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The Art of Being Your Own Best Friend

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5 Reasons People Fear Public Speaking

You probably already know that the fear of public speaking is top-ranked in our country. Even though I've been working with clients and students for many years, I never cease to be amazed at how attractive, smart, articulate, accomplished women can feel so uneasy about talking in front of a group.

It's easy to see why other people should be more confident, it's a lot harder to BE more confident yourself. But definitely worth the effort.

It's easy to see how silly other people's fears are. It's harder to face your own silly fears. Let's take a look at what is really behind the fear of public speaking.

1. Fear of embarrassing yourself.

The chances of doing this are pretty remote but even if you, laugh it off. Don't take yourself soooo seriously that this fear keeps you from living your wow life.

2. Fear of people being rude to you.

If you haven't noticed already, some people are rude. That's their problem, not yours. Shake it off.

3. Fear of people disliking you.

There's nothing more annoying that people who want everyone to like them. I know, I used to be there. You sell your soul for approval and ignore your own power. Is this where you really want to go?

4. Fear of making a mistake, or worse, failure.

Come on now, if you're not making mistakes, you're not really alive. The ONLY way to be creative and innovate is to make mistakes. You can't succeed without failing either; it's an integral part of the process of success. Celebrate your mistakes; laugh at your failures!

5. Fear of success.

You might actually make the sale/get the promotion....and live up to higher expectations. Yes, it's scary, and exhilarating, and dynamic. Try it, you might like it.

The only way around fear of public speaking is through it. Get someone to hold your hand, and you'll be fine.

Define Your Preferences in Detail

If you're like me, when you were younger, still enjoying that delicious age of "infinite wisdom," you may have scoffed at people who talked about "knowing who you really are." I mean, how stupid is that?


Turns out, Her Smartness, it's not stupid at all.


There was a reason Socrates said something like, "The beginning of wisdom is self knowledge."

It's easy to know yourself generally. Like your favorite color and television show. And you want to have lots of money and plenty of time to do stuff in it.


But, if that were what made people happy, you wouldn't have celebrity suicides, or Lindsay Lohan would not have spent so much time in rehab.


It's been something that's come up unexpectedly in my work with my coach. I hired a coach for one reason -- to build my business, and several months into our work she starts asking me to write lists of my preferences.


So, I do. I have lists and lists of lists. I know pretty clearly what kind of work I like to do, and am good at, what's really really really important to me (like having TONS of downtime) and how I like to spend my money. I want to travel, but not that often. I want a new car, but not a brand-new one. I have very specific trips (London in June) and cars (Honda CRV) in mind.


The weirdest thing is, I've become a more powerful person. I state my preferences more quickly and get more of them. If someone asks me anything, I no longer EVER say, "it doesn't matter to me where we eat lunch". Well, actually I have wimped out a couple of times, and lived to regret it. Mostly, I say, I prefer grilled fish for lunch.


Clarity makes you more confident. Confidence is money in your bank.

Exchange Your Normal Confidence for Wow

Usually becoming more confident is the top goal for my clients in their work with me. After all, if you're not confident, the rest of the public speaking and presentation techniques won't really work for you.

As I've written here and constantly remind my clients, "Confidence is worth more than money in the bank."

Here are 5 refresher suggestions for getting to wow. Even if you're normally confident, imagine what you might accomplish if you were even more so.

• Lighten up. Laugh. Just recently I read: We first need to laugh at our mistakes before we can learn from them. --Sonia Choquette.

• Remember that anything can happen. And no matter what, you can deal with it. Chances are, the outcome will be great...eventually. ;-)

• Chance favors the prepared mind. So do your homework.

• Take some time to focus on your desired outcomes. That brings you closer to them, and so you can relax a bit.

• Forgive yourself, as you forgive others. Nobody's perfect. Give yourself, and others, a break.

A Wow Tuesday to you!

Can You Be Nice AND Authentic?

When your coach asks you to think about becoming more authentic, it's not a warm and fuzzy feeling. You get this uneasy suspicion that you haven't been as honest as you'd like, even though you value complete transparency. It was for me, however, a gentle reminder about how easy it is to play the game of pleasing others, and failing to express yourself with complete transparency.

The downside to this pattern is that you can become fake. Yuck!

I recently read that it takes great courage to always express your preferences while being prepared to let go of some of them if needed. I think one really big key to living authentically is what my dad calls, "disagreeing without being disagreeable."

Or as Isaac Newton put it, "Tact is making a point without making an enemy."

