Ep 188 Try Yoga to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking July 6, 2016

Headline, try yoga to overcome your fear of public speaking.

Speaking. The show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work, and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Folks, I apologize. This may seem like a little bit of a rant today, but I see this so often and it just strikes me as so absurd. I feel I must, as a public service, alert you to scams. If I were a medical doctor and I constantly saw new little magic green pills guaranteed to make you lose £50 while you can eat chocolate sundaes and not exercise, and I see it taking off in the market, I would feel obligated to tell you, don't eat these little magic green pills. You're not going to lose £50. Similarly, when I see ridiculous, absurd solutions to problems like this, I have to call it out. This is From a website, thehealthsite.com the headline, try yoga to overcome your fear of public speaking and become confident. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let me ask you, if you came to my website and you saw a headline that says, try public speaking exercises to be better at yoga poses, wouldn't you think I'm a bit of a scam artist? Wouldn't you think I'm a fraud? Wouldn't that strike you as completely absurd? I think it would. And yet we routinely see all kinds of people come up with all sorts of solutions, everything from tapping yourself on the face. There's a guy on the Internet who stresses that Monica Lewinsky actually endorsed this method before her recent TED talk. You hear people talk about visualization exercises, yoga exercises, all these things to improve public speaking. I have a radical, wild suggestion on how to improve public speaking. It's called actually doing public Speaking. More in a moment.

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So here's the problem, folks, before I hyperventilate here. Of course you can use yoga, meditation, all sorts of things to relax yourself, and all things being equal, it never hurts to be relaxed. But if you're fearful about public speaking, if you want to be confident, public speaking, the number one way to lose your fear and get confident is to actually become good at it. It's that way with any other skill. If you've never driven before in your life, if you're about to take your driver's ed Test, whether you're 16, 18, or 20, what do you want to do to prepare yourself? Do you want to take yoga to relax yourself before your driver's ed test? If you had to choose. Would you want to visualize yourself getting an A on the test and an A on the driver's part and having that license handed to you? That's choice B or choice C? Would you like to go to a driver's ed class every day for a semester or for six weeks, actually practice driving with an instructor, have very specific feedback on when you didn't turn your left indicator on, or if you didn't hold your hands to the right, or if you forgot to put your seatbelt on and actually practice driving with an instructor and get to the point where the instructor says, okay, now you're doing everything well, it's time you go took your driver's ed test. I think that most sane people would say, well tj, that's a no brainer. Forget the yoga prep, forget the visualization, let me have the class on driving or actually do driving before I take the driver's ed test, before I take the driver's license test. Because I'll actually be less nervous for the driver's license test. I'll actually be a lot more confident for the driver's license test if I pass driver's ed. And I've actually seen myself do that parallel parking. So when I'm taking the driver's license test and the instructor asked me to parallel park, I'll have an image of myself having literally done it before. I defy anyone in the audience or anyone in the world to tell me that if you're taking a driver's license test, that a beta blocker or yoga or meditation or will actually help you be more confident or be better at passing the test than having actually passed a driver's ed test and actually haven't driven and done the things like come to a complete stop and use a right hand turn indicator and parallel park to hear me say that. Some of you are scratching your head saying, well, you know, tj, you're just stating things that are blindingly obvious and trite. You can say it's blindingly obvious and yet go to YouTube sometime and type in fear of public speaking. You won't see my videos on the top page, the top 10. You will see people who talk about visualization and yoga and there's this one guy who swears that if you tap on your face somehow that will eliminate your nerves. Utterly preposterous. But that's. People are always looking for an excuse to not do the one thing that. And hey, I'm guilty about that in other areas too. I'd much rather watch a video on how to organize my garage than to actually go into my garage, pull things off shelves, look at them, throw things away I don't use. Bag things up that aren't needed, that need to be taken to goodwill, sweep trash out. I'd much rather read a book on organizing a garage or watch a video than actually do it. Guess what? The only thing is that will help me clean my garage. I have to go into the garage and start throwing stuff away and start labeling things and start figuring out what to donate and what to give. That's the only thing that's going to help me clean my garage. If you want to speak more effectively, if you want to get over your fear of public speaking, if you want to be confident, you actually have to do the thing you're trying to get better at. You actually have to speak. Not go to yoga retreat, not go to meditation retreat, not sit under crystals or pyramids. And all those things may help you with other aspects of your life. They may help you feel more comfortable or relaxed, but it's not going to do anything to make you a better speaker. Now, the other side of this, which is rarely discussed, is that it is possible to be completely relaxed, be completely confident, and be horrible. If I'm nervous about walking through Times Square completely naked because I'm afraid people are going to point, laugh at me, and I would get arrested. If I take a beta blocker or some other drug or a Quaalude or a bottle of Jack Daniels, I might feel more relaxed walking naked through Times Square. But guess what? People are still going to point and laugh and I'm still likely to be arrested. So what good is it to make me feel more relaxed or confident if the underlying problem is still there? And that's my biggest problem with all of these fake phony solutions. Meditation, hypnosis. Hypnosis has its role in other aspects of life. Yoga, all these things to make you more confident about being a public speaker when the solution is to actually be a better public speaker and to practice on video until you like what you see. Those of you who are regular listeners may be growing tired of me saying this, but I really can't say it enough. Number one way to get over fear of public speaking or lack of confidence or just being awful is to practice your presentation on video. Look at it. Figure out what you like, what you don't like. Do it again. Do more of what you like. Do less of what you don't like. Keep doing it until you like what you see, your style and substance. If you do that, I guarantee you, you'll be more confident, you'll be less fearful than anyone who's had a year's worth of yoga classes, meditation classes, or an entire medicine cabinet full of beta blockers. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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