Taming Your Public Speaking Monkeys

Dee Clayton

• Publisher: M-Y Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781908372307
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Communication & Public Speaking

A Godsend for anyone who's ever suffered that dread of speaking in public!'

If, like almost everyone, you're petrified of public speaking, the last thing you want is a lecture! And there lies the brilliance of this unique book's genuinely innovative approach to the issue: Dee Clayton makes the process of overcoming those negative voices in your head (Your 'Public Speaking Monkeys!') and becoming an effective speaker lighthearted and fun!

A Godsend for anyone who's ever suffered that dread, Dee's refreshingly simple yet amazingly effective multiawardwinning approach has already helped thousands to overcome their fears and become effective and confident public speakers. Significantly, the author's keenly aware that for most of us, effective public speaking isn't necessarily an end in itself but a means to other ends for example Dee has already helped company directors to persuade more successfully, doctors to win more funding, mediators to influence international decisions and all kinds of business people to fulfil their potential.

What's more, this is a genuinely practical guide! Unlike most 'self help' books on the topic (or any other), this one doesn't just tell you what to do; in her chatty, good-humored style, Dee explains exactly how, sharing her own experiences and coaxing the reader through a programme that doesn't just work it even makes public speaking enjoyable!

Taming Your Public Speaking Monkeys® works so well because its easy, enjoyable style is underpinned by Dee's solid, real-life experience of speaking publicly to tens of thousands of people first in her highly successful twenty-year marketing career (communicating for UK household brands such as Jacob's Creek, Pizza Hut and Jammie Dodgers to name but a few) and now as a public speaking training specialist. Equally vitally, the book draws heavily upon the NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) techniques and insights in which Dee is a highly experienced Trainer and Master Practitioner.

Taming your Public Speaking Monkeys® is a rare find: a self-help book that really helps and best of all the results come to you quickly and stick with you for life!

Taming your Public Speaking Monkeys®

Chapter 1 –
Monkey spirals

In this first chapter you’ll begin to get a feel for what monkeys can say and why they’re a problem, sending you on a negative downward spiral. Becoming a confident speaker is all about being on an upward spiral which starts with understanding that there’s a problem and then getting in touch with what result you personally want from doing this programme.

Examples of monkey voices

You may think you are the only one with negative @(O_O)@ voices muttering away in your head, but believe me they’re more common than you think. And, having worked with many thousands of people and their monkeys, I want to share with you below some of the most common things that people’s @(O_O)@ say. That doesn’t mean they’re all there for the same reason, and we’ll talk more about that in later chapters, but for now take a look through this list and see which, if any, of these resonate with you.

You’re going to...

• Visibly shake or show your nervousness
• Forget what you want to say
• Freeze, faint or cry
• Get tongue tied
• Blush or get really sweaty
• Trip over your words
• Talk too fast or speak too quickly
• Lose your notes or forget your place
• Get really nervous
• Rush through things so the presentation is over quickly
• Get embarrassed standing up
• Be the focus of attention and stared at
• Get nervous before and while presenting.
• Hate everyone looking at you
• Forget what you’re saying
• Be too detailed and not be concise enough in the time
• Feel physically sick
• Feel your heart beat really fast
• Get your words muddled up
• Mess up
• Go red around the neck
• Get asked something you don’t know
• Make a mistake
• Sound rubbish
• Speak too quietly

What if you...

• Open your mouth and nothing comes out
• Are incoherent
• Bore them to tears
• Get interrupted
• Get asked an expected question
• Read from your script
• Are afraid you’re not interesting enough
• Aren’t prepared enough.
• Get the numbers wrong
• Make errors in the presentation
• Suffer technology failure
• Lose your train of thought
• Can’t keep the audience interested
• Have a wavering voice and croak
• Haven’t practiced enough
• Lose track of the structure
• Feel that everyone is “checking me out” and judging you
• Don’t get your message across
• Can’t answer a question on the spot
• Appear really boring
• Feel conscious because of your weight
• Aren’t liked by the audience
• Not good enough
• Can’t do it
• Dry up
• Talk rubbish

Monkey spirals

You can’t opt out of the monkey spirals or the @(O_O)@ – they’ll either work with you or against you. Either the voices will be saying negative, discouraging remarks, or positive, helpful remarks – you can’t be monkey neutral. If you don’t train the little fellas they’ll work against you and make your performance worse. But when you start to get the Public Speaking Monkeys® under control and working on your side, the good news is you can’t help but improve on your results. Let me explain.

Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be on the monkey downward spiral. They hear the monkey voices and begin to dread speaking so they start to feel fearful; they talk about it with their friends who fuel or feed their monkey fears or they totally ignore the monkeys and hope they’ll go away. The physical conditions start to kick in and as you start to sweat you feel more nervous. As you get up to speak, your hands are shaking so you drop your notes, making you even more flustered. Your mouth’s dry so you take a sip of water but your shaking hands spill a little on your notes and create an embarrassing spot on the new suit you’d bought especially for today. Because of your panic, you forget to turn off your phone which rings as you mutter your first words. Oh well, at least it gets the attention of the room! You become short of breath, speak more quietly, back away from the audience and start to gabble quickly to get it all over and done with. This is just the beginning of the downward spiral because next time you’ll recall every last minute in painful detail!

Part of the reason that fear is such a debilitating emotion when it’s out of proportion is that it can feel so bad that it prevents you from trying things. Once you get the @(O_O)@ under control and working for you, even if only a little bit at first, you’ll find it so much easier to keep going, to work through any less positive emotions, knowing that there’s something brighter on the other side.

On top of the internal stuff, the monkeys affect your audience too. If you’re feeling nervous and full of @(O_O)@ when you present, then I know you’ll be performing below par because you’ll be too worried about what’s going on inside your head to give much thought to the audience. You aren’t thinking about how they’re reacting and what you might need to do to connect more or build more rapport with them. You aren’t looking to see if you need to

explain things a little more clearly, motivate them into action or any other such objectives for your talk or presentation.

I want to show you how you can be your best and share your message in a manner that will help you to achieve what you want, and that begins with learning to travel on the upward spiral. This begins when you take the first step to taming your monkeys and work with them, not against them. You’ll recognise them and know how to manage them and become calmer and more relaxed about speaking.

The reason taming the monkeys is such a critical first step to speaking success is because it’s the key to moving your thoughts from a negative downward spiral to

a positive upward spiral. As you move through this programme you’ll start to see and experience mini successes, which in turn make you feel better and more confident. Will everything be totally perfect? Probably not – but as your negative @(O_O)@ diminish they take less of your focus and time. You begin to see that the focus needs to be outside yourself – with the audience; not with you inside your head. So naturally you start to please the audience more. They don’t really care if you get all your words perfectly right but they do care whether you’re interesting to them and INTERESTED IN THEM. So decide now that you want the @(O_O)@ to work with you and not against you.

As you become more relaxed you’ll be better able to breathe more easily, get more oxygen to the brain and think on your feet. Your body language will

improve and you’ll automatically stand taller. As you stand taller, your head will become more upright and you’ll be confident enough to try new techniques, engage with the audience and begin to make eye contact. The audience will respond more positively and the energy in the room will pick up. You’ll feel the energy and confidence pick up and become even more relaxed, so the audience relaxes and really starts connecting with you and the message you’re sharing.

The four keys to switching spirals

The four keys to switching spirals looks at what elements make up long-term successful change. I don’t want you to switch to the upward spiral just temporarily; I want you to know how to do it forever and to do that you need these four keys.

The process of successfully changing from a fearful speaker to a confident one requires four key elements, which we work through in this book.

1) Acknowledge why this is important to you – what are you missing out on or what do you want? Your fear of speaking might mean you’re lac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 – Monkey spirals
• Chapter 2 – Public Speaking Monkeys®
• Chapter 3 – Changing your mind for long term success
• Chapter 4 – The “Taming the monkeys” technique & case study
• Chapter 5 – Your turn to Tame your Monkeys
• Chapter 6 – Mindset and body language
• Chapter 7 – Preparation, structure & practice
• Chapter 8 – Delivering the talk and feedback
• Chapter 9 – Why is goal-setting important?
• Chapter 10 – And finally...