Happy Valentines Day!
So you want to become a confident public speaker because it will:
*Help you make a greater impact in the world
*Build your business as you attract more ideal clients
*Is a business superpower because most people fear it so when you speak, you’re instantly positioned as an Expert in your Industry…
So where do you start?
If you’re deathly afraid of public speaking…or you speak regularly and want to refine your speaking skills, what I’m going to share is an often overlooked secret to become a confident public speaker.
When people call me to help them become a confident speaker, they typically want to improve how to write their message, body posture techniques, and projecting their voices to make a better impact and be more engaging.
These are great skills to practice, but there’s a piece that’s more important to fast-track your speaking confidence and that is love.
You may be thinking “what the hell does love have to do with becoming a confident public speaker?”
Great question…the answer is everything.
After 8 years of coaching people that ranged from deathly afraid to speak in public and now regularly do talks. And being an official TEDx speaker coach and helping speakers give the most important talk of their live to thousands of people and getting millions of video views.
I’ve been in the trenches with the speakers and consistently see that love is the superpower and often the missing link for people to become a confident public speaker.
What happens when you’re low on love…
*Your inner critic will keep you from seizing speaking opportunities because you’re too critical of yourself, so you avoid speaking…but then beat yourself up about the missed opportunity.
*You say “yes” and do a talk. But how critical of yourself are you after the talk? Do you focus on a big list of mistakes you made and things you should have done differently? This erodes your speaking confidence
*As you’re giving a talk, you scan the audience looking for: Who doesn’t like me. Who looks bored. Then focus on them and try your best to win them over to “like you.”
*When speaking to an audience, having all their eyes on you feels overwhelming. It’s uncomfortable because you’re worried about how they’re judging you. You’re afraid to make a mistake because it could hurt your reputation so you’re speaking to “play it safe, instead of speaking your truth.”
*And aside from speaking on stages…what about videos? This can be very uncomfortable because it shows every “flaw” you have and brings up the inner critic in a massive way as you criticize yourself for how you look and sound on video.
So before we get into how to increase the love to fast-track your public speaking confidence, there’s two big mindset shifts you must embrace:
- Where you are today is where you’re meant to be
You can wish you were further ahead in terms of speaking confidence or beating yourself up because you should have seized more speaking opportunities in the past.
But this doesn’t help, it only keeps you stuck…now there can be a lot of comfort in staying stuck, but we’ll address that in a future article.
Embrace that where you you are today is where you’re supposed to be. This is a journey and anything but full acceptance will lead to frustration and wasted energy that can be focused on improving your skills today
2. This is a battle of You vs Yourself
Often I hear client stories about parents that told their children that they were “too loud” and needed to be quiet, Teachers that made them speak in front of class when they were young and how they felt embarrassed, or negative comments from the audience when they gave a talk.
Yes these events happened and they had an impact on a person developing fears about speaking in public…but when the focus is on the other people that brought on the fears you remain stuck.
Instead, we must focus on you and how you can empower yourself to heal and to overcome these fears, that’s when progress can happen.
So we’re accepting that we’re in the right place and focused that this is a journey of you vs you, now we’re ready to boost our love to fast-track our public speaking confidence.
How To Build Your Love To Build Your Public Speaking Confidence
In order to achieve your public speaking confidence goals…you have to be kind to yourself.
Because as you go on that journey to look within, that’s going to be the biggest piece to help you move forward.
- The Two Golden Questions To Build Self-Love
Every time you do a talk or record a video. There’s two questions I have clients ask themselves that boosts their self-love:
“What did I do well? “
“What can I refine?“
It’s that simple.
Two questions:
- What did I do well?
- What can I refine moving forward?
When you do that, it breaks the instinct to beat yourself up as instead of a list of everything you did wrong. You’re focused on the wins and reframing your “mistakes” into opportunities to improve next time.
2. Mindset Shift: This is a marathon, not a Sprint
I mentioned before that you’re embracing that you are where you’re supposed to be, but there’s another common trap that slows down speaking confidence progress…the Comparison Trap.
Have you ever watched a speaker and immediately thought “They’re a lot better than me” and this kind of took away some of your excitement to speak in public?
I’ve had many clients speaking at conferences and their confidence takes a major hit as before their talk, they see a speaker hit the stage and do a great job and immediately, they get in their head thinking:
*I’m not as good as them, they’re way better than me…I’m going to bore the audience. And then a bunch of fear drowns out their confidence.
Avoid this common mistake:
Comparing your beginning to other people’s middles.
You see a speaker and are wowed…and intimidated by their abilities and this brings up a lot of fear and insecurities for you.
Fully self-love and acceptance means embracing where you are in your journey.
Perhaps that speaker has been speaking for many more years than you.
Perhaps they’ve done a lot more training than you.
Perhaps that speaker grew up in a household where speaking in public was encouraged instead of dreaded?
3. Love Your Audience
When a person is afraid of the audience, what’s usually behind it:
*Fear of being judged
*Fear of not being liked by EVERYONE in the audience
*Fear of not providing enough value to the audience
Ok, so here’s 3 steps to overcome this and step into your power:
- Yes, some people in the audience will judge you. They will judge you as you walk on stage…before you even say a word. So the faster you embrace this and that any judgement isn’t a personal attack because they don’t know you. They’re basing their judgement off of a snapshot they see, not your whole character so detach from their judgement.
- It’s impossible to be liked by the entire audience and you don’t want to be. When you’re speaking in public, being confident requires taking a stand, sharing your beliefs and with that, some people will agree with your beliefs, others will not. The beauty in this is when you allow yourself to speak your truth, you attract your ideal clients as they resonate with you
- When we fear an audience, we cannot show up fully for them. Instead show up from a place of love. Take the mindset that you’re here to add value to them and help them achieve their goals. When you do this, it takes the pressure off of you and places the focus where it should be…on you helping them achieve their goals.
With that, I wish you the best of luck with your inner journey.
If you have any questions, comment below. I’d love to answer them.
Lucas Mattiello
P.S. If you’ve decided you want to live to your true potential and you’d like the fast path to get there, here are 3 ways I can help you speak with confidence:
- Grab a free copy of my ‘6 Steps To Speak With Confidence’ guide. It’s the 6-step process I use to take clients from anxious on stage to rock-solid confidence — Click Here
2. Join my 3-day ‘Speak With Confidence Training and become a confident public speaker. It’s the fastest way to become a confident communicator… If you’d like to work with me and a small group of highly motivated leaders like yourself — Click Here