Thomas Curran

They were from, you know, you talk to them, they're from this mega firm or that mega firm or that big industry.

And it was kind of overwhelming a little bit.

And they sort of just carried themselves with confidence.

And again, this kind of really picked at my thoughts of inferiority.

And the weird thing was, I was the one on the stage.

Like, I was the one who they were there to see.

I'm a bit of a perfectionist.

Now, how many times have you heard that one?

So the talk itself was extremely nerve-wracking, but I'm not a natural speaker.

It's not something that I ever thought I would do.

And I've kind of just been thrust into a profession that kind of requires you to be pretty good at speaking.

So one of the things I do to combat the anxiety that's associated with that is to overthink things, over-prepare, because in my mind, that's the most fail-safe way to make sure things don't go wrong.

it's so important that you don't show an ounce of weakness or vulnerability because in that moment things can cascade they can spiral and when it's so public that's when you feel like your deficiencies or shortcomings are being exposed and in the end i was able to recite a 15-minute talk word for word without any mistakes which was incredibly important for me but at the same time

It wasn't the most charismatic of talks.

It wasn't the most inspirational, but I did it.

And people were very polite and they applauded and I'm sure they appreciated it.

But at the same time, you could tell that it wasn't quite the show-stopping talk that perhaps other people at the conference had been able to deliver.

And that, you know, you do think about that.

I was very aware that, you know, it wasn't a rousing speech that others had delivered.

And so I wondered, you know, okay, did it look stilted?