When I was a kid, I didn’t have a shy bone in my body. I used to go to my Grandparents Hickey’s house, play the piano with my grandpa and sing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”. I would also pretend to tap dance wearing my Mary Jane patent leather shoes. Sometimes the neighbors would come to see me. The thought of making a mistake or looking foolish never entered my mind.
Do you think I could do that today? Hell no! I’m so much more conscious of making an ass of myself.
Truth be told, I’d love to recapture that free spirit and not care about what others think.
I was also a real ham and never feared standing up in class or getting on stage until…you guessed it, someone pointed, snickered and laughed at me. All of a sudden, I was gripped with insecurity and feeling completely self-conscious.
The fear of public speaking can be a huge stumbling block and is at the top of the fear list for most people. They are terrified of being rejected or looking foolish. The fear is so pervasive that many people I’ve spoken to about it have allowed huge opportunities to pass them by because they couldn’t speak up.
Honestly, I get so nervous every time I have to get up and speak live. Funny thing, I’m completely at home behind a camera. It feels so different for me than live eyes watching every move I make.
This week’s guest on Awakening Divine Wildness is Linda Ugelow. Linda is a real crackerjack at public speaking. She runs sought after teaching programs that show women how to release the fear and reclaim their voice. Linda knows how to recapture confidence when speaking publicly. She shares some of her favorite strategies to overcome fear with us.
I know you will love our conversation!
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Mal Duane Interviews Linda Ugelow, Producer of the TV Show Women Inspired
Mal: I am thrilled about this week’s topic because it’s something that’s so many women suffer from, and I’m one of them. I’ve got to be honest, people say, “Oh, Mal, you know, you record videos and you do workshops and you do listing presentations in people’s houses. You mean to tell me that you get scared when you get up on a stage to speak?” Yup, I do. I mean, you know that expression, don’t let them see you sweat? Well, honestly, I sweat. So that’s why I’m thrilled to have Linda Ugelow with me today.
[00:38] She’s an expert on public speaking and the roots of why we get so scared when we have to get up and use our voice. She’s helped hundreds of newly and seasoned professionals drop their stress and anxiety to feel comfortable and confident in front of a crowd and the camera. She’s a sought after coach for overcoming your fear of speaking and imposter syndrome. An international speaker herself, she has presented at the Positive Psychology Conference in France and recently emcee at the TEDx to Debrecen in Hungary. Linda is also an accomplished musician and dancer having performed in more than 500 shows around the world. She produces and hosts the TV, show Women Inspired and is the author of the upcoming book, ‘Delight in the Limelight’, which will be out in 2021. She also offers regular retreats for women, helping them to build confidence in their public speaking and we’ll get into more of that. I am so excited, girl, to see you and how are you today?
Linda Ugelow: I’m really happy to be on Mal. This is great.
Mal: Well, I’ve been interviewed by you and you’re masterful at being a host and interviewing people. I was completely relaxed with you and I love shooting video and things like that but, you know, very honest, if I have to get up on a stage, wow, everything changes very quickly. So let’s get into maybe some of those fears, some of those insecurities that we have as women about getting up and using our voice.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah. [02:32] The first thing I want to respond to, with what you just said, is that we’re all speakers, we speak from morning to night, but the thing is we’re comfortable in some situations and not others. And it’s different for every single person. So you described how you are really comfortable on video and you are, you are so poised and elegant and fluent and yet you feel very differently when you get up on stage. There are people who feel just the opposite. They can speak in front of a crowd, but put them in front of a camera and they freak out. And then there are people who want to do neither or like both of them but then if they’re in a networking circle and it’s their turn to speak, that’s when they feel terrified. So everybody has their own unique pattern. [03:21] And where it comes from are the experiences and the messages we have absorbed and experienced in our lives that gave us the sense that it wasn’t safe to be seen and or heard. And it could be any number of things, for each of us, it’s different.
Mal: Do you think that those fears, those insecurities start when we’re very small and it’s something we continue to carry with us?
Linda Ugelow: I think in most cases, that’s true. [03:59] You know, children, when we come into the world, we were not afraid to be seen and heard. In fact, we thrive on it and depend on it. You know, you picture the infant or the toddler who gets up for the first time and everyone’s delighted and laughing and clapping, she looks around and it just feels delight to be the center of attention. Or, you know, the four or five year old at the playground saying, “look at me, look at me, look at me, and look at me.” You know, constantly asking for that attention and then 10, 15 years later, afraid to stand in front of a group and speak for two minutes without breaking into a sweat. So in many cases, something has happened between that time of free self-expression and feeling okay to be you and then the eroding away as we learn to fit in, get along and follow the rules and be a good girl, and plus all the experiences or messages we might’ve gotten in our family at school or just in our culture.
