Oh Well…
I recently had the pleasure of facilitating a storytelling workshop for some people in the Portland community. It was a workshop for those who were interested in maybe-kinda-sorta-possibly-one-day telling a true personal story in front of an audience. I thought it went really well and the time went by really fast. I’m always a little paranoid when it comes to the length of my workshops. Having spent so much of my professional time sitting inside of meetings and workshops that seem to have no end in sight, I never want anyone to experience that feeling when taking a workshop that I offer.
Anyways, I overcompensated and just when things were heating up and people were starting to relax more, the hour was over and we all signed off of Zoom. The age of Zoom has scrambled my radar when it comes to time. Zoom fatigue is a very real phenomenon and I wasn’t sure if people could handle being on their screens for 90 minutes having probably spent their work day in a handful of Zoom meetings already.
Of course what I failed to take into consideration was that these people signed up for my workshop. They opted in, whereas we are forced to partake in meetings during the work day. I also didn’t take into account the fact that my workshops are dope, fun, interesting and very interactive! Everything is a learning opportunity and I will take my new found knowledge and apply the lessons learned for my next workshop.
There were two themes that stuck out to me during this workshop that I wanted to quickly address. The first being the idea of discomfort. We all experience it for a variety of reasons. One of my jobs requires a lot of anti-racist facilitation and unpacking discomfort takes up a fair chunk of the time in the beginning. In this context, however, discomfort came up around public speaking and some of the participants' belief (or lack thereof) in their abilities to tell a story that people would be interested in hearing.
The second theme that came up is something I’ve talked about before, perfectionism. Nobody wants to make a mistake but that’s life and there is no learning without failing. Discomfort and Perfectionism are wonderful dance partners because they have similar moves. You can’t be perfect at anything but when it comes to a creative outlet like storytelling you shouldn’t want to be perfect. Part of storytelling is discovering your story. Some of my greatest discoveries have come during struggle. It’s uncomfortable but the rewards are great and definitely worth it.
Imagine a world where you never made a mistake, you never felt nervous and everything came easy to you. Yuck! No thanks. I’ll sit with my discomfort and shine a warm, healing light on my mistakes so I can continuously improve myself and be the best version of myself that I can muster on that day. I want to live an adventurous life. There’s so much time to be perfect after you’re dead.
