Letting Yourself Shine in Public Speaking

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Lots of people have gifts and talents that are excellent but they don’t shine.    They are so full of self-judgment and self-criticism that they can’t experience their brilliance. They don’t shine because they don’t accept their gifts. Instead they place unrealistic expectations of perfection upon themselves.

For instance, a technical professional shares her ideas with co-workers or presents her valuable ideas to clients.  Instead of being proud to have shared unique insights, she picks apart every detail of how she delivered her message.  Every perceived imperfection causes her to beat herself up mentally. The result is she can’t experience how well she just spoke or how valuable her contribution was to the company or client.  She can’t shine. This is so common as to be epidemic.

What must happen to this professional in order to shine is that she must give up perfectionism and commit to service, allowing herself to make a contribution and make a difference.  Her focus must shift from her performance to simply giving her ideas freely.  She has to learn that her effectiveness is in what happens to her listeners rather than the appearance of perfection in her presentation.

I learned this lesson through my education in acting.  The hardest thing for me to learn in acting was to let go of control and allow the emotions to flow freely. As in presenting, acting is a performance skill that requires authenticity to really shine.  In acting, just because you say the lines perfectly does not mean you have given a great performance.  The actor needs to know the lines but allow the meaning of the lines to come as a result of the momentary emotional response to what is happening on stage during each performance. For acting to be great, the actor has to let go of emotional control and allow the feelings to flow through the words.  Each performance will be different if the actor is allowing for authentic flow of emotion.

Just like the actor, our employee has to give up control of her talk and allow herself to be real at the head of the room.  When she does so, sharing her ideas and expertise freely, allowing herself to find the words in that moment that communicate the ideas she wants her listeners to understand, she will shine.

What I have seen thousands of times since I have been teaching public speaking is that most people have the ability to shine at speaking once they let go of self-criticism. What we do at The Self-Expression Center is to help people make that transition from self-judgment to self-acceptance so they are free to share themselves and make a difference in the world.  We help people experience their own ability to communicate effectively, not perfectly…so they can shine.

For more information about learning to shine, visit www.self-expression.com.  See our programs in Speaking from the Heart and Beginning Acting.  

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How to Prevent Stage Fright

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David Portney at Best Public Speaking Training  has written an article on how to Prevent Stage Fright.  He has a great idea to meet and greet audience members just before your talk.  I have advocated this for many years. I hope I have David’s permission to mention his article and to add to his helpful ideas.

David’s advice about meeting people before your talk allows a speaker to create a genuine connection with listeners.  When we feel connected we feel safe to share our ideas.

There is a specific kind of eye contact that makes it feel even safer to connect.  I call it a soft-eye contact.  By consciously making connection through the use of soft-eyes, you shift from judging others to accepting and receiving them. To make soft-eye contact, relax your eyes, letting the eye muscles feel soft.  Then gently land your eyes on one person in your audience, imagining that you are drinking him in through your eyes. Don’t reach out to try to grab the person with your eye contact: that creates a distancing hard-eye contact. Instead, simply be with him and allow yourself to receive the flow of his attention. You will experience taking that person in, as though you are allowing his energy to come in to you.  It is an amazing feeling to receive another person!  The connection made seems deep, yet comfortable and oddly safe.

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What does the Caterpillar and Butterfly have to do with Public Speaking?

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Learning to speak in front of groups is similar to the caterpillar’s process.  The high intensity of energy that gets stirred inside your body when you become the center of attention requires a meltdown.  You have to melt into the feelings of physical tension and emotional overwhelm that get stirred up inside.  The lovely thing is that all that high intensity energy is passion that is trying to flow through you.  And like the caterpillar who must surrender to his meltdown before he can quicken into his higher form, you have to practice being in the soup for a short while until you stabilize your energy and can be present as a solid strong and present being in front of others.  If you are willing to go through the process with acceptance of your human feelings and emotions, then you can emerge as a speaker who really can make a difference.