Mal: I know for me, I was ridiculed as a kid.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah.
Mal: I was made fun of and so that started to create the insecurity in me that I was like, “Oh no, I better not raise my hand. I better not get up and speak.” And then it became more of a fear of rejection and that they don’t like me, so, I don’t want to get up and speak, they don’t like me, which always created in my own mind.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah.
Mal: And so you can see, that’s such a beautiful example and you’re so self-aware. So thank you for sharing that. [05:52] So you can see how being ridiculed would make it feel unsafe to express yourself or feeling that you’re not liked, so you don’t fit in, which most if not, you know, many and most, probably teenagers go through that because that’s part of the developmental stage of wanting to fit in. And most of us feel like we don’t. I even heard, I have a friend who teaches at Harvard and she said that they have a question for newly incoming freshmen, “How many of you feel like you are the odd person out and you really don’t belong here and it’s just kind of a fluke?” And half the people raise their hands. And those are people going to Harvard, who got into Harvard. I mean, we have an impression or a projection of what people going to Harvard must be like or feel like, but no, they’re not immune to this either.
Mal: Wow. So are there certain practices, steps we can take that will help us build confidence with getting up and speaking publicly?
Linda Ugelow: [06:55] Yes. Well, I believe that fear is not something to be pushed through or ignored. It’s actually a message. And it’s a message of these deeper things. So whether or not you had an experience of being ridiculed or bullied or you were ignored by your parents or you’re hovered over by your parents or you were pushed to perform, or you had, you know, some kind of experience in school, those experiences are needing to be looked at and honored, so that they can be healed and put away. Because the fear is really our body telling us that it remembers something that we should pay attention to. It’s like that’s what fear is. [07:45] Fear is saying you’re not safe. And so if you’re feeling fear that means that something’s getting triggered from a past experience, which in many cases is very protected, it’s protective. So by ignoring it, you’re kind of telling your body, “I don’t care. I’m not going to listen to you.” And what ends up happening is people, they say, “I just need more courage. I need to step outside my comfort zone. I’ve got to push through this and ignore it and don’t let it hold me back or keep me from living my life.” And what happens is that for some people, they may eventually get over it because they gain more evidence that in fact it is safe. But for many people, they end up carrying their fear with them. They get better at presenting, they get better at performing but inside they suffer. Kind of like you are expressing, cause you’ve learned to be very poised and express yourself so beautifully but inside you may be having a different kind of experience. [08:54] So, the tip that I have, it’s not a tip, it’s actually I lead people through a four step process, which I call the four Rs. The letter R of releasing fear and that Review, Resolve, Repattern and Restore.
Mal: Can you give us a little brief description of each?
Linda Ugelow: Yes. [09:15] So review is looking at the things that we’re talking about. It’s what I called, kind of like decluttering the psychic closet. It’s all the feelings and experiences that we have that maybe we haven’t looked at for a while, or we think, “Oh, that’s from long ago, and that doesn’t count anymore. I was a child, or I was younger.” And so it’s these experiences that we had, but it’s also messages. So for instance, how many of us have been taught, don’t stand out or don’t talk back to your elders or don’t question authority or if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all or children should be seen and not heard. Any of these messages that we get, we may think or we may not have even thought about them since we heard them. And so they become embedded in our understanding of the world. And if you have a message like this, it’s going to hit up against your desire to do just the opposite, to stand out, to take up people’s time and attention and to trust that what you have to say is of importance.
Even though all your life you are taught in school that you had to get somebody’s approval and grade in order to know that you were okay. So that though, so it’s the experiences, it’s the messages and it’s also our inner thoughts because our inner dialogue which I believe, the negative inner dialogue that we have, I believe emanates from these other two things, from the messages and the experiences. And when you review these and take care of them, a lot of those inner thoughts will shift, but some of them are kind of hardwired and then they take a little more attention. But we’ll hold onto that until later because that that comes into the last R. So that’s the review is like, let’s have a look at what were the rules that you followed by? Where did you feel diminished or put down or rejected or unseen? What are the things that you were told? You’ve got to like dig around for the treasures. I love what something Luis Hay once said, which was if you want to clean the house, he got to see the dirt.
