Outside my comfort zone

I am taking a 12 hour course at work right now on Presentation Skills. It was a class I wanted to take rather than one I was required to take. We meet each Tuesday morning for 3 hours.

One of the teaching methods the instructor uses is to force you out of your comfort zone. Now folks, give me time to think about what I want to say and prepare my presentation and I can do just fine. But hand me a slip of paper with a topic and give me less than 60 seconds to come up with a reasonable presentation? Uh - ugh. . . no way!

I am comfortable speaking in front of a group WHEN I AM PREPARED!!!

Yesterday my topic was, "My last meal on earth will be. . . . . " Hhmm. . . Well, dammit, in the first place, I'm gonna be around for a lot more years, so why should I be thinking about this now??? Okay, that mindset isn't going to get my anywhere. . . the clock is ticking. I was #6 so that gives me some time. Oops, there was no #2 or #4. . . how'd that happen?

I madly scribbled down strip steak, baked potato with lots of butter, sliced tomatoes with lots of salt, Italian Wedding Soup, a glass of cabernet, and a hot fudge sundae.

Okay, we are all in the same boat here. Why should I care about being perfect? I began by giving my list of items on the menu and went from there to say if it were my last meal on earth, then I didn't need to be concerned about ugly things such as cholesterol, low-fat, heart disease and what this meal would do to my health. I think I used facial expressions and words to describe my total delight for all the items on the menu.

Finally, my 60 seconds were up. I was pleasantly surprised at the written reviews I got from the rest of the class. While one person said I appeared nervous and another said I "swayed" too much as I was talking, most of the reviews were very positive. One person said I made her hungry!

Wow! I'm a grandmother, so that tells you I've been around a few years. I never knew I could do something like this before.