What is a Jedi Mind Trick?
The Jedi Mind Trick first occurs at about 40 minutes into the film Star Wars IV (A New Hope) when Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, uses it on Imperial Stormtroopers when entering the city of Mos Eisely looking for Han Solo. After being asked a number of questions, Obi-Wan says, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” to which the stormtrooper replies, “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for,” and allows them to pass into the city. On a simplistic level, the Jedi Mind Trick, in this instance, is a form of hypnosis.
And a Jedi Mind(fulness) Trick?
The Jedi Mind(fulness) Trick doesn’t use hypnosis to resolve a perceived issue, but Mindfulness instead. Mindfulness is a form of meditation which teaches you to reduce your continuous mind dialogue (rumination) and focus instead on the ‘now’; on the present.
What about CBT?
CBT stands for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and is a form of therapy where memories that can negatively affect your actions and behaviour in the present, are updated to alleviate those issues.
And when you bring these three disparate functions together, the outcome is truly a thing of joy and eternal wonder. Trust me, I know about these things.
Is Speaking In Public A Problem?
I had an issue in the present. The issue was speaking in public. It’s always been there, this irrational fear, but more latterly it had become less of an irrational fear and more of a overarching controlling burden in my mind. In other words, my mind was now deciding whether I would or wouldn’t do something, ignoring logic and reasoning and throwing a hissy fit if I didn’t comply.
So, in the example of public speaking, if I didn’t comply with my mind’s decision not to do it because clearly I was in mortal danger of ‘dying on my arse’ if I did, then my mind would crank up the anxiety to such a degree that for my own sanity I’d have to come to the conclusion not to go through with the speech or risk having a full mental breakdown as a consequence. Ha ha. What joy I have with my mind.
The Cortex and the Amygdala
There a two areas of the brain that are known to effect anxiety. The cortex and the amygdala. In the book, “Rewire Your Anxious Brain” by Pittman and Karle, they conclude that “…if you were focussing on specific thoughts or images (before the anxiety started), that suggests your anxiety began in the cortex.” Anxiety that derives from the amygdala is more object/location oriented, which implies fear in the present. Mine was clearly cortex related which deals with fear of a future event. So, fear of a tiger or spider is controlled by the amygdala, whereas fear of a public speech at a wedding in Cornwall during a global pandemic for example, is initiated by the cortex.
If you’re interested in such things, you can buy the book by clicking the link below.
So why is it important to distinguish between the two forms of anxiety triggers? Because to resolve the issue you must deal with them in different ways.
Facing My Fear
So, one day I had a session with my therapist Mel, who I’ve been seeing for therapy on and off for the last six years. And in that time, I’ve come to trust Mel and CBT to such a degree that even when she asks me to complete an unpleasant task, I will do it, purely because of the trust I have in the process. And so it was with what I dubbed the “Jedi-Mind(fulness)-Trick”. Honestly, I wasn’t keen on going through with the mind trick because to overcome my fear, it was necessary for me to face my fear. Not literally of course, my fear wasn’t a tiger, a spider or some other creepy-crawly. My fear was public speaking. So, I had to face it in my mind. And trust me, that was bad enough. It sort of goes like this.
“So, what do you fear the most?”
“Public speaking.”
“Ok, so now imagine yourself speaking publicly and concentrate on the feelings that image generates.”
“Well, that’s not happening.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I think about it the anxiety rockets off the scale.”
The Memory Bank
I don’t know why I detest public speaking, but Mel suggested I’d probably been speaking in front of an audience as a child once and perhaps I’d been ridiculed and that would have been enough to put me off it for life. You see, what happens is your mind remembers the negative emotion of ridicule and stores it away somewhere in case you happen to find yourself in a similar situation in the future.
Then to save you from going through the whole charade again it nips off to your memory bank and says, “Hey, look what I’ve found? It’s a memory. It’s a bit old and a bit dusty but you were in exactly the same situation when you were five and you hated it. I’d best ramp up the anxiety for you so you can run in the opposite direction as fast as you can. No need to thank me. It’s all part of the service.”
The Isle of Wight & The Great Lambrini
And in 1966 when I was five, I went to the Isle of Wight on holiday with my family. We stayed in a chalet on a holiday park and there was children’s entertainment on most days.
One day, I went to see a magician. I don’t recall his name, The Great Lambrini or something (he was cheap but mildly effervescent).
