I live in a traditional English village. There is the normal pub, church, pond, and a village green where they play cricket on the weekends. I am not a big cricket fan myself but it does look lovely to have a cricket match going on with spectators sitting on rugs and having a picnic.
I have a house overlooking the green and it has a rather rampant ivy growing up the side. The ivy needs to be trimmed back twice a year or it starts to play havoc with the roof. A little while ago my gardener retired and finding a gardener where I live is quite a challenging task. I had not found a gardener despite looking and so I decided to trim the ivy myself.
I am not keen on heights to say the least and as I slowly climbed the ladder, rung by rung, my hands clutched onto the sides so tightly my knuckles went white. Although I kept reminding myself of the consequences of not doing the task and I was saying to myself “Its perfectly safe. Just be careful and you will be fine” my body had a real sense of fear that stayed with me until I had completed the task. The interesting thing is that six months later I had to do the trim the ivy again and even though I was initially reluctant to do the task, once I was on the ladder I did not feel the fear in the same way.
This reminded me of my introduction to networking and how everything was strange and how it felt very uncomfortable at first. Despite saying to myself “This is going to help me build my business” my body had other ideas!. Walking into a room full of strangers filled me with dread.
At first I thought that this was a sign that I was not cut out for networking. I tried all the tricks of psyching myself up and that did not seem to work much but in the end I found the thing that did work the best was just swallowing my fears and getting on with it.
As each meeting came and went I began to feel a little more confident until at some point I stopped thinking about it at all and I even began to enjoy it!
Whether you are climbing up ladders or going into a room full of strangers, anything new can take a bit of getting used to. If you are feeling a little nervous about networking please stick with it. Believe me, the rewards will that make up for the temporary discomfort.
Richard White is The Author of 