Think of the Other Person
Expanding Paradigms - Fall 1997

In 1995 Naomi Judd addressed the National Wellness Conference in Wisconsin. She gave a vivid and moving account of her battle with hepatitis, her decision to retire from singing, and the final concert that she gave with her daughter Wynona. Halfway through the performance, they both broke down crying on stage and could not go on. At that moment Naomi remembered something that a friend had once told her, "At the moment of your greatest crisis, think of the other person."

She looked at her daughter and knew that if Wynona did not finish this concert, her daughter would not continue a solo career of her own. She leaned over to her daughter and told her, "Your first, most important connection is to God, not to me." With that they finished their last concert together, and Wynona went on to achieve fame and fortune in her own right as a solo performer.

I have found this simple advice to be helpful on numerous occasions. At the moment of your greatest crisis, think of the other person! This July, I found myself on a plane returning to the National Wellness Conference to present a workshop on "Self-Awareness Tools for Self-Transformation." This was a new topic for me, and I was completely unprepared. I had spent the previous week designing my first Internet Web page and getting ready for an upcoming team-building retreat for the staff of a San Antonio university. My plan was to spend all day Sunday before the conference getting ready for my talk on Monday.

Sunday morning I invaded the University of Wisconsin's student lounge and snack bar. Soon I had articles, mind-maps, glue, scissors, overheads and scraps of paper scattered across two tables. My attempts to mind-map the workshop looked more like a bowl of spaghetti! I had a tangle of ideas and thoughts with no structure or theme.

How could I condense several weeks worth of information into two hours and present it in a clear and meaningful way? At midnight an apologetic cleaning woman asked me to leave the darkened building so she could finish her cleaning under my table.

Monday morning started at 6 a.m. teaching my first yoga class. Before I knew it, the time for my talk had come. I found my assigned room and started setting up my presentation. The first thing I noticed was that the tape deck was missing! Music was essential to my presentation, so instead of sorting my handouts as I had planned, I set off to find the audio-visual staff.

When I finally got back to my room, I hurried to the podium to start organizing my materials. I took out a packet of prepared transparencies and placed them carefully next to the projector - into a large puddle of water that had condensed from a pitcher of ice water. The transparencies stuck to each other and the table.

It was almost time to start, nothing was going right and I was getting nervous at the prospect of talking for two hours on a topic I had not even rehearsed. As I started trying to peel overheads apart, wipe the water off, and spread them out over the already cluttered desktop to dry, while trying to keep them in order, I started to feel myself losing control of myself and the situation. And where was that tape deck anyway? With only five minutes before show time I realized that I was unprepared, unorganized and scared!

Two hours on stage can seem like a lifetime when you are dying. A recent survey said that Americans' two greatest fears are public speaking and death, and now I felt like I was about to experience both! I felt like a deer caught in the headlights, frozen and unable to think clearly.

At this moment, I remembered Naomi's advice, "Think of the other person." There was only one other person in the room, sitting alone in the center of the third row. I shifted my focus away from myself and came out from behind the podium to introduce myself, intent upon making him feel comfortable and welcome, even if I didn't. I was surprised to find out that he was from San Antonio, and amazed to discover that he was from the university that I was scheduled to address the following week.

I view sychronicities, even small ones, as a sign that I am on track, so I continued visiting with him as the audience slowly filled the room. As I returned to the stage, I knew that all of the problems with overheads, handouts, and the tape deck didn't really matter as long as I stayed fully present and connected with the audience. The last trace of fear vanished, clarity of purpose returned, and I delivered one of the best presentations of my career.