Why You Should Embrace Nervousness

What is the most nervous you've ever been to speak with an author?

Almost one hundred people volunteered to me in a Twitter conversation recently that they were never nervous to speak with famous authors or to give a speech to a packed auditorium.

I feel sorry for those people, because they’re in abject suffering and complete free-fall, the death spiral—and they don’t even know it.

I’m Not A Doctor

It took me a long time to figure out who I was and what mattered to me, and I’m still adding new values all the time. But one thing I learned on my hunt for purpose was human anatomy.

I was one class short of getting my ASN (Associates in Science and Nursing) as a twenty-year-old, so body/mind connection and health resonate with me.

And what I learned through study is that fear, anxiety, and nervousness are a result of the endocrine system. The endocrine system produces hormones, manufacturing chemicals that help the body to respond appropriately to external and internal stimuli.

Before your brain can even form words, your endocrine system will have fired off a handful of chemical cocktails the instant you see a mountain lion. Without those chemical signalers, you’d stand pat while a predator charged, mauled, killed, ate you.

In millions—perhaps billions—of powerful ways, the endocrine system tells you “PAY ATTENTION!!! This is important.”

If you have the opportunity to meet Stephen King and you don’t feel nervous about that, you either have no affection for his writing or you fail to understand the magnitude of the occasion. One word from the master of horror could change you career forever. And that’s a mountainlion of a moment.

So, please, dispatch with the notion that your failure to feel nervous, meeting a literary giant makes you a superior person, and if you need to, schedule a doctor’s appointment to have you health examined. Big opportunities are meant to make you nervous. It’s your body’s way of saying “Pay attention.”

My Book

Hey, You know my book is coming out in January. What’s stopping you from preordering it today? Grab your copy now and I’ll send you the audiobook, free of charge, one month early.