Last Tuesday, I petted a fluffy brown dog on the sunny side of the road.
Then, I crossed over, walked into the backdoor of Notting Hill Arts Club and onto the stage, and performed for twenty straight minutes to a room full of people.
Until a few years ago, my heart would’ve exploded, or I’d have spontaneously combusted.
For years I’ve frozen at dogs, and microphones.
But on Tuesday, I realised these fears had finally morphed into something else.
—
When I was eleven years old, I was at my friend’s house.
I’d been hanging out at hers for a few hours, and it was now time to go home, so I gathered my stuff and left as usual for the five-minute walk back.
But even before I could get out of the main gate, I heard a tiny dog bark, and then charge towards me. I screamed, and then I started running. The dog ran faster.
I noticed there were kids around laughing at me; nobody intervened.
A few seconds later, the dog closed in on the gap.
There was some blood, a big dog bite on the back of my right leg, but mostly there was intense embarrassment.
I wanted to disappear immediately; become invisible to these laughing kids.
I limped back home, crying.
—
When I was fifteen, I was part of every play in school. I was the narrator at many morning assemblies. I was also always the one picked out to read in class — whether it was in English or Hindi.
I loved it, and I felt in my most natural element when I was expressing.
—
When I was seventeen, I had moved from India to the US for my undergrad. I didn’t understand why I was required to sign up for COM114 when my major was Engineering.
COM114 was a class called “The Fundamentals of Speech Communication”. I thought this was a waste of time for me. It felt too basic, and also just did not seem relevant to my engineering degree at all.
But, okay, whatever. I took it because I had to.
—
When I was nineteen, and in my third year of college, I had signed up for a community service volunteer trip over Spring Break.
Twenty of us were on a bus from Indiana to West Virginia. This was a nearly twelve hour bus ride.
Before arriving at our destination, we were told that we would be making a very quick pit stop at a fire station because at some later stage we were supposed to be volunteering with the firefighters too.
I was super excited, because I’d only ever seen a fire station in movies before.
As soon as we entered the fire station, I heard a bunch of synchronised “awwwws”. To my horror, these awwwws were for a puppy that was running around that belonged to one of the firemen.
I was completely engulfed with fear. I rushed back to the bus.
The rest of the group could not believe that I was afraid of such a tiny, “harmless” little puppy. Someone from our crew came to the bus and told me that everyone had decided we were not going to leave until I held the puppy in my hands and got a picture with it.
Normally, I would just have said no repeatedly until they agreed. But after their fourth time insisting, I didn’t want to lose face in front of a new group of people that I was going to be spending the rest of the week with. So I forcefully, and begrudgingly, agreed.
The outcome of this (as evidenced below) ended up being very entertaining for the rest of the group, but yet another embarrassing and deeply fearful experience for me.
I decided to brush it off, and focused on enjoying the rest of the trip instead.
—
When I was twenty two, I had already moved back to India after college. My first job was in management consulting.
We were in the middle of a team dinner in Delhi on an offsite. I had been given some performance award earlier that day. At the team dinner, someone decided to ask me to give a speech.
I froze. I felt put on the spot. My voice shook, my whole body shook, and it was a completely unremarkable speech that lasted all of thirty seconds.
My colleague and mentor, Vikrant, later told me that he was so surprised at how difficult that was for me and that he could never have guessed it because I was always so confident on calls and in meetings.
I think my school teachers would also have agreed with Vikrant, and would have been very confused why this was so hard for me.
—
When I was twenty eight, I worked at a conference company in London. I was leaving the office for the day, and I stopped by to say bye to my colleague (and most influential mentor), Paul. He casually asked if I was ready with my speech.
I was flying out to New York the next morning for a conference I had put together.
I told Paul I wasn’t going to do a welcome speech and that I was just planning on asking the moderator to do it instead.
He stopped whatever he was working on, and launched into an enquiry.
When I told him that I had a fear of public speaking, he looked confused. He said the same thing Vikrant had said to me four years earlier.
But he then decided to dig deeper.
Twenty minutes later, Paul pinned the root of the issue. My fear of public speaking likely had seeped in when after my first COM114 class in college, the speech I gave was hard for the other American students to follow because of my accent.
I was truly surprised at this discovery, because I hadn’t quite realised it myself in all these years.
He then went on to tell me that this no longer applied to me because I was perfectly comprehensible with no added cognitive effort.
He said that I should give a speech that was true to my natural style of storytelling, which he insisted was engaging. He said it would be a real waste if I didn’t capitalise on this opportunity and that he knew I was going to be good if I could just get out of my own head.
I wasn’t entirely convinced.
—
Earlier that same week, I had walked into a meeting room in the office for a team meeting. What I hadn’t realised was that Bella, who was the dog of my then-boss Lou, was sitting in the corner of this meeting room on the floor.
As soon as I spotted Bella, I screamed and jumped up on the table.
I was literally on the table.
Lou realised what had happened and took Bella out of the room.
She apologised and said she had no idea I was scared of dogs.
—
On the flight to New York the next morning, I decided that I was going to give a welcome speech at the conference after all.
Not just one for formality’s sake; but a genuinely interesting one. One that reflected my ability to tell a good story.
My logic was simple.
Paul had found the root of my fear, and he believed I was ready — so I decided I had to believe him.
I wrote a speech on the flight.
A steward caught me mouthing lines; I admitted I was practising when he enquired. I told him I was very nervous. He, unexpectedly, asked if I wanted to try the speech on him after he was done serving food to everyone.
He called me thirty minutes later to the back of the plane and also invited the rest of the crew to listen.
They laughed where I hoped they would, leaned in intently at the right moments, and then also gave me a couple of really useful pointers in the end.
On Monday, I crushed the speech at the conference. My heart beat so fast with adrenaline after I came off stage.
But most of all, I was just really happy I didn’t let Paul down. He said he was proud of me when he saw the video on Youtube.
—
When I returned to London from New York, I went up to my boss Lou, and I told her about my history with dogs. I felt like it was time to work on this fear too.
I told her that I really wanted to be in a position where I wasn’t incapable of being in the same room, street, park, or hill if a dog was there.
Lou very kindly agreed to help me through it.
Over the next nine months, she exposed me to Bella little by little every day, until one day, Bella came over to me and started licking my feet and I didn’t flinch at all. In fact, I only realized my lack of flinching a few minutes after this was already happening.
I knew this was a breakthrough.
—
Over the next few years, I’ve gone on to pet many-a-dogs, and have done many-a-speeches despite my residual fear of both canines and microphones.
The nerves always kick in.
Last Tuesday was my first spoken-word gig. A new art form; with deeply personal material.
I expected the nerves to kick in, as usual. And I decided I was going to be okay with it when that happened.
But.. my heart just didn’t beat much faster at any point in the evening.
Not when I petted the floof on the street, and not even when I got on stage to perform.
I felt normal. Excited. Calm even.
Maybe I didn’t even need the tequila shot I took.
The bark didn’t echo in my head anymore. The stage lights didn’t blur my vision.
The fears didn’t disappear. I think they just got rewired.
Into muscle memory. Even into something that felt a little like happiness.
All it took was a thousand quiet tries, a truly amazing support system, and one unsuspecting Tuesday to realise that what once made me fearful now gave me joy.
Who would’ve thought?
