A few years ago, someone told me that I am a perfectionist. I tried to assure them that I was not. I thought of myself as laid back. And I am. With other people. Not so much with myself. No one can put more pressure on me than I put on myself. I'm working to treat myself with more kindness and understanding though, just like I would do for anyone else.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I was slated to do a session on media production for a virtual conference. I had spent hours on my presentation, refining my message and my slides, selecting just the right production samples to show. I did a test run with the organizers the week before the conference and everything worked beautifully. I was pumped.
Finally, the day arrived. I tried to log in to the virtual room 20 minutes early as instructed. Unfortunately, the link wasn't working. (I may have messed something up when I copied it into my calendar.) I frantically searched for conference organizers contact information. I finally made it into the room about 10 minutes before my session was to start. My room moderator was great, but unfortunately, we had a few snags, the most difficult being that none of my samples were working. By this point, my heart was racing, my palms were sweating, and we were two minutes past start time.
We agreed to carry on - without my samples.
I started off with a joke about the snafu and carried on. We had several questions at the end of the presentation which indicated to me that attendees stayed involved. And I spoke to someone who took my session and liked it. Yeah!
I'm happy I didn't let myself get pushed off course by an unexpected current but instead rowed with the flow, adjusting as needed. I did my best and didn't beat myself up afterward. In fact, I felt pretty good.