I have been invited to speak at a seminar produced by Skills 4 Living, a non-profit org that supports low-income families to prepare to raise their income and improve their situation in life. They asked me to speak to the fear of change. Frankly I was not sure I could speak on this topic, not sure I had a story to tell that would matter to the participants. But I believe in the program and decided to see if I could write a story and a process that would help people face the fear of change when they attempt to grow in their lives. I am so glad I said yes!
As I wrote the story, I was able to look back at my life and see the numerous times that I took risks to grow and how well I had been supported by spirit to change and grow. Not only that, I also discovered 4 steps that I have always used to face the fear of change and to help me go through the time of tension and terror that always accompanies a change in life. The 4 steps are easily remembered by using the word FEAR.
- Feel the emotion of fear, tension and anxiety. Don’t avoid, just be still and feel it fully.
- Express it out of your body. Scream, cry, dance, act, paint or write it out of you. Keep expressing until you get still and peaceful.
- Accept it. Accept that you are changing and that you are taking a risk and that you can’t control the outcome. And ask for help, pray and meditate.
- Remember the vision of what you saw was possible you had when you decided to change, recall the impulse that excited you and caused you to take a chance.
Everyone has a unique message to deliver that is exciting and compelling. 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.
Your unique message often comes from emotional wounds suffered in childhood. I believe each human being suffers a wound early in life. We were each hurt in some way that has deeply affected our lives and created an obstacle to overcome. Life, then, is a process of learning to heal that wound. The wound provides the experience, and the process of healing provides the wisdom for you to contribute to the lives of others. So the wound becomes a spiritual gift. I call it the “sacred wound,” and the best healers – perhaps the only true healers – are the wounded healers.
I once saw Sophia Loren discuss her sacred wound while being interviewed by Barbara Walters. Barbara asked Sophia what the secret of her stardom was, and Sophia shared that she and her mother had been abandoned by her father. As a young child, she struggled with the pain of his abandonment, which was always with her. As an adult actress, she became aware that her ever-present pain had become an emotional treasure that she used to bring authenticity to her performances. She was able to tap into the pain in her heart in every role she played, and she firmly believed it was the source of her talent and her stardom.
It is empowering to identify your own universal message that you want to deliver. It will energize your presentations with passion for what you are saying. A contributing factor to stage fright is the fact that people 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. When you bring your deeply held values into your talks, you are automatically connected 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 gifts that you forget to be afraid.
For more ideas on how to speak from passion, please visit teh articles on my website at http://www.self-expression.com/articles.shtml.
The thrust of my entire life has been about working through insecurity to develop self-confidence. The main thing I have learned is that authenticity fosters confidence. As an actor, I trembled at auditions. As long as I fought my tremors and made myself wrong for feeling afraid, I tensed to protect myself from showing my fear. In one key audition, I sang for “Jacques Brel is Alive and Living in Paris”, I decided to let myself shake. I couldn’t stop it, so I let it happen and I sang with every ounce of passion I had. I got cast! What a lesson! Authentically shaking and allowing myself to be was all it took to win the audition. That one audition developed so much self-confidence in myself, even though I was terrified. People who are self-confident are not without insecurities. They simply allow themselves to work through them, to feel the feeling of the fear or anxiety. I recently found a blog post by a Director who echoed this in saying” It’s okay to be insecure! It’s okay to be afraid. It’s not okay to let them take over your life.”
Right after the final night of American Idol, I posted this comment. It did not seem to show up on my blog, so I am reposting it. I was so taken with the quality of talent this year, but when a real professional singer performed the last night, the difference was palpable. Forgive me if you received this already!
The final night of American Idol was such a study in contrast of Idol finalists and seasoned performers. As the competition got down to the last two finalists, David and David, they each had developed a sense of presence in their performances that had matured through the competition. And yet, when George Michael walked onto the stage, we saw and felt real power of presence. He possessed the deep-in-his-body presence that makes a star. He sang with total control of his music, total connection to the meaning and the ability to radiate soul energy out into the audience so that it embraced us with his love. Simon Cowell stood to applaud. Enough said!
Freeing your body to move is essential to excellent presentation. Athletes, actors and dancers always warm up the body before performing because they know that it is the instrument through which they express and communicate. If your body is tense, your thoughts and emotions will not flow easily. Conversely, if your body is relaxed and in a flow state, words, thoughts and feelings can flow freely out of your heart and mind. You can connect with the passion of your spirit and express it fluidly. You do not have to be a dancer or athlete to free your body for self-expression. You merely have to loosen up the muscles and joints, increasing the flow of oxygen through your bloodstream. Below are two simple and quick exercises that have proven to be very effective in freeing your body for expressive movement. You can do each in only two or three minutes, and they will greatly enhance your energy level as well.
Muscle Shaking – Shake one arm for 30 seconds, then stop and feel the flow in that arm. Then shake the other arm and each leg, one at a time. You will be amazed at teh free flow of energy that muscle shaking loosens up!
Head to Toe Dance - Move your neck around any way that feels good for a few seconds. Then move your shoulders. Then your elbows. Continue to isolate movement in each joint area of your body. Move your spine, then hips, then knees, then ankles and feet.
Notice how much looser your whole body feels after these two exercises. When your body is loose, you feel much more free to express yourself, rpresent, communicate or perform.
When you add the word “with”, a bond is created. For instance “she’s with me”, “be with child”, “speak with a group.”