Since the inception of my work with stage fright and fear of public speaking in 1987, I have felt that learning to speak was a transformational journey.  It is one that we must all make if we are to really be of service and give our gifts to the world.

Here is a  beautiful video that captures the journey from caterpillar to butterfly and draws a  breathtakingly beautiful parallel to the transformation taking place in humanity now.

METAPHORmosis VIDEO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzU3H7E0DO8

If you have not become a speaker, now is the time to learn to add your voice to the mix. If I can help you transform into the powerful and inspiring communicator that you know you can be, visit www.self-expression.com

Sandra Zimmer
281-293-7070
www.self-expression.com

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Perfect Speed Pacing for Presenting and Speaking to Groups

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In Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach teaches us that perfect speed is being there. That means the exact right pace for any activity is the pace that allows you to be fully present for the event.

In speaking to groups, presenting and public speaking, pace is a key to effective communication. If you talk too fast, you talk from your head and dump data onto listeners at a pace that they can’t process and understand.  If you talk too slowly, your audience grows impatient and bored.

I have found that I experience a perfect speed when I stay totally connected with my listeners.  As I speak, I track their response and pace myself so that I perceive my message lands onto my listeners.  If you tune into your listeners, you will be able to sense the pace that you need to speak.  The coolest thing about this perfect speed is that you never feel anxious because you don’t disconnect.  As long as you are connected with people when you speak with them, you feel calm and in the flow.

For more about speaking from flow and presence, visit www.self-expression.com

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Thomas Friedman says to Connect on a Gut Level

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Thursday evening, I was almost asleep with the TV on when I awoke startled to hear Thomas Friedman speaking to Charli Rose on PBS.  Thomas was speaking about the importance of talking to people from a gut level. He mentioned Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton as speakers who impart more than information, as speakers who talk from the gut level. 

He said that when you speak and connect with others on a gut level, you don’t have to say much detail.  But, he said, if you don’t connect on a gut level, you can’t give enough detail.

If you want to impact people for real, get your emotions into the talk.  A story that illustrates your point is worth a million words of concepts, statistics, data and facts. The story is what makes people feel your message.  The story is the closest thing people can have to experiencing what you mean. 

Look for the authentically persuasive story to back up your ideas.  The authentically persuasive story is the what happened that allows people to feel the truth of your message.  It is the story that makes people say, “Yes! I want that!” 

Story is what connects us all.  Tell the human story behind your facts and figures.

For more about Thomas Friedman.

For more about Self-Expression Center programs on speaking authentically.

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Share Your Universal Message to Help Reduce Fear of Speaking

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To empower your talks, identify a universal message that you own through experience.   A universal message will energize your presentations with passion for what you are saying.  A contributing factor to stage fright and fear of speaking is the fact that people often leave out their most deeply held beliefs and values from their presentations.  They tend to edit out the very material that would inspire their communications.  Underlying this tendency is a belief that their spiritual and emotional values are not appropriate or acceptable in many situations.  This is not the truth.  The truth is, that your emotional and spiritual Self should always be expressed in every talk, performance or communication that you deliver.  There is always a place for universal human values.  Without it, your presentations are too dry, cerebral and heartless.  Without emotional juice to support and empower your presentation, you will naturally feel more stage fright and anxiety about speaking.  When you bring your deeply held values into your talks, you automatically connect to your passion, which is the fuel of your star power.  The passion of your spirit buoys you with so much energy to share your ideas that you forget to be afraid.

Everyone has a unique message to deliver that is exciting and energizing.  Every life has a theme that is based on a major lesson that is being learned through the human experience.  Your unique message always comes from your struggles.  Struggles build soul. What you are wrestling with in your life becomes the gift you have to give others.  When you identify your message, you can use it in your presentations to inspire yourself and your listeners and to ease your stage fright. 

