hey team,
I was at a coffee shop yesterday talking to a buddy who is about to become a father. He asked for the nitty gritty. What’s hard, Mike?
Years ago, I remember asking this same question to friends. Everyone warned me about two things:
1. Sleep; and
2. Loss of “me time”
While there’s truth to both those things, they are nowhere near the hardest part of being a parent.
You know what is? The trauma.
The part where there’s some area of life where you duct-taped a solution for yourself. But now you are reliving it through your child. And it’s worse, so much worse.
You keep telling your kids to persevere and work harder, but your heart can’t be completely in it because in the back of your head, you know: you ran away from the problem too.
As an example: my son with swimming.
I had completely forgotten how much I hated everything to do with swimming. Those first few cold seconds in the water. The feeling of jumping in and having the water wash through your nose. The way your suit sticks to the back of your legs when you leave the pool. I’m 46 years-old and I still loathe these things. What chance, then, does my son have?
He’s been taking swim lessons this summer. It doesn’t come naturally to him. He’s inherited my trepidation towards water.
The last ten minutes of every lesson are an abject disaster. That’s the part where you need to open your eyes underwater and he just cannot will himself to do it. Then he builds it into a huge mental obstacle and it’s too much and he winds up panic-waving his arms in front of his face because he’s afraid his 19-year-old swim instructor is going to let him drown.
I’m mostly thankful I didn’t grow up in the "everyone is recording everything, always" era, but I do find myself wishing my parents had video of me taking swim lessons back in the day. I bet we could create an amazing split screen of six-year-old Mike and six-year-old Luca whining at the exact same decibel level, with the exact same complaints about the exact same set of instructions, all stemming from the exact same deep-seated terror of opening our eyes underwater.
And yet. There’s beauty in the struggle. A few weeks ago, I challenged him to do the hard work of holding his breath for five seconds. Then six. Then seven. Then he made it ten. And on his face I saw the smile of joy, the big, wide smile that can only be seen on the face of a person who accomplished something that doesn’t come naturally.
Which, for many people, is speaking.
Every week, I send an email that’s in admiration of some minute aspect of giving a speech. In the back of my mind, I know that not everyone on this list enjoys speaking. It’s your version of opening your eyes underwater. And honestly, even those who do enjoy speaking have their own underwater moments - parts they don’t like, subjects they avoid.
Back in my Duarte days, I hated the Data Visualization part of our workshop. The part was not that long, thankfully, and I was determined to make it even less not that long. So I did what generations of speakers have done when they secretly don’t like their content: I rushed through it.
After months of speeding through those 10 slides, I realized “rush through it” wasn’t a viable long-term strategy. I challenged myself to make That Part something good. Something more me. I brainstormed stories and jokes. I thought about how to make it interactive.
Doing that stuff made all the difference. I started seeing feedback forms with That Part listed as their favorite of the day. I even added an optional call and response for fun groups. You have no idea how rewarding it is to see a room of W2 employees chanting “set your data free!”
For name-dropping purposes, there are faaaaaaaar more impressive things from my Duarte tenure. Mike led workshops at companies like Google, Microsoft, blah blah blah. I know that’s the stuff for bios at the beginning of a podcast interview. But honestly? That stuff rarely challenged me. I take little pride in it.
You know what I do take pride in? Doing the work to make That Part interesting. The thing I was avoiding. Figuring out how to open my eyes underwater. Brings joy to my heart to think about the work to get to the other side of it.
I know many of you have your own That Part when it comes to speaking. And particularly for those of you who don’t actually enjoy speaking, just know: when you get to the other side of it, you will experience a level of joy beyond what you can possibly realize.
It’s out there for you, too
Speak well, my friends
Mike
P.S. If you want to make the leap from tolerating/hating speaking to actually enjoying it, I’m going to open up the doors soon for another round of Speech Club. Last chance in 2025