Writing Affirmations 

·        Write them in the present tense.  Never use the past or future tenses.

·        Make them short so that they are easy to remember.

      ·        Make them personal – I am, I know, I have etc.

      ·        Be specific about your desired outcome.  State what but not how.

      ·        Make the vocabulary personal to you.

This morning, I was a guest on Geoff Carter’s programme on Bay FM 102.8 discussing how I got involved in my public speaking training business.  In the past, I have been a guest on Radio Solent, Hope FM and also Forest FM radio stations, so am well versed in the procedure.  It is something which I really enjoy doing and is an opportunity to advertise my business for free. 

If you run your own business or have an interesting hobby, you might like to consider going on the radio.  If you haven’t done it before, let me put your mind at rest.  The presenters are experienced in handling guests and will make it easy for you.  Just be yourself, relax and enjoy it.  It’s just like having a conversation with a friend.

So if you haven’t done it before, give it a go.

What are affirmations?  We have been using them all our life, without necessarily realising it, or understanding the effect of them.  The word affirmation means something which is validated, made firm.  Affirmations are statements which we make about ourselves and our lives and can be either positive or negative.  Affirmations which are repeated frequently then become beliefs.  It is therefore vital to make sure that we only make positive statements about ourselves, otherwise we will have negative and limiting beliefs.  In this way, we can re-programme our mind for positivity and empower ourselves to be and do whatever we want to.

When presenting to a group of people, it’s really important that your communication is as clear as possible, so that your audience understands.  One way to achieve this is to ensure that what you say is jargon-free.  The challenge with this is for the speaker to recognise the jargon they are using as jargon since it’s language that is used on an everyday basis in their particular industry or profession.

In my view, the worst form of jargon is acronymns.  For example, technical people are frequently guilty of sprinkling their presentations with this form of jargon, sometimes rendering it almost impossible to follow what is being said.  This can be easily overcome.  If you must use acronymns or other jargon, simply explain what you mean by it and your audience is far more likely to continue listening.    

I was really excited to have been invited to speak within such a prestigious organisation yesterday.  I was tasked with delivering two 50 minute slots back to back on Speaking with Confidence to mixed audiences at a large financial institution in Bournemouth.  Unfortunately, due to their rules and regulations, they do not allow their name to be mentioned in any marketing material.  There were approximately 40-50 people in each group and, although it was to celebrate International Women’s Day, there were also a few men present.  The fact that people would give up their lunch break to learn shows that this is a subject of interest.  They are running lunchtime events all week and I am told that mine has proved to be the most popular.

A number of key points were addressed on how to improve the most important aspects of verbal communications through what we say, how we say it and our body language.  State management was also explored. 

It was my first experience of doing two talks, one after the other, on the same subject.  As I do not use a script, both sessions included some different material, although the key points were still addressed.  An additional advantage was that the sessions were recorded, so that they can be listened to by other staff members who were unable to attend on the day.

I have to say that it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me and judging by the general reception, my feeling is that the audiences also enjoyed themselves. 

While the words we speak are only part of the communication process, I cannot emphasise enough the need to avoid using, and particularly over-using, certain words and phrases.  Whether this be in public speaking or your everyday communications, these can at best dilute your message (known as word thieves) and at worst totally distract your audience from receiving your message.  Frequently the speaker is unaware of the fact that he/she is using these words, and therefore can do nothing to improve unless this is pointed out to him/her.  Some of the words I love to hate are as follows:

Ums/ers

Kind of/sort of

At the end of the day

Basically

Actually

Essentially

Effectively

Ums/ers are the most common problem with those who are unsure of themselves. If a speaker ums/ers very frequently, I find myself counting them which means I have missed what they were saying altogether.  Once a speaker is aware of these bad habits, it’s relatively easy to correct.  Replace ums/ers with a pause and simply omit the other words and phrases.

Which words or phrases most irritate you?  Do let me know.

Public speaking and humour go together like a hand in a glove.  No matter whether you are delivering a business presentation, a wedding speech or a talk, humour helps in countless ways.  Firstly, it helps to relax the audience as well as the speaker.  If you can make your audience laugh, then you’re half way there to winning them over. 

Probably the most important thing to remember about humour, however, is that it must be appropriate – appropriate to the audience and appropriate to the circumstances.  Unless you are very good at telling jokes, steer away from them and, although personally I love a smutty joke, in terms of public speaking, this is an absolute no, no. 

In my opinion, the best form of humour is natural and spontaneous.  One such incident which happened to me recently comes to mind.  I was attending a Carrington lunch (www.carrington-club.co.uk) and was invited to stand up in front of about 110 people and deliver a one minute on my business.  Jonathan Rose, Chairman of Carrington, who is himself an excellent speaker, introduced me as “sourced entirely from Dorset” as he had just been talking about Buy Dorset (www.BuyDorset.co.uk.)  I immediately said, oh no “saucy from Dorset” with the appropriate cheeky grin on my face.  It went down a storm, made people laugh and made me feel very relaxed indeed.  Result: a number of people spoke to me afterwards interested in attending one of my courses. 

I recently received an email from a best friend from schooldays who I hadn’t seen in around 5 years.  She had received an email from Friends Reunited which had prompted her to think of me. She then googled me and of course found my website.  About a week later, we found ourselves walking along Boscombe seafront happily chatting away as if we had been meeting on a regular basis for a long time. 

Naturally, we caught up with what had been happening in our lives and then, unsurprisingly, we drifted back to our youth and chatted about all sorts of things.  Quite unconnected with anything that we had been saying, just as we were leaving the Urban Beach Restaurant in Boscombe, I said – “You had a party in your garage” and she said yes and I added “and there were gatecrashers.”  Yes, she said, quite taken aback, you are right!  Since this was apropos of nothing in particular and I didn’t consider my long-term memory that great, I have to say that I was surprised, particularly as the party in question would have been around 37 years ago.

Of course, if you understand that the subconscious mind is like a computer and stores absolutely everything that it sees, hears, touches, tastes and smells, then you will understand that all past events are in the memory and it’s just a case of accessing them.  While nothing that we had been saying had been an obvious trigger to me consciously, clearly the subconscious mind was back in that era and just general discussions of that time must have triggered this particular memory. 

The memory is truly an extraordinary thing isn’t it?