That’s what Dan White did when he was a new vice president for a hardware manufacturing and distribution company.  He believed strongly in hiring the best people and supporting them to do their best, and when his company had difficulties in distribution, he was called on to speak at a forum for their customers, the individual hardware store owners.  He could have focused on his company’s shipping issues and trying to play defense, but when he practiced that approach, he felt stiff and uncomfortable.  It was just not authentic for him. 

Instead, Dan chose to acknowledge the problems but focused primarily on his people.  He emphasized how his company was upgrading their hiring practices and how his great people were making the difference as the company changed its distribution system.  Dan was energized and inspired to speak to the owners this way.  He became animated, expressive and passionate, without a trace of stage fright.  By bringing his values about people into his presentation, Dan transformed the forum.  He set the tone that almost single-handedly rescued the company from potential disaster.  The owners went home inspired, feeling they were with a manufacturer that they could trust to supply them in the future. 

Dan did what I call “taking his audience to the mountaintop”, and you can go there as well in your next presentation.  Just look for the principles that are common to all human beings.   If you speak from your highest thoughts and speak to the highest good, you can take your listeners to the summit.  You will help them take action and be their very best – the very essence of what it means to inspire. Your courage will give them permission to speak and act from the same place, and they will be transformed.

Go here to understand what happens in stage fright. If you have a  presentation to give and are struggling with anxiety, an hour coaching session might help you as it did Dan White.  In person, by phone or Skype, we can work together to energize your talk so that you take your listeners to the mountaintop.

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Releasing Fear & Other Negative Emotions

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Ever feel stuck?  Like you can’t move forward in your life and don’t know why? Fear of feeling is the block that prevents one from going forward in life. 

A human being is meant to experience life, digest the experience, take the lesson and meaning from the experience and release the negative emotion from each situation. But, most people do not know how to process experience effectively.  To process a life experience, one has to go through the actual circumstances, take time to feel the feelings that have been triggered, evaluate the message of the feelings and release the negative emotion.

What many people will do is go through the circumstance and then run the circumstance over and over in their heads.  They stay focused on the circumstances of what happened, he said, she said, without allowing the emotions to be handled.  They tell the story of what happened over and over but nothing changes because the story is being relived mentally.

The human system is designed to express emotion in order to release the tension, sadness, fear and other negative emotions so that we can move past difficult experiences.  And really, it is so easy to express emotion in a creative and constructive way.  The steps are as follows:

1. When you are going through a difficult situation, set aside time to process the experience. Take some time to stop everything and get quiet. 
2. Stop thinking and start feeling. Turn your attention into your physical body. Notice what you are feeling about the situation.  Where are the feelings being experienced inside your physical body?
3. Once you have identified the feelings, take some time to feel them, without trying to make them go away.  Just be with your feelings. This prevents you from running from them.
4. Now, find a way to express those feelings. Crying is one of the best ways to express, but you can dance, sing, paint or act out the feelings until they have diminished.
5. When the feelings are out of your body, you can evaluate the situation and what you learned from it.  You will instantly be able see clearly what actions to take to handle the situation.

I write about this today because I just attended a Return to the Heart Workshop with Bill Ferguson. He has created a lovely system for healing the pain of difficult situations.  His method is focused on connecting directly with the emotions and releasing them rather than trying to mentalize or even understand the feelings.  I am so taken by Bill’s program that I want to encourage you to look at one of his websites. You can find him at BillFerguson.com. What you can learn from Bill is how to transform negative emotion into the experience of love. 

What got me involved in helping people transform stage fright and fear of public speaking was that, like Bill, I learned how to express and release negative emotion and it opened my heart to feeling love.  Then I learned I could approach my fear of public speaking with the same directness! And, oh my, I was so comfortable in front of people then! And I started to fall in love with my audiences when I spoke and taught classes!  Now speaking is such a delicious experience of being bathed in love that I want to share it with everyone who will listen. If you want to learn to fall in love with audiences, please visit my webpage on Speaking from the Heart.  If you want to learn to release negative emotion is general, check out Bill Ferguson.

