Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges

As Anatole France wrote, “All changes… have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.” Along the way, not surprisingly, I became a person for whom all these questions of presence and power, of confidence and doubt, took on a great deal of significance.

I also shared my own struggles with impostor syndrome and how I learned to trick myself to feel—and actually to become—more confident. I referred to this phenomenon as “fake it till you become it.” (By the way, in the talk, that part about my own struggles was almost entirely unplanned and unscripted, because I didn’t think I had the audacity to di

But it may have released her from the fear that could have prevented her from expressing the things she knew.

Powerlessness engulfs us—and all that we believe, know, and feel. It enshrouds who we are, making us invisible. It even alienates us from ourselves.

Of course, watching my talk didn’t magically give Fetaine the knowledge she needed to do well on the MCAT.