Lisa Nichols says fear of public speaking comes from telling yourself a negative story about what will happen. Instead, anchor on three specific things you'll give your audience: compassion, education, joy. She used this method to replace her own anxiety with conviction.
Chapters
Fear comes from projecting a story that you made up about speaking that hasn't happened yet that actually has a physical, emotional impact on you in the now. Let me give you an example. You said, oh, my God, when I get in front of people, I freeze. And I. And so you literally projected the concept, the idea that when you get in front of people, you freeze. So much so that it paralyzes you in the now. It makes you afraid. Now also, the second thing it does is when you get in front of people, you've already said you're going to freeze. Therefore, you have a tendency to stop and freeze. So let me tell you some things that you can do when you think about speaking. How about you have three things that you anchor on. Write that down. There's three things that you want to anchor on that will pull you past the fear. What are the three things that you're going to contribute to any audience that you give? I'm going to contribute compassion. I'm going to contribute viable education, and I'm going to contribute joy. So what are the three things that you know you're going to contribute? So oftentimes when you're not aware of the positive result you're going to produce from speaking, you get tied into the negative impression you have of the things that might occur. I'm going to be embarrassed. I'm going to be judged. Well, there's nothing in its place. You need to put something in its place. What are the three things that people are going to gain because you spoke? How are the lives of the listeners going to be different because they heard your voice. Very early on in my career, when I would go someplace to speak, I would be in the back and I would just be fortified. Literally. It didn't feel like butterflies were in my belly. I had bats and birds and eagles in my belly. And the only thing that would anchor me is that I go. As a result of listening to my message, people will learn how to stand in their power. That's number one. As a result of delivering this message, women who feel like their life is over will know that it's just begun. As a result of listening to my message, men will understand that they have the power to press reset if they need to. All of a sudden, what happened was I became more committed to those three outcomes. And the more committed and the more aware and the more clear those three outcomes are for you, the more the fear begins to dissipate into the nothingness that it always was. So your opportunity is to overcome fear and step more into confidence. The challenge and the problem that we're looking to solve is to replace your fear, replace that anxiety with a sense of conviction and clarity. That's what we're aiming to do together.
