I’m a professional public speaker, but I wasn’t born this way – far from it, in fact. It took a long time for me to get there, mostly because of this one thing I wasn’t doing.

I resisted my fear for a long time. It’s not easy to face it, but just by doing so you can start moving through it. Sometimes, it takes acceptance of what is just to move forward in life. You don’t like the present situation – whether it’s a fear of public speaking, losses you have suffered, the number you get when you step on the scale, the people who have angered you, or anything that you don’t want. Resisting it will only keep you stuck where you are.

In her book, Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway (r), Susan Jeffers talks about the benefits of saying yes to your universe:

Saying yes means letting go of resistance and letting in the possibilities that our universe offers in new ways of seeing the world. It means to relax bodily and calmly survey the situation, thereby reducing upset and anxiety. Aside from the emotional benefits, the physical benefits are enormous. Conversely, saying no means to be a victim… Saying no means to block, to fight, to resist opportunities for growth and challenge. Saying no creates tension, exhaustion, wasted expenditure of energy, emotional upheaval – or, worse, it creates apathy. “I can’t cope. I can’t go on. There is no hope.” The truth of the matter is that saying yes is our only hope.

Saying yes means getting up and acting on your belief that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you.

My fear of public speaking kept me hiding in the back in classes, praying that the teacher wouldn’t call on me. I made it all the way through high school and college this way.

Because I was so afraid to speak in front of people, I found myself missing out on things that I wanted to do. I am a writer, and I wanted more people to hear my work, but I would have died if I had read anything in front of people. Making speeches at special occasions, like weddings – that was automatically out. It also held me back in my career – I was afraid to speak or present my work in meetings. And yet, I kept resisting it.

Finally I couldn’t take it anymore – I said yes to the universe and accepted my fear so that I could overcome it.

I started practicing by going to Toastmasters and learning how to give speeches to an audience. Sometimes I did well – other times I bombed. I remember a humorous speech contest that I participated in and utterly failed – there was nothing funny about my speech. But I survived and got though it. And though I lost, I knew that I had overcome something that had been weighing on me for a long time.

Even though I know that my fear around public speaking will probably never totally go away, I can still say yes to it and do something positive about the fear – and be open to new possibilities.