I think the single biggest thing people would be surprised to learn about me is how introverted I am. It flies in the face of what they generally know about me or how they’ve experienced me.
I feel like I am a pendulum that can swing to extreme ends. I can be the guy on stage, literally conducting the energy in a room of thousands of people, and I can be the same person who can spend weeks at home without seeing anyone and be happy about it.
It actually takes a lot of energy from me to show up on stage as I do. My schedule is extremely barren for a big reason because I find it exhausting. That is the biggest reason why I limit any calls I have to one a day.
When I host things, like a Zoom, I often have a sleepless night, and the entire morning and day before I take the stage, I often find myself sitting in silence, steeling myself. I can feel the nervous energy.
I go through my now well documented fears of thinking no one cares or will show up. And then something magical happens. I take the stage, and all of that evaporates. It’s show time. I trust myself in that moment to deliver like no one else can.
When it’s over, I generally feel a euphoria and release. I usually feel quite proud of myself. I let the experience that happened sink in. And then I need time to recover. Sometimes weeks.
Even during my DJ days, I didn’t have a huge schedule. I promoted 5 of my own raves per year, and I played gigs for other promoters maybe once per month. I made every single one of those matter and be memorable. That is an extremely limited schedule for one of the biggest DJs of my era. Definitely a “quality not quantity” situation.
That’s for big events, but it’s the same for small ones. I find I can handle one-on-one conversations quite well, but once the numbers start to increase, I have a more and more difficult time speaking up.
The worst places for me are house parties or dinner parties. I can shut down completely unless I try very, very hard to stay engaged. It takes a lot of energy from me to not just hide out by myself and not talk to anyone. It’s easy for me to stay mute. Receiving an invitation to a party of people I don’t know is not my idea of a good time.
It gets more difficult because people will see me quiet and withdrawn at a social event, and combined with their thoughts of who I am misread it as aloofness and will choose not to engage with me. My wife has had multiple friends confess to her that they’re too intimidated to speak with me.
I think that’s why I enjoy mediums of mostly one direction communication. Either from the stage to an audience, or an email blast to my list.
Clearly, I found success in the past operating in this way. I can forgive myself for not doing it differently. The key for me is to recognize how I best work, and leverage that.
How about yourself? How do you best perform? What can you do to leverage this knowledge to work best for you?
