"All that ever holds somebody back, I think, is fear. For a minute I had fear. I went into the dressing room and shot my fear in the face..."
~ Lady Gaga

I'm afraid of just three things in this world: spiders, the look my Dad gives me when he's truly angry with me, and speaking in front of people.

The first two make perfect sense: spiders are the devil's children sent to terrorize me with their evil, and my Dad is my Dad. The third one confuses people, including myself.

One on one, I can and do talk to anyone and everyone. I have no problem having full-on life conversations with my aesthetician during my bikini wax, or for example writing about a bikini wax conversation and posting it on ChickAdvisor.

But ask me to stand up in front of a group of people and talk and something weird happens. I leave my body. My voice squeaks like a middle school boy's, my mouth goes dry, and I forget every word I've ever learned. Presentations that I wrote myself look like foreign objects. The audience, even if it's just five coworkers I know and like personally, becomes a sea of strangers ready to dissect every word.

Can they see my hands sweating? Do they know I just forgot my own name there for a second? Can they see that my heart is about to beat itself right through my ribcage?

I'm not sure quite when this happened. As a kid, I attended a progressive Catholic grade school that was more focused on teaching us to be ourselves than it was on multiplication tables. While I will never fully grasp the concept of long division, I'm glad I spent so much of my grammar school years in the Creative Arts room with my classmates, singing at the top of our lungs, creating and performing bizarre little skits and producing a Christmas pageant that could rival any professional production in the world (according to our mothers).

Somewhere between today and 1997, when I was an awkward but fearless tween who did a full-on lip synch to ABBA's Waterloo on stage in front of hundreds of people with her equally awkward best friend or who was performing OPEN MIC POETRY AT STARBUCKS (both true stories), I became an intensely fearful adult.

Cognitively, I know how useless it is to be concerned with how other people view you. I've never personally judged somebody who was giving a presentation, but for some reason I'm convinced that must be what people are saying as soon as I stand up and open my mouth.

I have an older sister I have always looked up to who, in addition to running a company, raising two kids and being an incredible human being, also does speaking engagements with her BFF. They're both naturally funny, magnetic women who are the same whether they're sitting across the table from you at dinner or standing in front of a group of people talking about technology and other nerd stuff. In other words, they're my heroes.

A few weeks back, both my sister and I were asked to speak to a group of students about careers in interactive marketing, which caused an instant spike in my blood pressure. My sister assured me that I'd be fine--I'd be GREAT, even. When she picked me up after work to head to the event, I had already sweated through my dress and two layers of clinical deodorant. I had hives on my forehead. I was thirsty. No-- hungry. No-- hungry and thirsty. No-- hungry and thirsty and hot.

I sat deliriously in the back while each speaker presented clearly and eloquently, my sister cracking jokes and tossing her shiny hair in the spotlight. "Breathe," she said when I told her to feel my heartbeat. "Also, put on some more deodorant."

Then it was my turn.

And I did it.

Like, I really did it. I talked like a normal person. Like a funny person. Like a person who wasn't about to drop dead from a spontaneous heart attack.

I left feeling just like Lady Gaga. Only sweatier.


What are your fears, and how did you shoot them in the face?