Public Speaking and Visibility: A Creative Way to Harness your Fears

Afraid People will see the REAL YOU?

Visibility means more than someone seeing you physically.  It means people seeing your insecurities, your flaws.  Are you afraid of people seeing the REAL you?  You’re not alone.  You’re not wrong for feeling that way.  Are you afraid that if you advertise your craft, your skills, your professional services that you won’t be able to deliver once they hire you?  These are all signs that you are struggling with visibility fears.  All of us have walked this earth with an inner critic whose voice is either: more powerful, louder, or more demanding than our authentic, wise, true self.  We were all born with our authentic, true, wise self, just as we were born with our inner critic.

Confidence-Building: Attend to your Inner Critic

Attend to your inner voices. Turn off the music, sit still for a moment.  Listen to what you’re telling yourself.  Are you speaking to yourself out of fear?  Are you telling yourself things like:

Who do you think you are reaching for these goals?

What if people think you’re no good?

What if you’re not as good as  “the others” out there?

You’re not ready for this.

Solution for Fear: Shifting your Inner Critic’s Focus

The above thoughts are all signs that you’re letting your inner critic get the best of you.  That’s right.  The fact that you’re trying to be more visible by speaking to more people about your passion or work is “the best” of you.  It’s human nature to silence that powerful part of ourselves, that dreamer in us, that excited true part of us.  Instead of silencing that productive part of ourselves, let’s assign your inner critic a new job.  You don’t want to kill your inner critic, although you can have it arrested.  The solution to dealing with these inner critics is not to avoid them but to actually embrace them.

Assigning your Inner Critic a New Job

By acknowledging your inner critic, you choose a starting point for shifting its energy.  Yes, I didn’t say get rid of your inner critic.  Perhaps it will one day leave completely.  For now, you can assign it a different job.  We assign them different jobs because they NEED  jobs.  They will find a job even it’s detrimental to you.  Therefore, we activate and empower our authentic selves so that they are in control of the critics.

Fear Shifting: Highly Sought Critic Jobs

Common critics are: comparer, pusher, perfectionist, hopeless, and procrastinator.  These critics are great at certain jobs.  For example, my perfectionist inner critic just started a new job after rocking the interview!  My perfectionist critic was, well, “perfect” for the job.  I found this job for her by realizing what she loves: creativity, color, organization, and working with people. She works for a large, successful creative company called Brand your Color Spirit.  She sorts through paint samples to get the PERFECT match for the paint engineer’s specifically designed color.  The colors match client profiles based on how the clients answers questions about personality, hobbies, strengths, and what hues, shades, and brightness levels they prefer.  This is an extremely important job, because the “right” color will make the difference in improving the life enjoyment of the client choosing the paint color.

Creating your Inner Critic’s New Job

Get creative!  Think of new jobs your inner critics would be great at!  Incorporate your own talents, personalities, and tendencies to make sure you land your inner critic the dream job that they will flourish at!  Check in every now and then and see that they they are loving their job.  When they creep back in and perhaps “miss” their old job of silencing your authentic voice, direct them back to their current job.  Acknowledge all the successes they have achieved and all the people they’re helping.

Public Speaking and Visibility: Creatively Harnessing your Fears

In summary, public speaking and visibility fears commonly are a result of negative self-talk.  When you approach this negative self-talk in a creative, embracing way, you can take control of it.  One way is to assign your inner critics new jobs that they will excel at and love.  This new empowerment over your inner critics helps you whether it’s making a life change in a big way or small way, a public speaking and visibility change in a big way or a small way.  Here’s to you having lots of fun creating your inner critics’ new jobs, and at the same time, harnessing your fears.  Don’t forget to check in on them and give them lots of compliments on how awesome they’re doing!