I often get the most amazing insights when I drive, when my mind is occupied with traffic, clarity often comes over me unexpectedly. So I was driving home from this amazing “Love to Present” event recently. A day on branding yourself and on becoming an expert for radio and TV. We all had to do a 30 second-on-the-spot-taster clip about our expert work. After a fantastic morning with really fabulous speakers:

BBC1’s Kate Humble and Top TV producer Alex Dundee (Holiday on Ice, Big Brother & Ant and Dec’s Saturdaynight Take Away) it was our turn to tell the camera about our line of expertese. I was scheduled last of the morning recordings.

Part of my work is to feel and see what others are hiding or suppressing. This sometimes comes in handy and sometimes not so much; I’ll literally work out whatever goes on underneath the surface and usually I feel it 10 times worse! It’s in my nature and often it just can’t be stopped. Its actually unnatural to stop it.

At Love to Present, there were a lot of nerves that weren’t expressed for those 30-sec recordings. Absorbing all of them wasn’t what I wanted but I could feel I could’nt stop it. Nearly all the experts before me did their camera clip flawlessly, in one take! The organizer, Jamie Breeze, kept saying how amazing that was. Now, I do not want to take all credits for that, but I know that I helped everybody by absorbing the nerves they were ‘hiding’: With each person going up I could feel the nervous energy in me rise. As I was scheduled last, imagine how much nerves were racing through my body.

By the time it was my turn I was trembling like grass in the wind. I started off strong with my rehearsed text, but got interrupted by a door closing and I had to start over again. Each time I tried again, I kept stumbling over the second sentence of my rehearsed text, after the 3rd stumble, Jamie got up and said, ‘I’ll help you’. He stood next to the camera and asked me a question about my work and out came a whole lot of words that I hadn’t rehearsed!

At first, I felt like I was the only one that failed to deliver that morning. I was angry at myself for being so sensitive, for not being able to stay in my own energy and for channeling everybody else’s. Even though everybody was complimenting me on recovering so beautifully.

Later, while driving home, the thought came to me that, because I was the only one that morning that couldn’t do it in one go, everybody there would remember me, a good thing! I also realized that I’m best at being asked questions, I LOVE being interviewed about my work and I LOVE speaking about my work. This realisation inspired me to many great idea’s.

I also realized that the text I had rehearsed really wasn’t the best pitch I could have given, but the text that came out later, when Jamie asked me about my work, felt much better, more passionate. I realized once again that things “going” wrong actually wasn’t bad at all. It gave me a lot of insight. Why hadn’t i just trusted that everything was just perfect.

Life is just amazing in it’s infinite wisdom. Next time something goes ‘wrong’ I’ll trust and open up for the insights I need. Maybe we all should do the same! As fr an aswer when you’re confused about something and see what happens!

Love and gratitude,

Sacha