Public Speaking: How Mindset Creates Opportunities-Part 2 (Your New Job)

Review of Part 1: Conditioned Self’s Job

In Public Speaking: How Mindset Creates Opportunities-Part 1 (Conditioned Self’s Job), you realized the potential harmful effects of the conditioned self on your ability to create opportunities through public speaking.  You learned that the job of the conditioned self is to protect you from vulnerability, pain, and discomfort.    You also saw how confidence manifests in your public speaking life when you believe in yourself.

Overcoming the Conditioned Self’s Lie & Seeing the Truth

Now that you know the conditioned self’s job and its seemingly importance to in your protection, you are ready to discover the truth of its lie.

Lie:  It’s best to focus on the negatives and to judge yourself when publicly speaking.

Truth: It’s best to focus on your success, compare yourself to yourself, and remove judgment about self-worth when publicly speaking.

Your 4 New Job Tasks

  1. Approach the following empowerment strategies as a fun new job. You’re stepping into new thoughts and behaviors that are supporting the unique message you have to share with your audience and target market.
  2. Compare yourself to yourself.  Look at your progress even in the presence of mistakes.  Objectively acknowledge opportunities for improvement instead of attaching judgment. Tell the conditioned self that you are continually learning and you attach no worth, shame, or guilt to the outcome.
  3. Realize that it’s your job to nurture your conditioned self’s response to vulnerability.  It is true that vulnerability by its very definition puts us at risk.  Otherwise there would be no such thing as vulnerability.  When you are speaking in front of others, you are vulnerable.  Ultimately, what is your goal?  Most likely, it’s to be of genuine help to someone in some way.  Keep this as your measure of your success and no other measures.  For example, if you puplicly speak, and feel that you have prepared to the best of your ability to help others with your information or product or service, then you have succeeded.  Even if you haven’t’ prepared to the best of your ability, you still took the risk.  Prepare more next time.
  4. Speak to the part of you that wants to criticize and pick at your performance.  Tell it that you understand it is trying to protect you from pain. Tell it that you are not in pain because you are measuring yours success in comparison to how much you’ve grown.  The only pain you may experience is in the from of learning from your experience.  This is best described as discomfort.  Explain to the conditioned self that discomfort is necessary for growth and is healthy.

Summary: Seeing the Truth of the Conditioned Self

Spend time teaching it ways to critique without attaching judgment, guilt, or shame.  Replace those behaviors with objectivity, support from yourself, belief in yourself, and with comparison to how much you’ve grown and the risks you’ve taken.  If it needs to refocus it’s job, assign it the new job of gently reminding you when you have forgotten to notice it’s judgmental tone.

To your success in seeing the truth of the conditioned self’s lie,

Cher

16 Comments

Marit GrendstadJune 18th, 2014 at 10:13 am

I´ve been in the middle of a letter trying to move forward, so applying it here and now. Thanks!

SangitaJune 18th, 2014 at 12:54 pm

Thanks for sharing Cher, I like the #2 task 🙂 Great tips.

Martha TassinariJune 18th, 2014 at 3:14 pm

Cher,
I love #4 speak to the part. I think it is so important to connect to that part of the conditioned self and learn the job it has and perhaps replacing its job with a new duty. Thanks!

Dorothy FitzerJune 18th, 2014 at 7:37 pm

Hey Cher – You’re comment on “compare yourself to yourself” reminded me of something someone said to me long ago that really was a good eye opener for me. “You compare you weaknesses to other people’s strengths.” Turning that destructive self-criticism into nurturing feedback and learning is so important. Thanks for shining the light on it;)

Tina GamesJune 18th, 2014 at 8:42 pm

Cher – I immediately resonated with tip #2 – compare yourself to yourself. ~ It’s what the great athletes do when they talk about “personal best.” ~ As Dorothy said, it’s not at all helpful to compare our weaknesses to another’s strengths. We only need to compare ourselves to ourselves – and keep striving for “personal bests.” ~ It also helps to focus on the best of every presentation – and celebrate that. Then look at where we can strengthen it – and go forward. 🙂

Mateja PetjeJune 19th, 2014 at 2:03 pm

Great tips thank you. I think a lot of us struggle with conditioned self.

veronicaJune 20th, 2014 at 6:39 pm

My goodness Cher – I really like the way you clarify the conditioned self’s persistence and how to recognize it. This is such valuable insight for all of us. I recall how freeing it was when I recognized all of my thoughts were not in my best interest and were not commands or realities of my self-worth when I was in my negative conditioned self. Excellent and thank you!

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:13 pm

Veronica,
You’re very welcome. Yes, the conditioned self has become my good friend as I’ve gotten to know her over the years mentoring her 🙂
Congrats on the success of your recent workshop,

Cher

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:15 pm

Mateja,
You’re very welcome. Yes, so many struggle with this, and I’m passionate about helping people get to know this part of themselves to mentor it 🙂
To your success,
Cher

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:19 pm

Tina,
Great point you make with the great athletes doing their best. Celebration of our strengths is paramount too.

To your strengths and celebration,
Cher

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:21 pm

Dorothy,
You’re so very welcome. It’s cool how those memorable moments from people stick with us for the good. Like you said, it’s important to heal ourselves with positive feedback.

To you,
Cher

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:22 pm

Martha,
You’re very welcome.

To your conditioned self’s new job,
Cher

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:23 pm

Sangita,
You’re welcome. Yes, comparing ourselves to ourselves is a critical process 🙂
Congrats on your book release and tours,
Cher

Cher GundersonJune 29th, 2014 at 6:24 pm

Marit,
That’s awesome! So glad to be of help to you in a practical way. That’s my goal.
To your successful letter,
Cher

KimberleySeptember 21st, 2014 at 7:02 am

Hey very nice web site!! Guy .. Beautiful ..
Superb .. I’ll bookmark your site and take the
feeds additionally? I’m happy to seek out so many useful
information here within the put up, we want develop more strategies in this regard,
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Cher GundersonSeptember 22nd, 2014 at 8:16 pm

Kimberly, I’m happy to hear you’re getting a lot of value from the articles we offer 🙂 Be sure to download our free kits and you will also receive updates on news and new articles. When you speak of developing more strategies, to which strategies do you refer? I’m curious about your plans and who you’re helping.
Looking forward to your reply. To your success,
Cher

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