Sometimes a conversation or even a presentation can make us emotional—that code word for teary or choked up. It can happen for a lot of reasons; sometimes we know it’s coming and sometimes it blindsides us.

 
What can you do? Your emotions help us understand who you are. Knowing what moves you so deeply that you get tearful is beautiful information to be able to share.

 
But.

 
Sometimes we don’t want to do that. That choice can make us feel vulnerable in a situation when we don’t want to feel vulnerable, and it can make the audience worry about us. What can you do?

 
Practical tactics include sipping some water, taking two deep breaths, and locating yourself clearly in the here and now. “I am sitting in the conference room between Malik and Siobhan. I’m on the 14th floor.”

 
Even more powerful is to remember why you’re there. What is your message in service of? When I gave a toast at my sister’s rehearsal dinner, I was worried that I would get so choked up that I wouldn’t be able to speak. So I thought about her, and the experience I wanted her to have. I created the intention to make her feel cherished, and that allowed all of my emotions to work in service of that goal, instead of being about me and how I felt.

 
Intention turns your focus outward, toward the audience you are speaking to. It helps you to remember that the experience that is for them.

I love to read. My family will tell you that I’ve always got at least two books going, and I keep a running list of what I’ve read.

I met a woman yesterday who set herself a goal last August to read 100 books in a year, and she is up to 95 now. I asked her what it was like, imagining long afternoons sitting blissfully with a stack of novels. She responded that she wouldn’t do it again. “I feel like the goal to get through the books got in the way of what I really love, which is reading.”

Such a great insight. Now she knows she can do it, which is cool. But she also has a clearer sense of what’s important to her—the reading, not the number of books she consumes.

What do you do when you’re giving a talk or a presentation, and your eyes fall on someone whose expression seems to say, “This is just the worst. Why am I here?”

This has happened to me a few times, most recently two weeks ago. The effect was exacerbated by the fact that the group was small, and the woman with the “prove to me this isn’t a waste of time” face was in the front row, about eight feet from me.

Fortunately, one of my earliest jobs was taking tours of Shakespeare plays to middle and high schools in New York City. I was the director, so I would sit in the audience to watch the performances. The faces on these kids as our productions of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth started were some of the most forbidding I’ve ever seen. Talk about expressions that say “I know this is going to be stupid!”

But in every case, the kids’ faces belied the experience they were having. They understood and enjoyed the plays, and they had great questions for the actors afterwards. That experience taught me that what you see on an audience member’s face is, nearly always, not about you.

When you happen across one of those expressions, compartmentalize it. Remind yourself that anything could be going on with that person—maybe they have a terrible upset stomach, or they got an email that’s bothering them, or maybe their face just looks like that!

At any rate, it’s not about you, and even if it were, don’t change what you’re doing. Keep going, and find a friendlier face to look at.

Confession time:

Last week I was at the gym, in the middle of a long, fatiguing workout. Our coach told me to change something I was doing so I could improve my performance.

I said “Okay.”

In that split second after I said it, I realized that I almost never do that—just say okay and go do it. My default behavior is to make a joke, ask a question, resist, if only for a moment. But maybe because I was tired and frustrated, and because I trust my coach—I just said “okay,” and turned to do what he said.

Why does this matter? What difference does it make if I joke around, and shouldn’t I ask questions?

It matters because it’s a behavior that shows I’m resistant to embracing the feedback. I’m not taking in the coaching and working on integrating it; I’m playing around. Anything I say other than “okay” is just me making excuses.

It was a real epiphany, and I’ve started to notice other places in my life when I will be better served to simply listen, take it in, and say “okay.” Don’t get quippy, don’t make a joke at my own expense, don’t talk. Just do the work.

When in doubt, remember:

 
It’s not about you.

 
That presentation, that difficult conversation, that speech—it’s not about you. Even when the topic is you, it’s not about you.

 
It’s about the person or people you’re talking to. That’s what they’re thinking about, so that’s what you should be thinking about.

Today’s the day folks in the U.S. celebrate our freedom from the tyranny of English rule. July 4, the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

I think a lot of us are uneasy with freedoms; we like to be told what to do, how and when to do it. We want to fit in, so having the freedom to decide on our own is unsettling. There are no lines to color inside.

Because we aren’t sure how to navigate our own freedoms, we’re sometimes super uneasy when we look at how other people navigate theirs. “She shouldn’t wear that.”
“Why do they have that in their shopping cart?”
“He shouldn’t let his kid act that way.”

It’s as though witnessing their freedom to do something (wear that, eat this, spend money on the other) calls into question how we are using our own freedom.

Justin works at my local dry cleaner. He has a full beard, is about 5’10”, and wears long yellow fingernails and sometimes a floral skirt. I’ll admit I was taken aback the first time I came in and saw him in a sparkly necklace and a blouse. Justin is using his freedom to wear what he wants in a way that is uncommon in U.S. culture—he has blown the lines of the coloring book right off the page.

Instead of feeling threatened by how he uses his freedom, I can look at it as an invitation to rethink what freedom is in these United States.

I started seeing a physical therapist recently for some back pain I’ve been having. In the course of our initial session, she pointed out that, even when I reported to her that I was totally relaxed, I was holding tension in different parts of my body. It wasn’t until she gently touched the areas in question that I could feel that what I had been thinking of as “relaxed,” wasn’t. I could let go of holding that muscle, and I would feel it loosen.

 
What else are we walking around with that we aren’t aware of? What do we carry through our days that we could put down, if only we knew what our burden was?

About five years ago I was working with a coach. In one of our sessions, I was talking about something I should probably do, a task that seemed easy, but that I had a lot of anxiety about. “It’s just going to be so hard!,” I remember saying.

What he said next has stuck with me more than anything else from those coaching sessions.

“What if it’s not?”

What if it’s not? What if it’s the story you’re telling yourself about it that’s hard? What if you’re creating what’s difficult? What if you take away the burden of thinking it’s hard, and then…it just isn’t anymore?

Those four words have helped me immeasurably. Try it out and let me know—what story can you let go of? How can you decide something is easy, and have it be so?

On a light note: the subject of this parody article could use the “what if it’s not?” advice.