Forge Guide to Public Speaking
How I Tricked My Body Into Being Okay With Public Speaking
DBT and the other acronyms that changed my life
This story is part of How to Get Better at Public Speaking, the Forge guide to talking in front of a crowd.
I like to tell people that I got my first job at the age of 30. The truth is a little more complicated. I spent most of my twenties as a full-time freelance journalist and eventually became the boss of a couple of online magazines at the same time, managing teams of contractors mostly from a home office in my pajamas.
When I found myself a potential escape hatch (that is, one single job that would pay me enough to live on), I leapt at it. Little did I consider that, there, I’d have to participate in meetings. Real meetings. In rooms, with other people, and the added bonus of even more people piped in by video from a conference room across the country.
For a person unaccustomed to presenting with authority in a professional setting, the expectation to do so on a weekly basis in front of the person signing my paychecks was a real-time, waking nightmare. My awkwardness at talking to a roomful of colleagues became a constant preoccupation. I lost sleep. I clenched my jaw with such routine force that I broke a…