Anyway, I was asked to go up on stage to help with a trick. Now you’ve all seen this trick a million times before but at five, I was still a little wet behind the ears when it came to magic. The Great Lambrini asked me to hold his magic wand (no sniggering at the back) whilst he set up the trick. Of course, as soon as I took hold of it, the wand collapsed. Just drooped like a dying plant in my hand. The wand looked like a single piece of wood when you held one end but collapsed when you held the other.
“Oh dear, he said, “What have you done?” There was a ripple of laughter from the audience.
I shook my head. I thought I’d done something wrong. Even then I was fearful of doing the wrong thing and then being admonished for it.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I wasn’t so sure I was enjoying the magic show anymore.
Wounded by the Wand
He took it off me and holding the other end it miraculously came together as one piece again. I was stunned. This was real magic. He handed it back and went to set up the trick again. And again, the wand drooped. The laughter was bigger this time. And of course, they were laughing at me, not with me. And it was impossible they could’ve been laughing with me because I wasn’t laughing. I was mortified.
“Oh dear, not again. What happened?” The Great Lambrini asked again. I shook my head. He took the wand and Hey Presto! it was solid again. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I was holding it in exactly the same place he was and in the same way. Yet he didn’t have the problem. It had to be me. There was something wrong with me. He gave it back, it drooped, everyone laughed again. Eventually he moved on to the next part of the show, asked everyone in the audience to give us, his helpers, a round of applause, which they did and I was allowed to leave the stage. But the applause didn’t cut any mustard with me. I’d been shown up in front of hundreds of people for the fool I was. There was no comeback from that.
A Metaphorical Death
I died up there that day. Not literally but it has remained a very unpleasant memory which, if I had told you about it before now, I would have spun some fun into it and mentioned how it made me stronger, as a person. But of course, it didn’t. It made me weaker. But this is only one example, there could be dozens of others. This might not be the reason I despise public speaking, but there’s a good possibility it had some influence on it. I haven’t spoken to Mel about it because it only occurred to me the other day that the two might be interrelated, somewhere in the dark corridors of my mind.
Wonders of the Human Mind
So ever since that fateful day, whenever I’ve been called upon to stand in the spotlight and do ‘a turn’ publicly, my mind has a little wander round my mind palace, looking for instances which are similar to the current one, to decide whether I like the scenario or not. This is how the human mind works. It’s an instinctive survival technique, so you know to run if a tiger wanders down the street looking peckish. You’ve learnt tigers are dangerous, in the same way you’ve learnt kittens are not. So, every time I’ve had to speak in public I’ve seen a orange and black striped feline monster coming my way and as a result I have hated it.
And every time I’ve hated it, that’s been noted as well, so over time a mild displeasure becomes a full-on irrational fear as the memories stack up and multiply exponentially. And this is where I found myself in July 2021. With an irrational fear of public speaking and a daughter who was about to get married and had asked if I would do her the honour of a Father-of-the-Bride speech. How could I say no? And how could I say yes? Here then is how it all played out. Jedi-Mind-Trick and all.
Marriage, and All That Entails
Recently, my eldest daughter got married, again. To the same person. It’s to do with the global pandemic you may have heard about. Lauren was able to have a ceremony for 30 people but the reception could only be for 30 people too. But when you’ve paid for a reception of about 150 and the insurance company isn’t paying out, then you have to make a decision, and the decision was made to hold the ceremony in one year (2020) and the reception a year later to allow for the ongoing COVID rule changes.
Speech Curveball
And all was going swimmingly until she hit me with the curveball. “Will you do a speech?” she said. “A Father-of-the-Bride speech?” Well, I’m all for tradition and everything but a speech? In front of people? Real people? No way!
Of course, I didn’t say no. I never do. I said I didn’t want to, which sounds like the same thing but isn’t. “No” generally means “Thanks for the offer but I will not be taking you up on it. Oh, and don’t bother asking again, as the answer will still be the same.” Whereas “I don’t want to” means, “I’d rather not but if you pester me enough I’ll cave in and do it even though I have no desire to.”
