Читать книгу Powerful Presentations - Jacques Waisvisz - Страница 9

To help you in your quest to overcome your fear of speaking in public in particular and to achieve more success in your life in general, I have included the following from a book called “ACHIEVE”. The author is Denis L. Cauvier, a professional speaker and seminar leader who at one time vowed never to try public speaking again. He writes:

“I had to re-program my subconscious mind to be comfortable with myself while speaking in front of an audience, and to actually enjoy the process. How I did this was by using a tool called Positive Affirmation Statements which, in reality, is nothing more than giving yourself a pep talk. We all talk to ourselves and give ourselves guidance as to how well we expect to perform in a given activity.

I decided to change the language of my self-talk to something more positive. Instead of repeating to myself on a subconscious level, “I am a lousy public speaker”, I changed my self-talk to “I am a great public speaker now.” By saying this over and over, I was actually able to recondition or program my subconscious mind to become comfortable with the idea of being a good speaker.

I also linked positive emotions to public speaking. When you discuss public speaking with the average person, they immediately link up all sorts of personal pain associated with the concept.

The pain of embarrassment, failure, disappointment, and maybe even ridicule come to mind. It’s this pain that prevents them from moving forward and conquering the fear of public speaking.

In my case, I decided to think of something that provided me with total pleasure: downhill skiing. I love skiing so much that just saying downhill skiing triggers a series of positive emotions within me. I took out my favourite skiing poster, hung it in my office, and then said to myself: “Public speaking - I love it” then stared at the poster; Public speaking - I love it” then stared at the poster again.

As soon as I would say “public speaking”, a little bit of negative emotion would creep in; then I would stare at the picture of the skier and, because a picture is stronger than words, all the positive emotions associated with skiing transferred into my self-concept associated with public speaking. I was finding it very difficult to feel fearful and nervous about public speaking while I was associating it with the pleasure of skiing.

I continued to repeat the exercise. Two days later, I was walking down the street and I said to myself: “ public speaking”, and my mind automatically kicked in the picture of the skier; I was now beginning to associate public speaking with all the positive feelings associated with skiing.

I was conditioning my mind to link pleasure, not pain, with public speaking... and was ultimately very successful. It’s the combination of the physical - writing a good speech; emotional - linking constant pleasure to public speaking (or whatever activity or behaviour you’re working on); and mental re-programming the subconscious mind, which will result in conquering fears.”