“Eat Your Vegetables” Moments

Ho w many times are children – and some adults – admonished to eat their vegetables or, more broadly, to do something that is probably good for us but that we don’t really want to? I find that I still need these prompts from time-to-time though, thankfully, I’ve learned to give myself the “eat your vegetables” talk as an inner monologue and I will listen most of the times. Recently, I had a vivid illustration of why this is so important.

I was attending a presentation/networking meeting with maybe 100 people in attendance. After the speaker was done, the moderator was going around the room and randomly picking on people to stand up and share some of their story. It was a chance to practice our “elevator pitch” that we were encouraged to work on as business professionals. I was actually carrying a printed copy of mine so I took it out just in case. I was on probably the 20th revision but I was secretly hoping that we’d run out of time before I got called on as I still wasn’t liking it. And I almost made it.

There was maybe 5 minutes left to the meeting. The guy next to me had been selected earlier, did a nice job and the microphone was handed off to someone 20 feet away before continuing it’s random journey to the other side of the room. And then I heard my name.

I looked up and smiled at the moderator as the microphone made it’s way back over to me. I looked at my notes one final time and launched into my spiel. I opted not to read my notes but relied on my memory to catch the relevant points and just let my brain & mouth riff a bit. When it was mercifully over, I handed back the mic… and felt like I had just been part of a small train wreck.

Okay, it wasn’t horrible but it didn’t feel good. I could read no reactions or even interest in the other faces in the crowd. I immediately started dissecting how I did and what I said and, ultimately, found myself lacking. Another strike out.

The formal part of the meeting broke up and all I wanted to do was slink out the door and put my poor performance behind me. But the “eat your vegetables” voice spoke up and I knew that I needed to stick around and do more networking. That’s what we were there for, right? So I started to mingle and said hello to faces both new & old. And that’s when something surprising happened.

I saw that Jeff waiting to talk to one of the organizers so I stopped over and said a quick hello. I knew he’d just completed a training course and wanted to ask a question about how it’d gone. And that’s when I had my first surprise. After exchanging pleasantries and asking my question about his training, Jeff complimented me on my elevator pitch and said it was the best one he’d heard that day and that he even took some notes of things he wanted to incorporate into his own version. I was shocked… but also a bit humbled and certainly thankful. Then the same thing happened again a few minutes later when my friend Carol also was complimentary and even quoted several points I’d shared. Someone had been listening!

Was I perfect? Absolutely not. My own critique was still valid and there’s still lots of room for improvement. But what my friends Jeff & Carol reminded me of were two things – first, that most of us tend to be our own harshest critics and, second, that these “eat your veges” moments really do pay dividends.

In this instance, by not leaving right away like I wanted to, I got feedback that countered my own negative perspective and ended up making me feel a lot better about how I did. But even if I did tank, doing the right thing would have let me further practice my pitch and, perhaps, pick up some pointers from others on how I can make it better.

So many times in life, we look for that excuse to take the easy way out. Maybe it’s so we can skip exercising or postpone doing our taxes or to not talk to that person. Whatever it is, I’ve found that most of us have this sense of what we should do even if we don’t want to do it.

If you trust that instinct and do what you know is right, I think that you’ll find you’ll be far better off because of it… though be aware that the reward may come in an unexpected way. In my example, kind words from two people put an abrupt halt to my own negative spiral of doubt and disappointment.

Know that I’m pulling for you!