Divorce Proceedings
Anyway, the weeks went by. Vikki had threatened to divorce me if I didn’t do the speech, which wasn’t the most supportive thing she could have said. But even she didn’t know the full extent of my secret fear. In fact, I didn’t know the full extent either…until it started to get out of hand. Every time I thought about ‘the speech’ the same thing happened. The tightening in the stomach. The nerves, the panic. The fear. It would come out of nowhere. It was as if the two came as a non-divisible pair. The thought of speaking publicly and the anxiety. “Here’s an imagined vision of you speaking publicly,” my mind would say to me. “Oh, and here’s a large helping of anxiety to go with it, just in case you’d forgotten how public speaking makes you feel.”
The Infinity Drive
Anxiety is not nerves. Anxiety is nerves x ∞ so there’s no correlation between the two. If someone tells you your anxiety is just nerves with a bit of drama thrown in, punch them in the face and tell them it was just nerves with a bit of drama thrown in disguised as a left hook.
Eventually, a few weeks before the wedding I started to try and write something, but it was impossible. Every time I thought about ‘it’ the nerves would jangle and Hey Presto! just like The Great Lambrini my desire to complete one sentence would disappear into thin air. As if by magic!
One morning, Vikki said to me, “Are you going to speak to Lauren about the speech?”
“Yes, at some point,” was my reply. Not very forthcoming with detail or specifics. And funnily enough, Vikki picked up on that and replied, “When?” She does this a lot. You know, wants to tie you down to the specifics of time.
“It don’t know, next week probably.”
“Because, if you’re not going to do it, you need to tell her sooner or later,” she replied. Wow, I thought, we’re not getting divorced after all. She’s changed her tune.
The Less Than Positive Effects of Anxiety
In the interim, Vikki had considered her position and remembered what happens to me when I get overly stressed about a situation which is usually of my own making. To wit, I collapse in a heap, have a panic attack and go to bed for a few days. Admittedly it hadn’t happened in a long time, certainly not since the early days of CBT and not since I had left work. But it never truly leaves you. Not fully. You have to accept it and manage it and be aware that it still hides in the darker recesses of your mind, just waiting for the day when it can pop up and say with a fiendish grin, “Guess who’s come to stay?”
Hen Party
All the same, it was a weight lifted from my shoulders, but the anxiety didn’t go away. It was nearing the end of July and the wedding was on the 11th August. That week, a number of things happened. Firstly, I took some items to Izzy’s house for the ‘Hen Party’. Izzy is my youngest daughter who was arranging Lauren’s Hen Party in her flat in Blackheath. I drove up on Tuesday to drop off some items. While I was there, I dropped the bombshell.
Izzy is doing a Psychology degree and I assumed she would understand the anxiety angle. She did. I told her it was unlikely that I’d do the speech not because I didn’t want to but because I was unable to. I felt like I had a choice; go to the wedding and not do the speech, or agree to do it, have a mental breakdown and then not go at all. Given those terms it’s simple to choose the right option. But there was a further option; one I had elected not to consider.
Circumvention
That Thursday I had a CBT session. I hadn’t had one for some months because I’m reasonably competent at dealing with most things these days (except public speaking clearly) and I had sensibly arranged a session near the time of the wedding in case an issue had arisen. And clearly one had. But on Wednesday, Lauren sent me a message asking if I wanted some note cards for my speech. I felt as if Izzy may have mentioned something in the interim. I replied, via Whatsapp, “I need to talk to you about that…”
Her response was as expected. “Nooooooo I can’t take any more bad news. I’m burying my head in the sand. Please do a speech Dad” (with a prayer emoji).
So I phoned her and explained my predicament. About the anxiety and all that other stuff. She understood. She wasn’t happy about it but she understood. I felt as if I was off the hook. She asked if I could write the speech and present it to the videographer so she had something as a memory. I decided to not agree to anything since that was the best way to manage my fear. So, I just said I would see what I could do.
CBT Session
I had my CBT on Thursday and thought I’d mention the speech and the fear but wasn’t overly fussed about discussing it in any detail since I thought I already had a perfectly reasonable solution in place. Also, I thought I was dealing with the issue in a sensible, CBT like manner, but I soon discovered I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. I thought because I was dealing with my fear by circumventing it, I was solving it – CBT stylie. But all I’d really done was recognise my fear and acted to reduce it (which in pre-CBT days I wouldn’t have done; I’d have ignored it or passed it off as irrational, and then had a meltdown).
I mentioned the speech and the fear and Mel asked how I was handling it. Then I told her how I’d managed to engineer a solution, but of course she saw straight through that nonsense. I had solved the problem but not resolved the issue. I was dealing with the symptom, not the cause. “Papering over the cracks” they call it.