Being kind and authentic is a challenge that truly makes life more interesting. Here are some guidelines that have helped me:

1. Always keep on the lookout for honest positives. You may not like the broccoli casserole, but you can rave about the brussel sprouts (that would certainly impress me!)

2. At times it will be in your best interest to say, go to a dinner when you'd rather stay home and watch a movie. Sometimes the dinner turns out to be much more fun than you thought, and usually it's good to share with people anyway. But, don't try to convince yourself that you don't really want to stay home, admit the truth to yourself, and go to the dinner. There will be times, however, that you must stay home. Only you can make that call.

3. One thing that has really helped me is realizing that I don't have to explain myself. For some reason, I used to always want to explain myself - even telling the Wal-mart cashier why I wanted one brand and not another, or why I wanted to pay with exact change. Who cares?

4. If you need to give some negative feedback, sandwich that comment between two honest positives.

5. Allow others to disagree with you. It's a free country, and no two people are ever going to see every single issue eye-to-eye.

Like so many personal growth issues, awareness is an excellent starting point. It has taken me a long time to see that in trying to please so many people in my life, I let myself get locked into a pattern that caused me to be unreliable, always changing, always seeking that elusive approval.

I'm not as nice as I used to be, but I feel more comfortable with myself. And that has made me a more confident person.

Confidence Comes in Many Colors

People are always asking me how they can present themselves more confidently. I'm told some version of, "I'm normally confident, but when I have to speak in front of a group, I totally freeze."

And I usually say something like, "I totally get that."

But, getting confident is not a technique, it is really a healing process of which greater confidence is a result.

You can be a confident extrovert, introvert, or like me, a confident ambivert. Confidence operates on a different plane of existence from that of being talkative, or the life of the party.

Think about why people fear public speaking. As someone who attended my leadership talk at Joyner Library pointed out, it's the fear of being judged that gets us.

Logically, you know that you can't please everyone all the time. And really, you don't even want to do that. Remembering that truth in your heart takes practice.

Confidence Is Money In Your Bank Account

Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right. --Henry Ford.

Fact: You don't have to be a flaming extrovert to be confident. You don't even have to be, or to have been, a good student.

Believe me, getting good grades does not correlate with confidence. It could even be true that people who graduate from college "Thank the Laudy" instead "Magna Cum Laude" are are more confident in themselves. When you get out of school, most people could NOT care less about your grades. And that's the way it should be.

I get a real kick out of working with certain clients who, like me, were excellent students. You probably know by now that getting good grades does not even correlate to being smart.

I enjoy so much seeing them blossom into authentically confident people by drawing on their inner resources they forgot they possessed.

Getting good grades is mostly a matter of pleasing the teacher. That's why girls tend to be better students in school, and why boys tend to do better in business. (Sorry if that offends anyone; that's the reality I see in the classroom and out.)

Remember when you were six and if someone asked you if you could draw, dance, sing, or tell stories, your answer would something like, "Duh....of course I can."

Getting your confidence back is something like remembering that feeling when you were six and your only career challenge was deciding what you wanted to do with yourself. That confidence is still in you, just gotta coax it to surface again.

Asset Management: Caring for Your Confidence

You probably have no idea how valuable is your confidence in yourself. Most of us don't. Strengthening your confidence is a major part of what I teach in Presentation Wow workshops.

Confidence means you take more calculated risks, like striking up a conversation with a stranger at Starbucks. Confidence naturally correlates positively to having more rich experiences. Self confidence is truly like having money in the bank. Ask your friendly Human Resources professional if you don't believe me.

FACT! Confident people ace job interviews and other interpersonal encounters. 

Here are a few thoughts on this asset I want to share with you.

1. Just like the stock market, confidence can be up one minute and down the next. Some people's confidence is more volatile than others'. The first step to having more confidence more of the time, is to realize that it's a source of strength for  you. Obviously you have more control over your confidence than you do over some of your other assets, like your 401K, to name one example.

2. Confidence in yourself is not arrogance or selfishness. Actually, arrogance is a major sign of a lack of confidence, same with selfishness. 

3. Here is what authentic confidence clearly looks like:

- Not dependent on getting approval from others.

- Working in a relaxed manner.

- Able to make decisions quickly.

- Not paralyzed by fear.

- Realize that life has its ups and downs, and neither lasts forever.

The value of your own confidence is amazing. Don't forget to take care of it.

Choose Confidence Over Fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are we not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn't serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

Taken from A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson.

This was quoted by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech.