Scared? "Don't be a chicken!"

Actually, chickens can teach us all a few things about overcome stage fright!

It’s Easter, which lead me into a conversation about eggs and chicks. Did you know that hens are able to hold on to the sperm of a rooster for a week allowing each egg they produce to be fertilised each egg until they have a whole nest full. They can even eliminate the sperm if they decide the rooster in question isn’t up to standard! These fertilised eggs lay in the nest in a sort of suspended animation until the hen decides enough have been laid where upon she sits upon them continuously for 21 days incubating until they hatch.

Amazing right? If she wasn’t able to do that, she’d have chicks hatching on different days and wouldn’t be able to both look after and teach the hatched chicks as well as incubate the unhatched ones.

I think there’s a lesson for us all there that can be applied to many areas of life. Let’s take overcoming a fear such as stage fright as an example. Overcoming fear takes determination and commitment and if you’re to succeed you need to want it and there has to be something big in it for you when you succeed, the chick.

Overcoming fear also requires something from the outside to combine with something on the inside. It requires an ability on your side to speak in the language you need to communicate in (a healthy egg) to combine with techniques to overcome your fear of public speaking (the rooster sperm). If you suffer from stage fright, you can’t just decide to not have this fear any more than the hen can decide to have chicks without fertilising her eggs. We all have it in us to be great public speakers, but we need to learn and apply the skills.

Just like the hen, if you don’t believe in or trust the quality of the techniques, or if you don’t believe it’s the right time for you to have this ability, you’ll either reject the techniques completely, or delay the absorption of the input.

So, take your time with the selection process. Once you’ve checked out different people offering the services you require to start speaking up and you believe that they can provide good quality techniques, it’s up to you to accept their techniques, and allow these methods to fuse with your belief system.

This takes effort on your part. You can’t just have coaching and expect to see immediate results. You need to be patient, apply the techniques and consciously assimilate the new way of being. You need to be consistent just like the hen that sits on her eggs for 21 days. She knows that if sitting gets uncomfortable, tiring, boring, she can’t just take a break for a few hours because her freshly laid eggs will get cold and won’t hatch into chicks.

You need to do the same. You need to give yourself time to fully absorb the new information developing within you and allow it to develop in the early days. There’s another great English saying “You shouldn’t count your chickens until they hatch” meaning you have to wait to see what actually develops from your efforts and not assume that you’ll instantly get what you want. It takes time and effort. So, be patient with yourself and be consistent with your chosen method to become different.

Once it’s time for you to show your new skills, your fluffy new chicks off to the outside world, you should treat them with compassion. Displaying them in safe environments at first for short periods of time. Your new skills just like chicks won’t be very strong at first and will tire and scare easily the first. But with protection, and continued nurturing they will develop in to strong fully fledged chickens. As your skills grow and you gain confidence you’ll develop new skills, trust yourself more and learn to fly to new heights.

With time and effort who knows you could bring life to the rooster within you that crows at the dawn for all to hear, and doesn’t flinch at the thought of ruffling a few feathers with it’s new inspirations. A rooster that stands proud for all to see, and delights at leading others to new horizons. A rooster that knows when it’s time to crow and when not; I rooster with the wisdom to crow whenever it deems it to be the right time. A rooster that doesn’t second think itself and fear what others think about it’s voice because it trusts in its knowledge and knows it’s voice is appreciated and wanted.

Don’t believe you have a rooster in you? Let’s find out!

I’m Louise and help introverted highly sensitive people in Pharma and biotech overcome stage fright and get the recognition they deserve and desire.

Follow me to understand more about overcoming imposter syndrome and how to live your best life as an introvert in an extrovert world without getting overwhelmed.⭐️

✨ Click the 🔔 on my profile to be alerted to new posts

👉🏽 Follow me for insights on imposter syndrome

📄Subscribe to my newsletter

🎧Tune into my podcast ‘English Talk’

😎 Join my Facebook group Softly Spoken Scientists Network

📆 Book your FREE 30-minute consultation

🧭Links to all the above in my profile