Banjo Spiders
“Did you see the dancer on “I’m A Celebrity” some time back?” Mel asked me.
I shook my head.
“Well, his biggest fear was spiders so of course they placed them on his head and he had to endure that to win a prize of food for the night. At the end he said, “I thought if you faced your fears you overcome them? But I haven’t.””
“So, what are you saying?” I asked.
“Well, he’d faced his fears but he hadn’t dealt with his fear. He hadn’t resolved why he had a fear of spiders. So, facing your fears isn’t enough. It just gets you through that moment but the fear hasn’t changed because whatever is behind it, in your mind, is still there, managing the fear.”
The Jedi Mind Trick
“Ok, so what does that mean?” I asked.
“It means we need you to focus on your fear,” she said.
“Well, that’s not happening,” I replied flatly.
“Come on,” she said. “It’ll be fine.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” I replied. “You haven’t got it.”
“I’m here. I’ll guide you. You’ll be ok, trust me.”
There it was. Trust. I did trust her because every time she messed with my head I came out the other side a bit better than when I went in.
I sighed, “Ok, you win. What do I have to do?”
“I want you to imagine you’re speaking in public, perhaps at your daughter’s wedding.”
“I knew it’d be something unpleasant like that,” I said.
“Yes but we’re going to work our way through it together. Nothing’s going to happen here and you can stop at any time.”
The Image
I closed my eyes and opened my mind. “Ok, I’m thinking about it now,” I said in an agitated fashion.
“Ok, now just close your eyes or lower your head and concentrate on the image you have in your head, or perhaps think of the other times when you’ve spoken publicly.”
I was restless now. “Ok, I have an image,” I told her.
“Now, how do you feel when you focus on the thoughts in your mind?”
“Not good,” I said. “I suppose it’s fear, anxiety, it just builds up in my stomach and it won’t let go. It just gets bigger and bigger and bigger…” I was beginning to shake, just a little and I noticed my feet were tapping uncontrollably on the floor. Then my hands started to tremble and I was tapping the pen in my hand feverishly against my other hand.
The Jedi Mind(fulness) Trick
“Ok,” said Mel in a reassuring manner. Except it wasn’t reassuring at all. Not to me at least. “Now focus on your breathing for a moment, then your feet on the ground, the seat your sitting on and concentrate on what you can feel here right now. But keep thinking about the speech. Try to concentrate on both.”
“So, we’re doing some mindfulness then?” I said.
“Yes, let’s see if we can get you thinking about your body instead of your mind. How do you feel now?” she asked.
“The same,” I replied. My hands and feet were still going on their own and the anxiety was still ramped way up. It was incredibly unpleasant to sit there with fearful emotions at the front and centre of your mind and not shy away from them.
“Keep thinking about your breathing; your feet, your seat….how do you feel now?”
“Still the same,” I said. In my mind I had the vision I had generated of what it would be like giving a speech at a wedding, then fleeting visions of other speeches at other weddings, then presentations at work came flooding into my head. I compartmentalised my mind and focussed on my breathing, as my diaphragm moved up and down; my feet in my slippers (this was a Skype call) flat on the floor but tapping away. The solid floor beneath my feet, the warmth, the tapping. The settee I was sitting on, the cushion against my back, the way the sofa sort of enveloped my legs and supported them.
“Keep thinking about the breathing, the seat, the feet,” she reminded me.
You’re Anxiety Has Left The Meeting
I did. And then after a couple of minutes, the strangest thing happened. Suddenly I noticed my feet becoming still. My hands stopped tapping the pen. The movement just sort of melted away as if they had run out of energy. Then as I registered this lack of movement in my limbs something else occurred to me. The ache in the pit of my stomach. The nagging, gnawing sense of impending doom wrapped up in an anxiety attack, had vanished. Ebbed away. Just got up and left the room. “You’re Anxiety Has Left The Meeting.” And The Great Lambrini had disappeared too. Up his own backside I hoped.
It was as if the anxiety had never really existed except in my own mind which of course, is exactly where it had only ever been. But now it seemed I had stood up to the anxiety bully and the bully had backed down. I was shocked. Dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe it. But it had happened. The anxiety was no more.
Control
“And how do you feel now?” Mel asked me.
I laughed. “It’s gone!” I said. “It’s gone! You’ve only gone and done it again. It’s bloody well gone!”