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Emotional Safety Allows Creative Expression

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Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo, gave a talk about the relationship of play to creativity.  Among his main points he stressed that adults are embarrassed to share their most creative ideas with peers because they are sensitive to critical opinions from others.  As a result, most adults only offer their most conservative ideas.  In order for adults to express their most creative ideas, they must feel safe.  Adults who feel safe are more willing to take risks, be playful and offer up creative ideas. 

It seems to me that companies often say they want their people to be creative and to offer unique solutions to business problems.  But so often, the business environment is stiff and heady where everyone feels they have to be cautious in expressing who they are for fear of being perceived as inappropriate.  To facilitate creativity, companies must create an environment that feels playful and emotionally safe for employees.  If they don’t, they surely lose enormous creative potential as employees withhold their wildest ideas.

Likewise, if companies want their people to present to clients creatively, so as to engage and connect with clients and prospective clients, why not offer programs that make people feel safe to be themselves in front of others? It is time for standard, mechanical presentation training to be gone. Let’s learn that presentations don’t have to be perfect, they have to engage and excite listeners.  To achieve real engagement, presenters must feel safe to be authentic.

Watch the Video of Tim Brown’s talk.

To consider a different kind of presentation training that encourages employees to be genuine and speak from their hearts, check out Presentation, Persuasion & Leadership Presence.

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Getting in the Zone for Public Speaking and Communicating in Groups

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Almost everyone has heard the term being in the zone. Athletes of all kinds use this term along with the phrase Ideal Performance State, coined by Dr. James E. Loehr of the Human Performance Institute.  Within the fields of presentation skills, public speaking and artistic performance, the zone is called presence or being present in the moment.  I also often call it the flow state. This state of presence is hard to define. We don’t have language to adequately describe the experience of presence, but some of the qualities of presence are as follows: 

  • A sense of timelessness as if you have plenty of time to perceive, think and respond
  • A sense of ease and flow when everything is going just right
  • A sense of strength and confidence as if you are in control of yourself and your expression
  • A sense of focus with total concentration on the present time activity
  • A sense of size and expansion of awareness so you feel free to express fully

 Athletes and actors have long sought to create the state of presence consciously so they can be excellent at what they do.  Their training, focused attention and physicality combine to make it easier to get into this much-desired state.  Speakers, business communicators and leaders are not traditionally trained like athletes and actors to warm-up their physical bodies and focus attention in the now moment. But, they can be taught to do so in the same way actors learn to develop stage presence and athletes learn to be fully focused in their game. Because I was trained as an actor, I have brought that same kind of physical preparation and mental focus to my presentation skills training for professionals. Getting into a state of presence for speaking in groups requires three steps to activate energy awareness.

  1. Increase your psycho-physical energy through movement and breathing exercises so your body is energized and excited.
  2. Ground the energy in your body so you have the full-bodied sense of awareness that facilitates being in present time.
  3. Open to receive the flow of attention from your audience so you connect fully with audience members and listen to them with your eyes.

 These steps create the experience of presence.  They cause people to drop into a state of presence that allows them to be more available to audiences than in their normal state of awareness. This zone state is grounded in the reality of the moment, devoid of anxiety, and makes it easy for a presenter to be real with the audience.   Yesterday I completed two days of presentation skills training for young designers and programmers at FKP Architects in Houston. Guiding them through these steps freed them to be comfortable in their skin in front of the group, to express themselves authentically and to share their expertise freely as they stood at the center of attention of the group of peers.  The resulting qualities of confidence, creativity and persuasion were nothing short of miraculous!  The participants were brilliant, as are we all, when we feel free to be who we genuinely are in front of others.  For more about training in presence for presentation or leadership, visit Self-Expression Center Corporate Presentation Programs.    

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