How to Leave a Hotel Room

Some people walk onto stages because they've made themselves get out there." — me

Bottom Line: The bravest thing in my week was not a keynote. It was the seven-foot walk from a hotel bed to a hotel door. What is it for you?

It’s 6:17 a.m., and I am sitting at the end of my bed in the theme-park-sized Orlando hotel called the Gaylord Palms.

I am up WAY before I have to, holding a coffee that I brewed in a rickety plastic coffeemaker in the bathroom, and glancing at the outfit I laid out the night before. Khakis and a button down.

“Conference casual” that is meant to say: I belong but I’m not trying too hard.

In two hours, two thousand HR leaders and I will be pouring into the convention hall for the Workhuman Live convention. Many of them flew into the Land of Disney with their teams.

I came alone.

I am in what my friend Dorie Clark calls “heads-up mode” — it’s the opposite of “heads-down mode” where we are developing, building, working. Heads-up mode is time we carve out for being a learner instead of a creator.

And I need this time to feed my soul.

But, as an introvert, this kind of social extravaganza is hard.

So, every morning at the Gaylord, I engage in my morning rituals: waking up way too early. Having my coffee. Wearing something that feels right. Taking a deep breath.

Then, in full Susan Cain mode, I literally propel myself out of the hotel room and toward the 2,000 leaders downstairs.

Last night, something happened that stopped me in my tracks.

Dorie and her wife Alexis had pulled together an awesome private dinner at a great local restaurant for seven of us — world-renowned authors, coaches, startup founders ... and me.

The kind of table that makes me tingle with inspiration.

But of all the conversations from the conference and the dinner, it was a throw-away exchange that really stopped me.

We had all taken an Uber back to the Gaylord, and walking through the massive lobby lit by Epcot-sized chandeliers, I innocently asked Dorie about her rituals to prepare for her morning keynote. Given that she was speaking to a packed room to close the conference, surely she had some.

She raised an eyebrow.

Alexis laughed.

“Dorie’s very different than you and me, Scott. She’s the type that’ll just get out there and be excited to talk.”

I had always known I lived in the camp of the people who have to work for it. The over-preparers. The four-a.m. mirror-rehearsers. The ones who have to propel ourselves out of our hotel rooms.

Some people walk onto stages excited.

Some people walk onto stages because they’ve made themselves get out there.

Now, I know Dorie has been speaking publicly for ages and has hundreds of experiences under her belt — and I’ve been doing it for two years.

But that small exchange brought home something.

I chose this.

I had a real estate license. I had a quieter version of my life sitting right there. I turned it down.

I keep turning it down.

I literally built a career that requires me — every single day — to walk into the exact rooms my nervous system is wired to avoid.

Strangers. Stages. Crowds of people who already know each other. The 2,000 leaders downstairs.

Not because I’m brave.

Because it’s my path.

And I wasn’t going to find it on the couch.

Courage is the load-bearing wall of my career.

And it still comes hard to me.

Some mornings I love that it isn’t easy.

Some mornings I don’t.

So here is the question I am sitting with — and the one I want to leave with you:

Where in your life have the edges softened?

Where have you stopped having to propel yourself? Not because the work got easier, but because comfort quietly moved in and you didn’t notice.

The job that used to scare you. The relationships that used to require effort. The room you used to have to talk yourself across.

The edges don’t disappear. We just stop visiting them.

This week, walk into one room where you know absolutely no one.

Not a Zoom. Not a podcast. Not a comment thread. A physical room.

A gallery event. A class you’ve been meaning to try. A volunteer opportunity at an unfamiliar non-profit. A meetup whose flyer you’ve been ignoring. A networking event your inbox has been filing under later.

The kind of room where, when you walk in, you’ll have to talk yourself across the threshold.

Notice the propelling. Notice the outfit you choose. Notice the small lies you tell yourself in the doorway.

Then go anyway.

P.S. — I have spent the last several months building something called the Courage Archetype Assessment. It is a two-minute quiz that surfaces the pattern your nervous system actually runs when discomfort shows up — not the version you’d like to believe, the one that’s actually true.

If you’d be open to being one of the first to take it when it goes live and give me your feedback, just hit reply and write the word Quiz. I’ll add you to the wait list.