So much of stage fright and fear of public speaking is about feeling separated or being judged by others. People with stage fright and fear of public speaking are experiencing a separation from the group involved. Their thoughts are focused on the disconnection from the group and the expectation that the group will somehow not be with them as they speak, share their ideas, present or perform.
A simple shift in thinking about “being with” the audience can make a huge difference in your level of comfort. Learning how to be with the audience transforms the experience of being the center of attention from a sense of feeling isolated to a sense of we are here together.
Think about what it takes to be with others. What do you have to do to create a sense of being with? It’s attention on three levels: 1) a mental intention to connect, 2) a feeling of openness towards and 3) an action of reaching out and speaking truth. Attend to all that with your audience and you be with them in a way that builds connection, chemistry, magnetic attraction and falling in love with listeners. I know it’s a lot, but it is what you have to do to be at ease with others in a group.
Presence is the antidote to stage fright and fear of public speaking. Cultivating a sense of presence and being present in the moment, will support highly sensitive people who are feeing stressed about presenting and performing in front of groups.
The main key to presence is getting the thinking mind out of the head and into the body. You have to focus your attention below the neck into the whole body and become aware of sensations inside your skin. This effort will reverse the tendencies to stay in your head, run negative thoughts and avoid the important humanizing aspect of feelings and emotions.
Here are three exercises to help develop presence:
- Breathe deeply into your body. Open your mouth and breathe air down your spine all the way to your pelvis. Mentally follow the breath stream as you inhale and exhale.
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Focus your attention into each separate part of your body, from your neck down to your feet. Simply pay attention to being inside each part of your body. This will bring a sense of energy into the whole body.
- Shake the muscles of your arms and legs. Shake one extremity at a time. Shake hard for as along as 30 seconds. When you stop shaking, you will feel a great sense of blood and energy flowing through your body.
Focus your attention on what you are feeling now, in this moment. After doing the exercises above, you will most likely notice that you feel more peaceful and still inside. Your mind will seem quieter and emotions will not be so stirred up. You will be able to think more clearly and think on your feet more easily.
John Tesh just posted a blog called Taming Fear on which he shared that one of his biggest fears was stage fright. He was wonderfully honest about his fear and shared his experience of getting help from a therapist named Dr Hart. What pleased me so much was that Dr. Hart’s approach to healing stage fright was strikingly similar to mine. It is wonderful for an accomplished performer to share his personal fears. It gives others the courage to reach through their own fears and to reach for their dreams. And it was generous of John to share Dr. Hart with the world. I want to acknowledge and support the process that Dr. Hart guided John through that helped him transform some stage fright. For 20 years, I have been guiding people through stage fright and fear of public speaking. My work came from my own terror about being the center of attention. Out of my terror, I created a process called the Zimmer Method that sounds similar to Dr. Hart’s ideas. The steps are first learn to feel the fear and tension, then describe it or express it outloud to a supportive group and finally allow yourself to relax into the tension and fear. When you do this process in a supportive group, the tension dissolves out of the body. Even more amazing, the tension of being the center of attention transforms into presence and passion! My discovery has been that people who have the most stage fright have the potential to be among the most compelling presenters and performers because they have the feelings. Their feelings are up to the surface where they can be used to create authentic emotional connection with listeners. I will bet that when John Tesh transformed his stage fright, he gained access to more passion than he had ever experienced before. Thanks to John for his open and honest sharing about some of his healing process. This is what will transform the world - authenticity!
When it comes to speaking, presenting or performing, each of us must decide how we are going to present ourselves to the world. We might each ask ourselves, “Will I create an image I think my audience will approve or will I risk presenting myself as I authentically am?” This question determines whether we will seek to be perfect or to be genuine. When you ask and answer this question, you have a chance to build a style of speaking based on your natural strengths. Here are seven tips to help you build a style based on being who you are rather than who you think you should be.
- Include your natural qualities. Make a list of qualities that describe your strengths, for instance - sweet, kind, funny, serious, intense, direct, knowledgeable. Bring those qualities into your talk or performance. There is a tendency for speakers to think they have to act a certain way. Resist the temptation to be any way you think you should and just go with being the person your close friends know you to be.
- Be Unique. Everyone has unique and quirky behaviors. Allow the quirky aspects of your personality to be a part of your speaking or performing style. Those personality quirks will be the marks of authenticity that your audience perceives with the eyes and ears of their hearts.
- Let your style be based on your natural rhythms. Introverts and extraverts have different rhythms for expression. Introverts are deep and inwardly focused, so their thoughts and words come from the depths of their being. If you are an introvert, let your self speak slowly and deliberately and thoughtfully. Don’t try to manufacture enthusiasm that is false for you. Extraverts are dynamic and outwardly focused. If you are extraverted, be large and dramatic. Don’t try to squash your natural energies or be too controlled.
- Say it like you would say it in real life. Speak, present or perform just like you are talking to friends in your living room. Ask yourself, “How would I really say this?” Then say it that way as if you were talking to a close friend.
- Give up trying to be perfect. Let your style be imperfect. Don’t try to speak like you write. Instead of trying to speak perfectly, focus on speaking the truth. When you tell the truth, you don’t speak in literary phrases. You let it come from your heart as you feel it.
- Realize that being perfect does not equate to being effective. Being effective does not have to do with your performance. It has to do with what happens to the listeners as a result of who you are being with them.
- Make space for your fear. Give yourself permission to feel your fear, anxiety or tension when you are presenting and performing. The fear is energy; it is power and passion. When you create space inside yourself to feel the fear, it converts into passion that causes your words to vibrate with electricity.