“I knew you could do it,” she said. “Well done.”
“I don’t understand. What happened. How? Where? Where did it go? What kind of Jedi Mind Trick is this?”
“You focussed on your anxiety but using mindfulness techniques you were able to focus on your body, your breathing, the physical things you were touching. Anxiety isn’t triggered by the body, it’s triggered by the mind. If you’re not in your mind but in your body, your anxiety has nowhere to go.”
The Droids
My head was swimming. This was some serious shit going on that I had no comprehension of. I didn’t know what to say, I was playing it over in my mind when Mel said, “Those aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
I looked up, puzzled. “What did you just say?” I asked her.
“I said, ‘That’s the outcome I was looking for.’ And our session is nearly over.”
“Oh, ok. Sure.” I was hearing things now.
It’s a Wrap
We wrapped up the session and I was in awe. Dumbstruck. So much so that I had to tell everyone I knew, including the Groom. He wasn’t best pleased about the thought of his own speech either. We sat in The Rake and discussed battle scars.
“Are you going to tell Lauren?” he asked.
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know if this is going to work or not. It might have worn off by next week. I don’t want to say anything just yet, you know, just in case it puts the mockers on everything.”
So I didn’t say anything, to anyone. It meant I was under no obligation to do anything come the day. I didn’t need the additional pressure of agreeing to perform.
Paradigm Shift
But I’d noticed a sea-change in the way my mind and body reacted to the thought of ‘the speech’. No longer was there any real hint of anxiety. Instead it had been replaced by small but distinguishable, excitable nerves. Butterflies in the stomach. Something I was very familiar with. I used to get them before a football match, before a gig, before an interview. All stressful situations but something I had always prepared for. I felt all that was required of me was to write the speech, prepare for it by running through it, rehearsing it and doing it. So that’s what I did.
The Essex Coast
We have a caravan on the East Essex coast, so I went down there for a day or two, calmed myself and wrote the speech. I timed it. Quite good, not too short, not too long. I backed it up to OneDrive and updated in on my phone in Word. Then I thought, why don’t I just read it off my phone? I had Word on its night setting, so it showed up as white on black, very bold and easy to read with a nice, big font. So, I went for the eco-tech speech version. No paper. I practiced it and told no one.
Mindfulness
The other thing I did was mindfulness. I have some meditations on a link on my phone, so I fired them up every day or two, listened, relaxed and then after I would visualise the speech, the public speaking and sit with my fear, focus on it whilst focussing on my breathing, the seat, the floor and then wait for it to disappear. And after a while I noted this wasn’t having much of an effect. But I wasn’t anxious about this. The reason it had little effect was because there was nothing to have an effect on. I was trying to overcome the anxiety which wasn’t even registering anymore. The anxiety was already asleep and I was trying to read it a bedtime story. That’s how powerful the Jedi Mind Trick can be.
Butterflies
As the day of the wedding drew near, a few people asked if I was going to be doing a speech or not. I was non-committal but I felt oddly calm. Butterflies. A little nervous excitement. I was actually thinking about how to best deliver the speech. Not just getting through it. This was a performance! What on earth was going on? I was relaxed. I was calm. Too calm? Maybe. Maybe not.
The wedding day came. I spoke to Stuart, the Groom. I said I was ok. That I thought everything would be ok. I still didn’t know if the CBT hex was going to wear off at any minute. Was it just new-age sorcery or was there something more fundamental at play than an old, worn out Jedi Mind Trick ?
Eventually we got round to my turn. Stuart told Lauren I was up next. She came over and hugged me. “I knew you would!” she laughed. “You don’t know the half of it,” I replied. She didn’t.
I did the speech. Yes, I was nervous, but it wasn’t insurmountable, like anxiety is. And I quite enjoyed it. Would I do it again? I’m not crazy about the idea but I know I could, if necessary i.e. if/when Izzy gets married. But I’d have to do the Jedi Mind Trick on myself first. You know, just to make sure.
The Speech
Here’s the speech, in its entirety if you want to indulge yourself in my ramblings.
I’m Lee, the father of the bride, and I’d like to take a moment welcome you to Lauren & Stuart’s wedding, and to thank you for coming to what is surely the longest wedding in history.
