How hard are you on yourself? Or if you teach, how hard are your students on themselves?
Let's set the scene.
Either you, or one of your students, has just finished a speech. The audience is clapping as you, or they, step down from the stage.
What is one of the first things to happen?
Do you find them, or yourself, fixating on the 'wrong' things, the niggling minutiae?
Oh, my goodness, I forgot to mention the importance of, for instance, red wheelbarrows! How stupid of me!
And I stumbled over pronouncing anathema clearly.
(Never mind. You’re in good company. Many people bumble that one. The second syllable is stressed: “a-NATH-em-a”.)That person wearing a bright yellow polka dot bowtie in the third row kept playing with their phone. The whole time! That means I'm boring. I knew this wasn’t the right angle to take on the topic.
I'm never going to be good at presenting. No matter how hard I try.
Or is the focus on the successes?
Many of us tend to lump everything in together. It's either good or bad. Black or white. There are no distinctions and more importantly no credit given for little successes, improvements, along the way to mastery.
If we apply common sense, we know being successful is not black or white, good or bad. We also know positive feedback, acknowledgment of elements done well, boosts confidence and creates a willingness to keep moving, to learn more, and to work with criticism positively.
Let's practice being kinder.
The next time you finish a speech instead of flaying yourself by re-running errors big and loud through your mind focus on what you did well.
Grab up a pen and paper and note them down. The act of writing them out gives them more power. Anything, no matter how minor you think it is, qualifies. The only rule is whatever you put on the list must be positive and true.
Examples:
I stood tall.
I breathed deeply to calm myself before I started to speak.
I faced the audience.
I managed some eye contact and a smile.
I recovered from a moment of panic by remembering to pause and breath properly.
My voice got stronger as I got further into my speech.
The audience appreciated my slides.
I felt good about my clothing choices.
My cue cards were ordered well.
Try it. Teach your students to do it. When I did their readiness to push themselves along and experiment increased dramatically. (Surprise, surprise!)
There's a fine balance between being 'cruel to be kind' and overly indulgent with our selves. My personal experience is that most of us err on the cruel side. How we expect ourselves to learn and progress through repeated beatings is beyond me. It's ridiculous, silly logic.
Let's change it.
Happy speaking, happy teaching,
Susan
PS. As I said last week, and I’ll say next, if you have ideas for topics you’d like to see covered in this newsletter, or if you’d like to share an article on some aspect of public speaking, or a speech of your own, please get in touch. Either reply to this email or contact me through the form on my about me page on my website. I’d love to hear from you!
I love your approach to limiting negative self-talk. With my students, I always found a few things positive to comment on, even with the least prepared speeches. Applying that same standard to myself is more difficult, like you say, but you've certainly given us a good standard to use in measuring our own performance.