CashCome.com Articles Pages

Lose Stagefright Over Your Lunch Hour

Download eBooks and Software

The Lotto Black Book
This Radical Approach To An Online Sales Letter Converts In The 3-5%... We've Never Seen Something Like This Since The Early Days Of 2004-2005 And I'm Sure You Haven't Either... We Convert More Than Our Competition And We Pay Out More... Try It!

Paleo Recipe Book - Brand New Paleo Cookbook
Brand New Paleo Diet Cookbook With Over 370 Recipes. Pays 70% Commission On This High-quality, Easy To Sell Product. Get Banners And Promotional Material At Http://paleorecipebook.com/affiliates.html

Real Writing Jobs
New & Improved Pricing Structure With Multiple Price Points, Downsells, And Upsells. Doing Better Than Ever! Plus, We Keep Emailing All Interested Users With Your Affiliate Link In The Emails To Make Sure You Get Credit! Realwritingjobs.com/affiliates.php

Articles > Self Improvement and Motivation

Lose Stagefright Over Your Lunch Hour

by: Melissa Mayers Lewis

While teaching a two-day Speaking Confidence program to a group of 25 government secretaries, I wanted to give them practice using their personal experience to help others. So I gave them a simple assignment to ponder over their lunch hour: Think of a lesson they'd learned in life and share that lesson with the group when they came back.

A petite woman named Judy nervously came to me as the group was disbursing. Judy begged me to excuse her from this exercise. "Please! You don't understand. I'm terrified! I can't possibly get up and speak in front of all these people," she pleaded. We talked for a few minutes and, with compassionate encouragement from me, agreed to think in a hypothetical way about the possibility of maybe doing the exercise. With a long face and a heavy heart, Judy slouched off to lunch.

When the group came back, I said, "OK, it's time to hear your lessons learned. Who wants to go first?" To my amazement, Judy's hand shot up! "Well, Judy, come on down," I said.She marched to the front of the room like a woman on a mission. She whipped around and, with a determined but gentle poise, she looked out at her colleagues and spoke. "After 30 years of marriage, my husband left me for a younger woman, which was devastating. To make matters worse, he took all our money. So there I was alone in my mid-'50s and practically penniless. (Long, poignant pause.) But, I'm happy to say that today I am literally a millionaire. That's because, out of necessity, I learned to save and manage and invest my money. But none of you should have to learn it the way I did. So take out your pencils, girls. I'm gonna show you how it's done!"

Judy Blew Us Away

She was funny, passionate, authentic, driven, feisty. She shared the mistakes she made, the resources she found, the lessons she learned, the gifts she discovered-all with a magnetic power that held us transfixed. The moment she finished talking, everyone leaped up in a joyful, exuberant standing ovation.

After everyone settled down, I asked, "Judy, what on earth happened to you? An hour ago you were quivering, saying you couldn't possibly speak. Yet you've just held this room spellbound for 10 minutes. What happened?" She paused for a moment and said thoughtfully, "It never occurred to me until today that I could HELP people from up here. All my life I thought that public speaking was about following rules and performing and getting everything right. It had never occurred to me I could just stand up and help people."

As Judy discovered, all the posturing and performing is unnecessary. You need a desire to help your listeners-that's it! Any time you speak to a group, it's because you have a message that can help them. Perhaps you can spare them some pain (as Judy did), tell them about a resource they've been missing, help them take advantage of an opportunity, explain something that's been confusing them, make their jobs easier, save them money or time, increase their efficiency, boost their morale, solve a problem, etc. The audience doesn't need to be impressed or entertained. They just need YOU and the wisdom you have to share.

As Judy learned over her lunch hour, it's about helping people.

About The Author

Melissa Lewis turns traditional thinking about public speaking upside down to give people more comfort, confidence, and charisma in front of groups. She is a former comic actress, a certified facilitator of SPEAKING CIRCLES(r), president-elect of the National Speakers Association Kansas City Chapter, and author of the soon-to-be-released book, Upside Down Speaking. For more information, call (913) 341-1241 or visit www.upsidedownspeaking.com.

MelissaUDS@aol.com

?>

News on Self Improvement and Motivation

Workshop on personality development
Neha Foundation will be organising one-week workshop on ‘self-improvement' for students aged between 13 and 19 years from May 21 to 25 between 9.30 a.m. and 1.30 p.m. at No. 153, Bells Road, Chep...

After-school activities form well-rounded kids
If you're carting around more than one child to several after-school activities in the hope of rearing learned, talented, self-assured adults, the message from researchers is clear - keep it up, you're on the right track.

Toolbox: Prime Cycling Pyramid
As I discussed in my first post, Prime Cycling is defined as “riding at a consistently high level under the most challenging training and race conditions.”

Looking back through the years, 5/17/12
Five years ago Pinal Hispanic hosts Eloy Block Party

Science Fiction or Fact: Humanlike Intelligent Machines Will Soon Exist
In this weekly series, Life's Little Mysteries rates the plausibility of popular science fiction concepts.