“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” — The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune (Frank Herbert) Most of us will never battle sandworms or sit on the throne of Arrakis. And sometimes, that fear holds us back from saying the thing that really matters. 💡 ONE IDEA WELLFear isn’t a flaw. It shows up when something matters. Too often, we treat fear like an alarm bell: But what if it’s a signal? Fear lives in the gap between where you are and where you want to be. 🧰 LESS MESS, MORE MESSAGEHere’s a simple reframe:
So next time your pulse quickens, 🧭 ASK YOURSELF THISWhat if fear is a sign you’re exactly where you need to be? |
One idea a week to help you teach and present with more clarity, confidence, and calm. No fluff. No scripts. Just practical tools that land.
I once saw a brilliant doctor explain febrile convulsions to a parent. He started with: “It’s about hypothalamic thermoregulation.” Accurate? Yes.Useful? Not even close. The parent nodded politely.But nothing landed. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL The more you know, the harder it is to explain. This is The Curse of Knowledge—a bias where we forget what it’s like not to know something. We assume shared language. Shared logic. Shared leaps. But when we present from that place, we leave people behind. We skip...
“I’ll just talk through this slide…” Harmless phrase, right? Except it usually means: 👉 I haven’t crafted a message - just collected some slides. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL This is one of the most common traps for early presenters: Thinking the slide is the presentation. But here’s the truth: Slides support your message. They shouldn’t be your message. If your audience can get everything they need from the slide, they don’t need you. And if they can’t make sense of the slide without you, they’re...
My first talk in English class was about bats. I was 14.I brought in a desiccated pipistrelle to show everyone.Instead of an acetate, I held up a wallpaper scroll I'd drawn with outlines of bat species. Another student read a piece on VW Combi vans. No images. No props. Just words. I had figured out you could do it the same way it had always been done.Or you could do something different.More memorable. 💡 ONE IDEA WELL We often treat presentations like assignments.Say the thing. Prove you know...