Speaker 1 (00:02):

Welcome to Amplify with Jess, a show designed to help women get out of their heads and into their zone of influence. Happy Monday, everyone. Here’s some food for thought to start your week.

(00:16)

I feel like I am definitely, I don’t know about you, but more anxious learning and definitely becoming a mom was like, let’s just pour a whole thing of kerosene on your anxiety fire. But one of the things that I learned through doing standup classes, which, if you’ve been listening, you know, is that one of the ways I feel like I was able to step a little bit out of postpartum when Ellie was born was through trying something new. For me, that was trying standup comedy, which has been on my wishlist for a while, but I was always really afraid to do it. In the first class of standup, they were like, what are you afraid of? Everyone goes around the room, and what’s the one thing that you’re so afraid might happen? And so people went around the room; I’m afraid that no one will laugh.

(01:04)

I’m afraid that I’ll offend someone. I’m afraid that I’ll go up there and forget what I was going to say. I am afraid I’ll get heckled or whatever it might be. And the instructor was like, okay, so what if those things happen? What would you do about it? And he literally was like, one, you can always make content out of your fears, but two, if you write down everything that you’re afraid of that might happen with standup, getting heckled, forgetting what you’re going to say and how you would go about it, it shrinks that anxiety because you realize like, oh, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I could go o; I could stand up to a heckler. I could go up there and just riff about something if I forget. So, it is the same thing when it comes to public speaking. I mean, I’ve been doing this long enough, and I’ve had enough reps where a lot of things have gone wrong.

(01:52)

I’ve had the fire alarm go off when I’ve been speaking. I’ve had someone bring a dog that started barking in the middle of my talk. I had someone just light up a cigarette in the middle of an auditorium and start smoking. While I’m talking, I’ve had my mic go out,t and you realize all the things that go wrong, that you have the anxiety of the what ifs if you just write out or even just think through, what would I do in that scenario, you realize that you can handle a lot more than maybe what you think of when it’s just sitting in your head. Thanks for listening To Amplify. If you are a fan of the, show us some podcast love by giving us a rating and review and give us a follow at the mic drop workshop and at Jess Ekstrom coming up on Amplify.

Speaker 2 (02:40):

You and I are both new moms this year, and I know one thing I really struggled with: why I put off my own avoidance of having kids. That was my own anxiety of, like, I’m not ready. I can’t do it. We can be so focused on our careers, which is amazing, that I think I told myself a narrative: well, I can’t be a parent at the same time. Something I’ve really learned this year is to embrace the mess. It doesn’t have to be so perfect.

Speaker 1 (03:08):

This episode was edited and produced by Ear Fluence. And I’m Jess Ekstrom, your host. Remember that You deserve the biggest stage. So let’s find out how to get you there. I’ll see you again soon.