to face your fears and live the life you never thought possible. Go live life. God will be patiently waiting as you find out what becoming fearless means in your own story.”
— Michelle Aguilar, Becoming Fearless
School begins tomorrow at the Palestine-Wheatley School District in the heart of the Arkansas Delta. It’s an unlikely new chapter in a new season of life as I transition from a mass media print journalist and author to a public school teacher. Among my responsibilities is leading the school’s first competitive public speaking and debate team.
The latter is the unlikeliest duty of all, especially for a guy who relished the relatively safe anonymity of print journalism for many years—a guy who was often told he had a face for radio.
My public speaking “career” is defined by two milestone moments. Spoiler alert regarding the moral of the story: facing your fears equals personal growth.
Speaking came naturally enough as a kid—student council speeches, the occasional talk to Boys State sponsors at the American Legion. But a soul-crushing moment during my freshman year of college changed everything.
During a first-semester government class, the professor called on me to summarize an assigned reading. I had done a less-than-adequate job with the homework, so I reverted to my high-school modus operandi: fake it ’til you make it. I did this without understanding that college was a whole new world. I bumbled along with the clear signposts of an inauthentic faker.
Dr. Lawson Veasey literally skewered me in front of thirty peers. “Dressed down” doesn’t even approach the scale of that public humiliation.
For the next thirty years, I ran from the slightest hint of an invitation to speak in public.
Cue another unlikely event in another season-of-life transition.
