Be The Winning Speaker Part4: Ice the cake

Dear loving people,

 

Let us get back to our strategies of becoming a winning speaker and ice the cake with two more strategies:

 

Always interact with your audience: An easy technique to calm your nerves during a presentation is to engage the audience. Encourage them to participate. A simple way to do this is to ask your audience an interesting and topical question. You will be amazed at the responses you will receive.

If your audience has been sitting for a long time, you can interact with them by asking them to stand up, give their neighbor a friendly hand gesture, or by patting themselves on the back. This unexpected physical movement helps your audience stay more engaged with you for the rest of your presentation.

Should your nerves begin to raise, this gives you a quick break to compose yourself again before you continue on with your presentation. The key is to keep breathing…you will overcome your fears.

Always remember to breathe and enjoy: It’s common for anxiety to set in as you approach the platform to give your speech or even during your presentation. If this happens, then remember to take a deep breath and relax. You will get through it.

You can also relax yourself by simply focusing on a friendly face in the audience. For example, make eye contact with a listener who is smiling or nodding his head with what you are saying or has just laughed at one of your opening sentences or jokes. Once you find that friendly face in the audience immediately focus on that person and speak to him as if that person is your friend. This will calm you.

Public speaking can definitely be challenging at times but in the business world, it is really an inescapable part of the every day. As a business owner, you are by default the spokesperson for your company. So, embrace it and put your fears aside. Enjoy the experience!

 

Recapitulating and as a friendly reminder, when it comes to public speaking, remember to do the following:

1. Throw perfection out the door…don’t beat yourself up if you make a mistake or two during your presentation.
2. Be prepared and use an outline to present your ideas.
3. Add humor and humility to your presentation to connect with your audience.
4. Interact with your audience by asking questions.
5. Breathe and enjoy the experience.

Self-Image Part3

People with negative self-image some of the times unfairly personalize the actions around them. They may think that everything someone says or does in some way is a reflection of them. For example: If during a group conversation one individual walks away to go to the bathroom, the person with a negative self-image may think "they left because I was acting stupid again." There is also the feeling that "everyone hates me," or only hangs around because they feel sorry for them, or are just being polite. Compliments are seen as polite gestures, but not truly compliments, and are often met with an invalidating remark about themselves. For example: someone compliments on a negative person’s achievement and they reply, "no really, I'm so stupid. You should have seen how badly I messed up during my last activity..."

Self-blame can be another aspect, a people with a negative self-image may blame themself for everything bad that has ever happened to them, believing that in some way they deserved it; for example, "my parents hated me because I was such an irresponsible child." On the contrary, they may also blame others for everything and take no responsibility for their own lives. For example: "if you'd been there for me, I wouldn't have been this bad."

Negativity prevents you from being optimistic about any aspect of a situation or your life. Everything seems negative in one way or another, or you only pick the negative to focus on. In comparison to others, someone else who achieves something is considered great, but the same achievement for yourself would be met with negativity and how it could have been done better. Though the world is not seen as perfect and others are not expected to act as such, the person with a negative self-image may have high expectations of perfection for themselves.

Ultimately, one of the biggest perception distortions of the negative person is that "life will be better and I will be happy when I lose the weight, decolorize my body or buy the new car." There is a false sense of control that is achieved during self-starvation, a feeling of comfort when overdoing, or a temporary release of emotions and guilt during exclusion... In reality none of the above has been achieved except within the victim's perception. There is no light at the end of the tunnel of a person with a negative self-image, even though those who suffer may think there is. In reality, the only true light comes from recovery, from adopting a POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE.

It stands out clearly that with a negative self-image, underperformance characterizes your whole being. The only remedy is to realign your processes, and develop a POSITIVE SELF-IMAGE.

For the HOW? That is why Living Lectures is at your service.

- End -

Is Your Water Running Deep or Shallow?

