Desperately Seeking Confidence

Where Are You?!?!?!

I briefly touched on this in a previous post, but it's still personally one of my biggest bugbears.

So anyone who knows me know that I'm a stage performer and have been quoted as one of the funnest men on the planet (quote source: unknown). I have dressed up in all kinds of outfits like panto-dames, in mankinis, Frank-n-Furter (Rocky Horror)....and many more, all in the name of live entertainment and comedy.

So why the hell can't I run in public??

Yesterday after my run I went for a lovely walk with my wife and daughter. Before we headed out I set my FitBit to record and track the route we would take. The route took us down our local bridal path, into our village, along the seafront, through a cliff (Yes! a tunnel THROUGH a cliff - It's awesome) and back again! A total of 5.5 miles, include my earlier run and that's almost 9 miles. Not back for a fatty!

I can currently run about 1.2 miles without stopping (running laps of my garden). So during the walk I noticed that I had walked 1.2 miles on my FitBit. 'Shit!', I thought to myself (looking at how far I'd walked), 'I could run here without stopping, that would be awesome', But my mind won't let me. How can I dress in drag on stage in front of hundreds of people but not have the confidence to run down a road?

I think the problem lies with other peoples perspectives of me.

When I'm on stage the audience expects to be entertained, and I deliver that because I want them to feel good, which in turn makes me feel good. It's a win/win situation.

But if I was to run in public then people are expecting nothing from me, and that's what scares me.

I'm so used to wanting 'my audience' to feel good so that I feel good....I don't know how to make myself feel good with out that connection. Because I'm not interacting with people when I'm running I feel like I have nothing to feed off....It's turns out I'm a 'Joy Leech' - I feel the need to make other people happy so I can feed off it, and it's been like this many years.

So now I finally understand this process....how can I fix it?

The truth is I don't think I can change my mindset but I have to try and separate 'Performing' and 'Running' as two different entities, but I'm not quite sure where to start. I'm as confused as a fart in a fan factory.

One thing I do know is I really, really want to do it, I just have to cut the thread holding me back.

Anyone got the scissors?