At 11:00 am, just four hours before I was supposed to give a TEDx talk, I couldn’t remember my lines.
I was rehearsing, ready to give the most important talk of my life, and after the third line into the talk, my mind would go blank. The words, drowned deep down inside me, just couldn’t make their way to my mouth. I tried three times and failed each time. I heard myself thinking, Maybe I should gracefully bow out and give this talk when I am better prepared.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. What I was experiencing was exactly what my talk was about: “Returning to the Field Within: How to Be Mindful When It Matters Most.” Before acting on my impulse to back out from this opportunity, I decided to pause and follow my own advice to practice three mindful steps to return to my field of non-judging awareness.
Has this ever happened to you—right before you’re about to give a presentation or go for an important meeting, and your mind goes blank? What did you do in that situation?
When we’re mindful, we return to a spacious mind…