Dear Loving People,

Really, I should ask you the question; is your water running deep or shallow? While I grew up through primary school, I quickly memorized the adage “slow waters run very deep.” The few of us, who shared the pleasure of guessing what that meant, were often quick to make that statement to a mate whom we assumed to be discreet and who suddenly committed an offence. We were often self-confident in making that statement especially with the aura of an intellectual.

Have you asked yourself what that statement could actually mean after all? I would say it's based on the simple notion that the deepest rivers and streams do have the calmest surfaces. When you look at them on the surface, they look like nothing at all is happening, but behold! Below, the water is flowing at a high velocity.

Now let’s come back to our lives, if you observe well, you will notice that most people who have a calm exterior enjoy rich and interesting personalities. Get close to some of them; you will notice they have fascinating ideas. What then do we make of this? The lesson here is that, those who are quiet, seem to be slow or appear withdrawn, may be worth paying more attention to than the talkative and vibrant types like me. Don’t get me wrong here; I am not insinuating that introversion is a better personality type than extroversion.

In the Christian Bible, Ecclesiastes 1:7 says “All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again” (ESV)

Streams and rivers flow into the seas year-in, year-out yet they make more noise than the seas that absorb them. Think about what a river sounds like especially at the upper course. It is shallow, so noisy, bubbling, transporting huge rocks that hit against one another, causing massive erosion and creating tons of silt. What happens as it approaches the mighty sea? It gets deeper and calmer. The huge rocks are broken down to pebbles and sand, the silt is beginning to settle down and only the sludge remains in suspension.

When the river meets the giant sea, it completely calms down; dropping off the entire load it’s been transporting from source and gets lost in the mighty waters of the sea. The sea with all its huge volumes of water is relatively calm, extremely deep and ready to accommodate the river.

Quiet people are often very thoughtful; they process information before making statements. Outgoing people on the other hand like me, process information while they talk. You must know where you fall and start making the best of it. That is a stepping stone to success.

While You Sit On The Elephant

Dear loving people,

A friend of mine – Victoire shared an African proverb that was read on the BBC last Tuesday 4^th September 2012. It read thus “When you are on top of an elephant, do not pretend there is no dew on the grass”. You can’t imagine how much this thought provoking proverb got me reflecting, it’s even been used during the ongoing 2012 Obama campaign.

Can you imagine for a second how often we forget the people who toiled with us to get us where we are today? Their empathy and dedication to us while we needed them is soon forgotten. We ignore at times even hate them once we attain what some have termed ‘glory’. N.D. Wilson writes “Self-loathing and self-worship can easily be the same thing. You hate the small sack of fluids and resentments that you are, and you would go to any length, and betray anything and anyone, to preserve it.”

You must remember at all times that excellent builders equally master how to scatter. N.D. Wilson continues to say that “Your life is your own, your glory is your glory, but you will lose it if you keep it for yourself. Grasp it for the sake of others...”

When you are on top of an elephant, keep it at the center of your mind how you got there, there will come a time when the elephant will stop walking and you will need to climb down. The very people who got you up there will be the ones to hold your hand as you climb down. If you are the type that used your past ‘glory’ to abuse, subdue and shunt the same people who toiled so hard to get you up there in the first place, rest assured the fall from grace to grass will be catastrophic.

You can only pretend there is no dew on the grass once sitting on an elephant because you forget so soon the life you led before climbing up there, you now think you sail above the issues that once bogged you and the people you now neglect.

N.D. Wilson advice “Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.”

You must remain a man of the people even when you cruise in glory on the elephant. Your capacity to remain a man of the people at such times is proportionate to your determination to shunt evil and N.D. Wilson again, has this to say “Sometimes standing against evil is more important than defeating it. The greatest heroes stand because it is right to do so, not because they believe they will walk away with their lives. Such selfless courage is a victory in itself”

For always, remember that there is a price tag on every option in life. Victory at the end will be on the side of those who choose the positive options of life.

Remain blessed