Key Takeaways from My Speaking Debut
Last Wednesday Squarespace paid for me to fly out from Tagazhout Morocco to Amsterdam to speak at Forward Festival and Self Made Summit about authentic community building.
Of course the night before my flight, I couldn’t sleep - classic Nicole. I didn’t feel nervous about my debut public speaking gigs but I suppose it was subconscious. My boyfriend drove me to the airport early in the morning and was gentle with me on the way but the security was not - apparently there was an issue with my passport since I’d entered the country in a van and was attempting to leave without it. I got it sorted but then I had a new challenge - a crammed flight. Word of caution if you ever fly Royal Air Maroc - you will be treated like anything but royalty. They will change the gate a million times and smirk at you when you ask what is going on and never turn on the A/C. The plane was FULL of coughing people and I was just thankful that I managed to grab a water at the kiosk before entering this mobile sauna.
My hotel thankfully included a taxi pickup and I laughed at the absurdity of it all. Just a few hours prior I was heading to the airport in an old Citroen and inhaling all the exhaust from the other old vehicles on the Moroccan freeway and here I was being whisked to my hotel in a new Mercedes that looked more like a spaceship. Just the day before I was using the bathroom in a hole in the ground and “showering” by boiling water and then strategically pouring it over myself while hovering over the same hole in the ground. When I got to my hotel, the first thing I did was take a proper shower, a rainfall shower with steaming temperatures.
Not feeling like going to a restaurant, I made my way to the grocery store and stocked up on all the items I hadn’t been able to indulge in since being in Morocco; prepackaged hummus, chocolate, and fresh lettuce. After gorging on my makeshift picnic in the hotel room, I immediately felt bloated and like a migraine was coming on. Was it a symptom of the processed food my body had just consumed in large quantities, a huge diversion from the fresh tagine I’d been eating daily in Morocco, or was it the fact that my period was about to start? Combine that with my lack of sleep, the horrible flight experience, and the stress looming from my upcoming speaking gigs and I had a recipe for disaster.
I managed to hold it all together and surprise myself, however. Not only did I deliver two speeches to two very different crowds, one to a room full of female entrepreneurs and another to a room full of cool designers and artists, but I managed not to get red or forget any bit of my presentation.
What were my key takeaways from the experience?
Women are awesome. I did ALL of that whilst bleeding.
I will try to avoid traveling during my winter phase if at all possible in the future - though I did it, and I did it well, my body was NOT happy. Now that I am back in Morocco, I am fighting a little illness that I know transpired as a result of not resting during my winter phase.
I actually LOVE public speaking, although I would prefer to talk about topics that invigorate me like overcoming self-doubt, tuning up your intuition, and taking leaps towards achieving self-actualization instead of website design and marketing. Regardless I am grateful to Squarespace for giving me this opportunity and for the surprising fire it ignited within me.