It was an intense 24 hours in Switzerland before my flight to Hong Kong. I gave a talk in Rapperswil and was super excited – in this episode I’ll share my number one tip on how to stay calm before a presentation. I was also invited to a party in Zurich which doesn’t happen too often anymore – see below to find out why. Enjoy!
Video Transcript
It’s shortly before 7:00 a.m… and I’m starting another beautiful day.
I love water.
I’m feeling a bit tense today. I’ve barely been here for 24 hours and just lots and lots of stuff. Then also, with Sendtask, we’re in a very interesting phase right now where we’re thinking about a pivot and (hopefully) I can tell you more next week. But also because I’m gonna give a talk in less than two hours now. Worked on the slides this morning.
How to stay calm when you feel nervous or excited
I enjoy being… I wonder what the right description is for this feeling. Whether it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s nervous, I’ve done the talk before. Obviously, I always wanted to change certain things, make it a bit more lively and add a bit of spice. But it’s not nervousness, but it’s, I think, excitement. I wanted to share with you one thing and that I do when I get this tense feeling of excitement and it’s controlling my breath.
A lot of people do this during their meditation to calm themselves. I use it to slow down and it’s extremely simple. I just take deep breaths like…
The rhythm of my breathing gives these signals to the rest of my body, to my brain and my heart. My pulse slows down so that’s what really helps me appear calm even if internally I have a bit of a… a bit of a storm.
It helps me leverage this energy inside of me in a good way. So instead of getting distracted, it helps me become very, very focused and use that energy to just zero in on what I want to do and become really good at.
My talk: “The only thing constant in your life is Change”
The talk is here in the Rapperswil, the topic is “The only thing constant in your life is Change” which obviously very much resonates with me.
Elena has also just arrived here, her luggage is now here at the office. So I think after the talk, we’re gonna go back here, get some more work done and then head to the airport quite soon because our flight leaves at 10:00 p.m. tonight. We’re gonna fly to Hong Kong which is, I think, about a 12-hour flight and a six-hour time difference.
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I think the talk went pretty good. I got some extra work done here in the office, uploading footage as we speak and soon we’re gonna head to Zurich.
Why I don’t get invited to birthday parties anymore
It’s about 5 p.m. right now, I am invited to a birthday party in Zurich. This doesn’t happen too often. Usually, people don’t invite me anymore because they think I’m not gonna be around anyway. So I’m actually looking forward to this.
But even if people don’t invite me usually, that’s not a bad thing. Because I like the fact that I have to be proactive to meet people. Of course, when I was living here, I got invited to birthday parties and I would just go because I was invited. But I didn’t really take the time to think about is that a person I want to spend time with, do I even wanna take the night off, spend it at a birthday party versus anything else that I could do with that night…
So now it’s a lot more proactive, I often approach people to meet them. And while it’s a bit more work, I get a lot of value from that. And with that, I’m gonna head to Zurich, enjoy the birthday party and then at almost 11 p.m. we are gonna fly out of Zurich to Hong Kong.
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So we’re invited to a red party which obviously I couldn’t really fit so Elena’s compensating for me. I’m always saying I do not want to miss out on anything and be able to participate in anything and not be restricted by how little I own. But white parties and red parties are tough.
An unusual Uber trip and we’re off to Hong Kong!
So this Uber driver was a bit of an experience. He, apparently he used to be on Arabic TV and works for the UN on human rights stuff, and apparently way too many stories. And then also his wife kept calling him constantly and he would just decline her call.
Anyway, we made it to the airport, we made it through security. Now we’re gonna head out to the lounge and (hopefully) we’ll see the last bit of the sunset. And we can get on our flight to Hong Kong!
You can listen to the audio version here:
