The Cruise Texts Vol 9 Realisation Dawns!

During much of my business life I have networked. A great way to meet people and maybe one day do business with them.

During the lockdown due to Covid, this caried on, but the meetings transferred online to the zoom platform.

An important component of networking is 121 meetings where you get to know someone in more depth. I had arranged one with a gentleman, who failed to show up. Assuming this was a flaw in his character, how you do anything is how you do everything’, I wrote him off as unreliable and consigned him to my past. We didn’t meet in a breakout room, and I thought no further of him.

Until that is, he phoned me up.

He was apologetic and explained that he suffers with chronic anxiety.  He has these tablets from the doctor and when his anxiety is really bad, he takes one. They knock him out for quite some time. He’d taken one the day of our meeting and slept through it.  Could we book a 121 in again?

Figuring it must have taken some courage to phone I said ‘yes, why not’, and we set a date and time. He duly turned up as arranged.

We went and sat down by the pond in my garden. Its calm sitting in the shade of a beech tree with the sound of gently running water.

And for an hour he talked, talked about anxiety, and as he did so, I repeatedly said to myself, ‘that’s me’ and ‘that’s me’. Lights were going on all over the place.  Everything pretty much that he talked about I knew and had experienced.

Interpretation of badly punctuated texts and what’s app messages, fear of the opinions of others, struggles with conversations, continually checking social media, needing to feel noticed, wanting to be part of the crowd, but failing to be and avoiding them. Stepping away from anything that might be proof of the self-evaluations that are continually carried out with little or no evidence, thus proving them, lousy self-talk that you would never say to anyone else. Talking yourself out of doing anything before ever actually doing it.

Unless tanked up.

Thankfully, I’d got passed the last bit and by then had done a lot of work on myself and my knowledge of psychology.

I run outdoor experiences and know how much help the contents had been to me.  The gentleman that ran the networking meeting had suggested we do a View Over the Wall Experience for the group. I suggested my colleague might like to come.

He agreed.

When we ran the day there were four of us, the fella who ran the meeting and his girlfriend, my colleague and me.

The day and its contents were transformational, for those attending. The reviews speak for themselves, but also for me.  They suggested new ways of marketing them which we duly did.

Not only had I cleaned up my life, made those around me happier I also had a fantastic way to help everybody live happier, better-connected lives with improved MIND health.

I have tools to manage my anxiety. I no longer suffer with it, but it hasn’t gone away.

I also know what I am here to do.

Simon Pollard July 2024.