But it has to be said, this one has been a lot more leisurely. There’s been no fights with the neighbours, no barbequing for 8000 people in a hurricane, and no lost teeth. There has been the lost trousers incident though. Harry bought himself a lovely suit for the wedding. It’s just a shame he left half of it at home. There has been car some car trouble too. Now, my car only breaks down when Isobel gets in it and when there’s a wedding. Isobel, don’t get married, but if you do don’t ask me to give you a lift.
Speech Impediment
Now, when Lauren told me I was doing speech, I thought, “blimey, she sounds just like her mother!” But in a good way. So, when she told me, sorry, asked me, my initial thought was,
“How far in the opposite direction can I run and how quickly can I get there?”
I explained this to Lauren and she being the warm, considerate, understanding person she is said, “If you don’t do a speech I’m never talking to you again.”
To which I said, “Is that a promise?”
That didn’t happen. Nothing I say today is true, least of all the welcome at the beginning. And that’s not true either.
There have been some fun times over the years mixed in with, what we like to refer to as ‘interesting’. I’ve seen her have a fight, get drunk, throw up on grass, wet herself and cry herself to sleep. But enough about her 10th birthday at Legoland.
Apple Salad
And who could forget the Apple Salad incident? Having said that, who in their right mind organises two weddings in Cornwall in the middle of a global pandemic? Then there was the Jackie Chan incident. Chop chop! Where is Louise Ditchman? It’s your fault my daughter is an alcoholic.
But on the flipside there was being on stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane singing Beatles songs – the Graduation Day at Newcastle, and also school sports day and cheating at the egg & spoon race. They’re all special moments and dear to my heart.
When Lauren was younger she liked to go to her theatre group, then she went to Girl Guides, but before all that she mainly liked to go A&E. She had an interesting appetite when she was very young. She liked to eat Wood Lice, Clothes Pegs, Albas Oil, Glade Air Fresheners. Anything really. And after a few worrying trips Princess Alexandra Hospital we learned keep things a little higher up, out of her reach.
Survivor
But you survived it all and here you are, on your wedding day. Your 2nd wedding day. But let’s not forget the groom, Stuart who has accepted the challenge of being your husband in magnanimous fashion. So, thank you for that. I really mean it!
Lauren, I love you very much and if I didn’t say it often enough before, I hope this makes up for it in some small way.
So, in closing I’d like to provide you with a few words of wisdom. When your mum and I got married, the priest said to us, “Never go to bed on an argument,” and your Mum said, “Well that’s OK because we tend to use a mattress.” He also said, “Love is blind, but marriage is a real eye opener.” Which is also very true. And Stuart, on a cautionary note – wives like to remind you of things you’re not so good at, so you can up your game a bit. Vikki says I have two bad traits. The first one is not listening, or the second one is not listening and the first one is…or is it…well it’s something like that…
And so, on that note I’d like to welcome Stuart into the family and propose a toast to the bride and groom. Please stand and raise your glasses.
A Concluding Analogy
So, in my head I have this analogy and it goes something like this:
“Those aren’t the droids you are looking for.”
And in the analogy, the Mos Eisley Spaceport represents my mind, (and as Obi-Wan perceptively observed, “You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”) the droids are my perceived anxiety, the stormtroopers are my cortex, Obi-Wan is me, and the Jedi Mind Trick is Mindfulness. So, I use mindfulness on my cortex and the anxiety in my mind goes out of the window of the Millennium Falcon and disappears into the TON618 quasar supermassive black hole. Simple eh? So, as you can see, the Jedi Mind Trick scene stacks up as more than a feeble attempt at some lightweight correlation to a film classic. Or maybe I just made the whole thing up. But it doesn’t matter because I don’t feel any anxiety towards this piece or anyone’s opinion on it. And that is worth much more than the desire to please everyone but at my own expense.
Thank you for your time.
Go back to Blogs here
Lees Blogosphere (theleeadamsblog.com)
If for any reason you wanted to read a professional blog (can’t think why) about the wedding in 2020, then you can do so here…
Ahh Lee what a champion I never new well done for the speech 👍 anxiety is a dick ain’t it I really know how hard that would have been well not the speech but overcoming the anxiety bit so well done wish I had been there to see you do it xxxxx
Ps lambrini the drink is disgusting too 🙄
Thanks. You didn’t miss much, just some old codger warbling for a while…
Brilliant Lee- I had no idea of your struggles…..bloody well done lovely.
X
Thanks. Well you know, it’s not the usual thing to discuss in polite company…