Joan Lunden overcame her terror of public speaking by joining Tony Robbins on tour for two years, performing in stadiums with up to 24,000 people each month. She calls it a baptism by fire that transformed her anxiety into passion and learned that you have to be willing to start out not being good at something to get better.
'cause I'd always been, believe it or not, afraid of public speaking. People like, "Wait, how can you be afraid of speaking in front of an audience of 200 people? Like millions of people see you every day." I was like, "Yeah, but I don't see any of them." So when I was kind of at that point in my life, I decided to get over that. And I went on the road with Tony Robbins for 2 years, I did. 2 big events a month. And when I say big events, Tony goes into like a stadium with 24,000 people and it was like baptism by fire. But I literally got over that fear of public speaking. Like I'm a living, walking example of someone who can turn a total fear into a total passion. But there's a lesson there that I've always tried to impart in my books, which is that You have to be willing to not be good in order to get the opportunity to learn how to be good.
