A client was telling me about a communication training they’d attended at work, all about increasing confidence to have more impact, when speaking in front of others.
You see, while it might not look like it, we all feel nervous from time to time. It’s a universal experience.
And public speaking’s a sure-fire way to get the old SEC (Speaker Ego Construct 📦) fired up and churning out all sorts of thoughts and feelings, usually along the lines of:
But weirdly, this seems to affect some people more than others, so that’s what the training was about: what to do about those feelings. How to be a more effective communicator.
And there were two main techniques my client was recommended.
See it differently 👀
First up was REFRAMING (i.e. actively re-interpreting that anxious feeling as excitement), which I suppose is no bad thing… if what you’re about to do is vaguely exciting.
I clocked this one for myself years ago, when I used to get very nervous in advance of doing the thing that made me feel most alive: speaking at conferences.
Seeing that I was actually excited about the prospect of stepping out on stage and sharing my insights with an audience allowed me to let go of the anxious thinking.
And it’s pretty obvious when my daughter is feeling anxious in advance of doing the thing she loves most, each week: cycling practice. Just dropping in the idea that actually, it might be because she’s excited about what’s coming up… that helps to take the edge off it.
But it doesn’t make sense to the mind when you’ve got to present this quarter’s sales figures, or point out a flaw in your department’s process.
In that case, reframing is just going to create a lot more thinking!
Pretend 🤦🏼♀️
Then they got to AFFIRMATIONS. Positive self-talk. Oh dear, somebody shoot me.
Here, we’re encouraged to somehow replace the ‘negative’ thoughts (e.g. “I’m not good enough”, “This is going to be a total car crash”, “Can everyone else in the room also hear my heart beating really fast?!”) with more ‘positive’ thoughts, e.g. “I am a strong and confident presenter, with much to offer!”
🤮
As my client pointed out, with a wry smile,
“There’s no way the positive thoughts are winning that battle!!” 😂
The problem with techniques 🔊
Most of the time, these techniques we’re encouraged to use actually have the opposite effect to the desired one, because they create more thinking, when, if we’re to be connected to our innate sense of confidence and connection, what we need is less thinking.
Picture it this way: if your Thought System 📦 is the home of all thinking—both positive and negative—and you’re trying to turn up the volume of the positive stuff (e.g. with reframing or affirmations), then you are just turning up the master volume on the whole system – you'll get more negative stuff too.
You can’t tune one out, selectively - it’s all thinking!
The answer isn’t to try and manipulate or change thought. (Please stop trying to do that, you’re going to break yourself. Besides, ‘trying is lying’, remember? 😉)
No, the answer is to deepen your understanding of the nature of thought, which is what we do here at the Daily Reminders, and how I help all my clients.
Here’s what happens (in the words of one of them):
“I delivered a presentation to over 40 people and did this easily and confidently whereas before I would have been anxious/nervous/worried about it for days before. I came away from that meeting thinking, geez it doesn't get much bigger, the chief executive, the director of children's services, and I'm there for 15 minutes talking to them about what I can do to help! I'm completely calm, not shook up by anything.”
There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever why you shouldn’t experience that change too, because it’s got nothing to do with you, and everything to do with how we all work in the same way.
Getting a real feel for the principles behind how we experience life, and who we really are is what makes all the difference, and helps you to uncover your natural confidence, that lies within.
When you know you're ready for that change, just get in touch.
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft