Lessons from a Street Fighter

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Everyday about 5 pm, I drive past a street fighter at the corner of Westheimer and Shadowbriar.  Really!  A street fighter!  For at least a year, I have seen this man, maybe 30 years old, dressed in fight gear, hat, gloves, armbands, shorts.  He dances on the corner, fighting with an invisible opponent.  Once I got over the initial sense that what I was seeing was strange, I realized two things – how beautiful he is, dancing on the corner, and what a great training for success in the ring!

 

He punches and kicks and bobs to miss the punches of his invisible opponent.  All without any concern for the cars driving by or the stares of the people in those cars.  His concentration is awesome and amazing!  I admire his focused presence and especially his disregard for what people might be thinking about him.

 

He has really won the battle over stage fright!  Imagine what focus he must have in the ring, sparing with real opponents and observed by real audiences! Why can’t we all be so unconcerned for what others are thinking about us? What could you do to combat your over-concern for what others may think about you?  Where could you practice some form of street fighting like this courageous man at the corner of Westheimer and Shadowbriar?

 

If you’d like to learn to be the center of attention in a supportive environment, consider a Transform Stage Fright into Authentic Presence Course at Self-Expression Center. I can help you fight your fear of being in front of others.

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New Stage Fright & Fear of Public Speaking Book is Available

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When one journey ends, another begins.  But sometimes, maybe, you have to wait to see the next path.

A little over 20 years ago, I started the journey of learning to transform stage fright and fear of public speaking so that I and others could connect with the power of presence when speaking or performing to groups and audiences.  I was fascinated by a spiritual experience  I had while acting onstage that transformed my relationship with myself and my audience one night in 1985.  That fascination led me through twenty plus years of exploration, research and work facilitating people to develop presence and comfort speaking in front of others.

That journey  is really over now!  All of my discoveries have been collected and written into a book that shares all the secrets I have been using to help myself and thousands of other people in the past two decades.  The book called It’s your Time to Shine: How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking, Develop Authentic Presence and Speak from Your Heart is now available at my website and through Amazon.com.

So, what is the next journey? I don’t know!  I almost feel empty and aimless.  This was such a big part of my life, both the development of the Zimmer Method for authentic communication and the writing of the book. What is left now is a sense of waiting to be inspired to create something new.  Meanwhile, I continue to teach the method in classes, coaching sessions and in corporate teams.

Here is what Dr. Joe Vitale, star of The Secret,  said about this book. “The best book I’ve seen on the power of authentic presence for speaking.  Sandra brings years of work with spiritual psychology to shed new light on public speaking as a means of personal transformation.”

If you struggle with tension and anxiety about speaking up, speaking out or speaking to groups, please look at my book.  It may be the key that unlocks your stress and sets you free to be who you are when you share your ideas, insights, expertise, talents or gifts.

Sandra Zimmer
@sandrazimmer

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Taylor Swift – Transparency is a Key to Taylor’s Success

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Recently, I was fascinated by an NBC Dateline documentary spotlighting the singing star, Taylor Swift.  What compelled me to pay attention and watch the whole hour twice was the authenticity from which this dynamo of a performer and businesswoman lives her life and runs her productions.

 

At 19 years of age, she runs the whole show; and she has already learned the lesson of being a transparent leader for the hundreds of people who work for her.  As the leader of her production company, Taylor focuses on treating people well.  She said that even if she gets frustrated during rehearsals, she never lets herself yell at people.  Instead she looks for ways to ask for what she wants sweetly.

 

In her performances, Taylor grants a transparent view of her real life through her songs and her stage shows.  Whatever she experiences, she writes songs about.  Even her interview with Dateline’s Hoda Kotb became a part of her show.  She took the emotions of being asked about her breakup with Jonas Brother’s Joe Jonas and made it a song and a theater piece for her Fearless Tour.

 

I have often told my clients and students that talent is simply the ability to connect with your inner Self honestly and to express that Self authentically in some creative form.  Your form for expression can be speaking, singing, acting, painting, sculpting, dancing, music or writing – any form of self-expression.  If your expression reflects your authentic Self, it will be brilliant.

 

Taylor Swift is showing the world what authentic talent is and the world is paying attention.  Her transparency is surely a key to her great talent and her success.  And you can do it too! As Marianne Williamson once wrote, “It’s not just in some of us.  It’s in everyone.” When you are speaking or expressing, give the world your real stuff! Let your audiences in on your inner reality.  When you do, you will shine!

 

If you are a speaker or performer who wants some support to shine authentically, please visit www.self-expression.com.

 

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Healing the Mind & Body Split of Stage Fright and Fear of Speaking

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“The split between the mind and body is one of the most painful things we face.”

                        –  Carla Bazemore – Founder, Yoga Lotus

 

Carla, my yoga teacher, reminded me that the split between the mind and body causes us humans much difficulty.  It is this same kind of mind/body split that makes public speaking, presenting and performing so painful for some of us.

 

People with stage fright don’t know how to stay present and whole when they become the center of attention.  They have simply not learned how to relax into the excitement that is stirred in their bodies when they speak or perform in front of others.  Instead of allowing themselves to feel the sensations as a part of the whole experience of presenting, they tighten up their bodies to fight against the natural flow of excitement energy.  The result is the mind/body split known as “going into your head.”

 

“Going into the head” is an apt description of how one unconsciously adjusts in order to avoid the intensity of sensations and emotions generated when all eyes are on you.  Rather than experience the feelings, you draw most of your attention up into your head.  When your head is flooded with energy, you can’t think clearly.  Your mind freezes and you don’t have access to all that you know.

 

Once you understand the nature of this split, you can actively work to heal it so that you can stay whole and present during the times you are presenting. The secret to healing the split is exactly what Carla Bazemore and other yoga practitioners know – reconnect the mind and body.  In yoga classes, people learn to keep their minds focused in their bodies during intense stretches and exercises.  Yoga teaches people to breathe into a physical pose that stresses the body so they stay calm even though the body is experiencing intensity.

 

The Zimmer Method for transforming stage fright and fear of speaking is kind of like yoga for speakers and performers.  It guides you to relax deeply into your body when you are stressed by being the center of attention.  It helps to mitigate the tendency to go into your head, teaching you to ground your awareness in your body so that you are comfortable in your skin in front of others.  Instead of avoiding the stage fright tension, you give yourself permission to feel the tension. You get out of your head and into your body. Amazingly, the tension of stage fright dissolves into a relaxed state of presence.  Your head clears, body softens and you have greater access to your ideas, insights, expertise, talents and gifts.

 

I always say that nothing is the end-all, be-all, but it really helps to learn to connect your mind and body when you are at the center of attention for speaking or performing.  I have written the entire method in a newly published book on overcoming stage fright and fear of public speaking called “It’s Your Time to Shine.”  Read about my book on my website or at Amazon.com. 

 

 

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SYNTHESIS THINKING FOR THINKING ON YOUR FEET

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Impromptu speaking or thinking on your feet is synthesis thinking not new thought thinking.  You do have to prepare to think on your feet; but then you have to let go and flow.  So it uses structure and flow at the same time.

 

In impromptu speaking or thinking on your feet, you are most often sharing your expertise in a spontaneous situation where you want to help a client or influence a prospective client. You don’t have time to plan all your words.  You must grab some thoughts and ideas and stories and let them flow through your mind and out of your mouth.

 

Thinking on your feet is thinking as you speak and speaking as you think.  This experience is hard to articulate and hard to teach because it happens at another level of consciousness than normal thought.  Normal thought is usually a mental process of thinking in words, one word at a time.  But thinking on your feet is not verbal but rather thinking in gestalt concepts.

 

Thinking on your feet is rarely pure creative thinking.  You are not usually making up totally new ideas, rather you are synthesizing and stringing together ideas, insights and stories that have been thought out at a prior time.

 

 I was hired a few years ago to facilitate a Leadership Houston class to make leadership declarations at the last meeting of their year-long program.  The Director of LH had met me and hired me, but he did not ask for the approval of the man (I will call him Bill) who had facilitated the whole year of sessions. 

 

So, he had to get the three of us together on a conference call to discuss my participation in the last session.  There was definitely a flavor of “audition” in our call.  There was an unspoken expectation that I would have to prove my value to Bill even though the stated purpose was to plan the last session.

 

At the beginning of the call, Bill asked me to talk about my work and what I did.  I had a choice to make FAST!  I could tense up and try to think of what to say or just dive in.

 

I took a deep breath, said, “OK” and opened my mouth not knowing what I was going to say.  About 5 minutes later I stopped talking.  I heard a silence on the phone line and then both said “WOW” at the same time.

 

I don’t know exactly what I said, but I know I was grounded and present in that moment. I had managed to synthesized the following concepts:

 

  1. An opening that was a “Helping people get what they want” line.
  2. What was different about my approach.
  3. What results are often achieved.
  4. A story to back it up.
  5. What I thought we could do to help the LH participants make their leadership declarations.

 

I followed the flow of thoughts as they occurred to me. And I was not focused on my performance.  The pieces of content I shared were things that were already in my verbiage.  I had said them many times before. Now I was just synthesizing them to help Bill and the LH Director understand what I could do to support their last program.

 

I love to make speaking easy for myself and for my clients. Learning to break things into chunks of content and to string them together produces talks that are compelling, persuasive and creative.  Check out Speaking from the Heart class descriptions.

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Waiting Impatiently for My Book to Print

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Just wanting to keep you posted about my book It’s Your Time to Shine: How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking, Develop Authentic Presence and Speak from Your Heart.

 I am sending the book back for the fourth time to reprint the cover!  Shish! I might be inclined to just let it go to final printing but the printing company keeps cutting my main figure’s feet off.  No one else except the designer Mark Gelotte and me might notice her feet are chopped off, but the symbology of that is not acceptable.  Since my work with speakers and performers is partly about getting the grounded in their bodies and secure in their feet, I can’t have the main figure on the book without her feet.

 It will be available soon.  Meanwhile, you can read the first chapter by downloading a pdf.  Thanks for your patience!

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Great Leadership Begins with Leveling with People

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I heard this on the radio today, “Great Leadership begins with the ability to level with people.” That’s another way of saying we must be transparent to be effective as leaders.

I just heard Obama criticized for going to Cairo to “apologize” for American behavior. It might just be that he was being transparent – leveling with the world about where we are together as citizens of the world. Sometimes the leader in any situation has to open his heart to the followers. Then the followers can begin to trust the leader as a fellow human being.

The Beatles once sang, “Give peace a chance.”  Maybe before we can do that, we must give transparency a turn. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Obama could lead the world into an Era of Transparency?

For transparency in speaking, I offer a workshop called Transform Stage Fright into Authentic Presence.”  Transparency requires openness in speaking.  You can learn to be wide open, connecting to the minds and hearts of listeners, and like Obama, you can experience the power of being able to level with listeners.

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Update on Sandra’s Book – It’s Your Time to Shine

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Update on Sandra Zimmer’s Book – It’s Your Time to Shine: How to Overcome Fear of Public Speaking, Develop Authentic Presence and Speak from your Heart

For those of you who have called or emailed to ask where is the book, it is about 3 weeeks away from being at amazon.com.  We are tweaking the cover just a little to make sure it prints well.  The cover is awesome!  Mark Gelotte did an amazing job of designing the cover and  want it to look as good as he intended.  So we have had to go through a third proof. 

 I am trying to be patient and not push the river!  Thanks to all who ahve ordered a pre-publication copy.  I will send those autographed copies as soon as I have them!  they are still available if you fill out the order form and send in a  check for $21.00.

 You can also download a copy of Chapter 1 and The Table of Contents right now!

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Mirroring the Good: A Way of Growing Others and Yourself

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Most people are used to hearing others say what is bad and wrong about them.  That is one of the causes of fear of public speaking. It shocks people to hear all the good that you sense and see in them.  We use “mirroring the good” as a part of  our speaking training to help people to relax at the center of attention, develop authentic presence and become comfortable speaking in front of groups.

 

When people are acknowledged for who they are, what they do well and for the positive qualities they possess, it sets them free to be who they are. Tension and anxiety literally drain out of people when we flood them with supportive feedback acknowledging what is good, strong and valuable about how they come across.

 

Mirroring the good is not just a nice thing to do for other people, it is a powerful tool for growing other people and even for growing yourself.  It involves feeding positive statements to others so that they begin to see themselves more positively. With enough mirroring the good, people eventually are able to give that positive feedback to themselves. Because the act of mirroring the good grows others, this makes it a valuable leadership skill. Once you learn how to mirror the good in others, you begin to exert a powerful influence on people where your words cause a transformation in those around you.

 

But what if you just want to grow yourself? Mirroring the good absolutely empowers you to be all that you want to be.  To give positive feedback to others, you must first identify qualities that you admire in others.  Many people will envy other’s good qualities instead of acknowledging them outright.  When you envy something in another, you push that quality away from you.  But when you acknowledge that quality in the other person, you draw that quality to you and begin to own it for yourself.  So you grow yourself through acknowledgement of others.

 

So how do you mirror the good for others?  Simply ask yourself what do you see, sense, perceive or know about someone that you think is good, strong and valuable?  Whatever your answer, say that to the person directly.  Don’t expect them to receive it easily.  More often than not, that person will have difficulty saying thank you.  They are more likely to be shocked at your positive feedback.  Don’t let that daunt you.  Just give your feedback as a gift, smile and walk away. The more you practice mirroring the good, the more good you will see in others and the more good you will own as a part of who you are.

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