The next time you need to speak in public, have one thing in mind: This won’t kill you.
It’s not like you are renting a car late at night in Maine and have been warned by multiple people to turn on your high beams to beware of moose standing in the road.
You certainly will not have had this message reinforced by stats of how many people died this year of moose collisions.
And for sure you did not have a toll-taker respond to your question as to whether moose bound across the road or stand by the side with a colorful image like: “They stand in the middle and since they’re the same color as the road you really can’t see them. And when you run into them the car buckles their legs and they go slamming into your windshield and roof right into your car. You pretty much die if that happens.”
You’re merely standing in front of a crowd who wants to hear what you have to say.
It’s not like you are racing 3 hours to get somewhere with your eyes wide open, almost no other cars on the road, trying to reach your destination before falling asleep or meeting your maker through contact with a horned two ton animal.
This is all I could think about on my long drive: how much scarier it is with the prospect of encounters with wild animals and death than it is to stand in front of a room delivering a presentation or speech. Forget picturing people naked. Picture a moose’s rack of horns in your torso. That’ll calm you down.
With just an hour left on my drive I called my brother in law and regaled him with tales of my fearful driving, asking if there were even more moose on the smaller roads on which I was about to embark.
“It’s not moose season!” he replied.
See, your fears are often just unnecessary.
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