M ission accomplished! My self-designed-outward bound-fear facing-envelope pushing experiment on Monday went really well! But not without a few setbacks…
My subconscious mind was working overtime to keep me from dancing. First, on Saturday, my usually trustworthy Volvo had to be towed to the shop. I spent the Saturday dealing with the car and practiced my dance a few times on Sunday and Monday.
On Monday, I got a ride to the venue with a friend. When I went to practice my dance, I discovered that the sound system was not compatible with my iPod. No problem. I called my husband, who was running early, and asked him to pick up a patch cord from home.
When he arrived with the cord, we discovered that the sound system had a headphone jack but no aux out port. I don’t know why it hadn’t been obvious to me….
SO, Will ran back home to burn a disc of my music. I did my practice dance with my headphones on while my classmates watched me in silence.
As performance time drew near, my friends began to arrive. It was so nice to have friend and family support for this! I thought that having friends there would make it harder but the opposite was true. Having them there made it fun.
Time passed and Will did not arrive with my music. It turned out that I had sent him home to burn a cd of my music but did not remind him of the password to my computer. Of course, he could not remember it. I had turned my ringer off so that it would not disturb the other dancers. He called and called. I anxiously watched the door waiting for him.
I finally checked my phone and saw roughly 30 missed calls and 2 text messages. I sent my password and he arrived about 10 minutes after the last dancer performed.
And then I danced. It was exhilarating, liberating, fun, and kind of scary. As intended, it was entertaining.
It took a lot of mental work for me to get to and through that dance. It was a big deal because it was a way of standing out that had always been very uncomfortable for me. I pushed my envelope out – a lot – what a happy day!
Over the next few days I’m going to post in detail about the techniques I used to prepare for it. They include EFT (for fear and anxiety), work in my Master Control Room, journaling, and meditative imagery.
Stay tuned!
Nancy