The competition aspect of my new gig is nuts. This morning in hot-seat was a fierce Hunger Games style battle. Despite being new, I went up against someone who is very well spoken, smooth, charismatic, and seasoned. I’d noticed him before and admired his style.

Anyway, both of us had to demonstrate how to overcome objections. I was repping for my team, he was repping for his. And the audience’s applause would determine the winner. The Master of Ceremony role played—angry customer, busy customer, savvy consumer—with each of us.

Lots of curveballs. We had to dodge them and guide the conversation along.

The other guy went first. He was fast talking, smooth. He flowed really well but he was a bit long winded, confident though. As he spoke my heartbeat rose more and more. He was fantastic, how could I compete? 

The Master of Ceremony had very little critique for him. Just that he was long winded and how to rephrase some of what he said.

Then it was my turn. The other guy looked at me, the Master of Ceremony looked at me, the entire room of people looked over to me, seemingly all at once.

I took a deep breath and began spilling words, mindful of my tone, mindful of the places I normally pause and taking my time there. I was even mindful of the fact that I was gently leading without force, yet my heart was fluttering like it was propelled by the wings of a frightened creature. 

I’m genuinely surprised I was speaking actual intelligible words, but I was. 

I handled objection after objection, then he threw the ultimate objection at me—one that the other guy was too verbose on. My answer was a quick 10 word sentence, a question, which threw him off a bit. In fact, it stopped him in his tracks (he was pacing back and forth between me and the other guy as we spoke).

A wave of “Ooo’s” ran across the crowd before the Master of Ceremony resumed walking and said, “That’s a really good question.” And he answered it, which gave me useful data to ask more questions. And he answered them until we got to a point where he said, “Enough, let’s vote!”

The other guy got a decent applause. Mine was unexpectedly grand. Some people even stood up. What the fuck. Whose life am I living? I wanna tap into that flow state more often.

The energy was intoxicating.