Five Ways to Relax for Meetings

Take a break for a moment and reflect on how life is being for you just now. In the workplace, many of us see demands on our time increasing hugely.

Everyone appears to be even more anxious to achieve their goals and key performance indicators and with this, comes the greater likelihood you will be asked to share your activities. 

Sometimes, strong emotions can get in the way: feelings of anxiety, excessive worry and low self-confidence can impact on how you perform when asked to contribute in meetings. There's probably nothing stopping you performing at a capability level. In your specialist field, you know your topic better than anyone. Yet, when asked to speak in front of others, these strong emotions can become a real challenge.

That's where it can seem very unfair that just at the moment you need to stay calm, your heart rate increases, your breathing becomes rapid and you worry that others might think you aren't 'good enough' to do your role. There's nothing more unfair in life than someone who can do the job well. No, very well. But something is holding that person back from being relaxed and calm about whatever it is they are doing.

When we speak in front of other people, we expose ourselves to the risk of negative judgement. Or that's what we sometimes believe. We also expose ourselves to the chance we will be judged positively. But because our unconscious mind has evolved to be alert to anything that could be a threat, guess which one wins over?

So, when people are listening to you speak, if these people are silent, looking at you, how often do you believe they are judging you badly? They are looking for you to fail. 

Steve McCabe describing the Five Ways to Relax for Meetings.

But what if it's possible, they aren't thinking that and you are second guessing incorrectly? What if they are in awe of your courage in speaking up?

Does this sound like you?

 You worry about the environment you are going to speak in. Perhaps you fear the IT equipment will fail and you'll feel like an idiot in front of an audience.

• Maybe you believe that you're not good enough, not qualified to speak on your topic?
• Could it be that your values you inherited in your childhood are holding you back? Or your inner critic tells you something like:

It's not my place to lecture people better than me. Let's leave it to the experts and I'm no expert.

• Your values, beliefs, upbringing and education now shape your identity. You don't feel confident because you've allowed the beliefs of others to define you. However, please don't feel guilt. This is entirely normal as we often become the product of our upbringing.

How would you prefer to feel this way instead?

• You take a relaxed view to who you are. You accept you are good enough. You know your subject and no-one can know everything there is to know about everything - and that's ok.
• Your work invovles lots of changing priorities. People ask you to do things and sometimes you feel they are being unreasonable. You feel confident to decline their polite request and suggest someone else for them to approach instead.
• Your beliefs are empowering. You believe everyone matters but you believe you can only help others once you've put your own oxygen mask on. Self-care is important and you believe this. You also invest in taking time to be kind to yourself.
• You have strong values that being imperfect is just fine and you are being true to yourself. You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not. Being honest about yourself is important.
• You are aligned with your identity. You matter and you are great. Comfortable, calm and confident.

Sounds wonderful doesn't it?

But are you telling me, Steve, that watching five videos can make such a big difference? Check out my FAQs below!

Check out my FAQs below:

I've watched your videos. Will I now be calm and confident in meetings?

Investing time in yourself is so important and these techniques will demonstrate one thing: they should prove to you what's possible. No-one, not even famous broadcasters, sportspeople or those in business achieve what seems like calm, confident speaking just by accident. Everything in life needs working at. My course can open a new perspective on what you can achieve.

Do I need to watch any particular video for a specific situation?

Work your way through the videos - the sequence I have recorded these in is not important. Decide which one you'd like to put into practice and go with that. You can always try a difference exercise next time.

How soon will I notice a difference in being relaxed in meetings?

This is a great question but impossible to answer. Each of us is unique and it's likely some exercises will resonate with you more than others. Try to be less objective and be curious about possibility. The smaller differences in life are usually then ones that result in bigger change. They can be overlooked easily.

For example, I used to be looking at peoples faces in the audience to see if they were disinterested or noticing something about me that made them see me as nervous. Instead, you may forget to remember to look for these audience faces: a small difference but one that could, just could be a sign things are improving.

Buy my course and you'll be joining a growing number of people, just like you, who have decided, enough is enough ... now I need to overcome this.

I look forward to working with you.

When you view the videos in my course, please enable subtitles by clicking on the 'cc' icon upper right of your YouTube screen.

If you'd like to Book a 30min Freedom from Nerves Phone Call with me, click HERE