My TEDX talk is finally live! In celebration, I thought I’d re-post something I wrote last month after it was over. 

For the last two months, I’d been rehearsing my upcoming TEDX talk.  I needed to know these 18 minutes like my own name. I rehearsed in my car, in the bathroom, in front of my husband (who fell asleep). My speech became part of my daily commute. When I finally gave the talk, a part of me wondered if I was still rehearsing or if this moment was actually happening. 
This morning, as I drove to work, I stopped at a light and realized, I’M STILL RECITING THE DAMN SPEECH! Like some parasitic habit, my body had decided that driving a car meant I had to keep repeating the speech. And when I became conscious of my brain invasion, I was shocked to experience a feeling of lack. How do I fill the space of what had become almost a mantra? 
As I sat at the intersection of confusion and Patton Ave, I realized that for this brief moment, I was in the unknown. My monkey mind had nothing to chew on. I let my shoulders come down, released the knot in my stomach. inwardly thanked TED for training my brain to develop the habit of practicing the talk. 
The next step? I found that each time I found myself rehearsing the talk  was unquestionably a time when my conscious mind had been hijacked by habit. So TED became my new wake-up call. I’d catch myself repeating lines from the talk and pause. Breathe. And remember that repeating this speech after the fact, was simply habit, and not an active part of my brain, the equivalent of an earworm. 
Now if only I could remember where I put my reading glasses as thoroughly.  

And if you missed the link up top, here it is!