Mal: Absolutely. I was just going to say that.
Linda Ugelow: Right, oh my gosh.
Mal: I was going to say, “If you want to clean something, you got to find the dirt.”
Linda Ugelow: I love that.
Mal: It’s the same thing with us. We’ve got to find what our weaknesses are, our challenges, and our fears, acknowledge them and work with them. You’re absolutely spot on. You can’t dismiss this stuff.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah.
Mal: It has to be worked with and embraced. It’s all part of you. So awesome. Step two.
Linda Ugelow: [12:02] Step two is to resolve what you find there. So it’s not enough to know that you were terrified by Sister Mary in Catholic school and you couldn’t think of what seven times eight was when she was knocking her ruler against her hand, threateningly. You have to find a way to kind of like close the book on it, in a conscious way. And there are lots of different modalities out there that you can use. I have my favorites that I like to use, but basically what you want is to find a way to acknowledge, first of all, that it happened, acknowledge the feelings that you had. Maybe even from your standpoint now, envision what might’ve happened in the best of circumstances, but clearly weren’t available to you at the time. Finding a way of seeing what may have been going on in the other person’s shoes. So expanding your sense of self compassionate to others. And then thinking about what it is that you need, you would need to let go, so that your body trusts that this is no longer a big story for you anymore. So there’s going to be some forgiveness and release involved, maybe cutting the cords. But you want to get to a place where your body trusts that it’s safe, now. That those things are no longer like active volcanoes ready to erupt.
Mal: I love that. Yeah.
Linda Ugelow: So that’s step number two.
Mal: Great.
Linda Ugelow: [13:46] So step three, if you want to get into it, is repattern. When you want to replace out your old ways of responding and reacting with new ways. So one of the things that I like to ask people at my talks or at the retreats that I do, is what is the desired feeling that you want as a speaker? And if you get into it well, like, “Mal, what are some of the things you would like to feel?”
Mal: I like to feel that I’m making a difference. That I’m bringing something that touches the women that I work with deeply, that they’re getting value insight. They’re getting woken up a little bit, getting a little bit of a shakeup.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah.
Mal: And feeling inspired that, “Oh, if she can do that, then I can do it too. If she’s gone through that and look how she’s living today, maybe I can do that too.” So it’s about leaving them inspired, inspired to take action, inspired to make changes in their lives.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah. That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. And you know what? You can do that without feeling comfortable yourself. I’m sure you do that already, even if you’re on stage. And what I would like to challenge you to think about is what do you want for yourself? How do you want to feel for you? How do you want to feel ideally up on stage?
Mal: That’s a good question because I think more about what I’m delivering. I guess I want to leave knowing that I was a presence of love, unconditional love for those that I was speaking with.
Linda Ugelow: That’s beautiful. I love that. So one of the, when you tell me about a presence. So presence is something obviously that one can practice. [15:59] I once read a book called ‘The Perfect Wrong Note’ and the biggest takeaway I had from it was that there’s nothing too small to practice. So if you want to practice, if you want to be a presence of love, you practice being a presence of love. And when you practice that, you will find that your body will become relaxed and open and you’ll shift into a place of openheartedness.
Mal: Beautiful.
Linda Ugelow: And then you can take that feeling of openheartedness and expand that out to include the whole audience, the whole bringing your energy to fill the whole room. So that’s, that’s beautiful and thank you for that example. So things that other people may bring up is, I want to feel relaxed or I want to feel confident or I want to feel playful. I want to feel like I’m fully myself, you know, expressive or I want to feel like I bring my humorful part out, which I would do with my kids. So each of these you can practice. And what that does is it re patterns your way of expressing yourself. And you can practice these things in your imagination, through mental rehearsal. Just kind of what we just did was a kind of mental imagination, right? And you can do the same thing with a sense of playfulness or relaxation in your body or calm and centeredness or a feeling of clarity. You just imagine that quality inside yourself and you can also practice that quality in your day. So for instance, you can get out of your car and walk to the grocery store with a sense of ease and elegance or playful and jauntiness. Do you hear what I do? Or you can have a conversation on the phone with a friend of yours and if you have a list, let’s say on a piece of paper and you say, “Hmm, today I want to practice loving presence. So as I speak to my friend, I’m going to be in this place of loving presence. I’m going to feel it in my body and I’m going to allow that energy to come out of me.” I have a feeling Mal that you do this all the time because that’s what I see in you, is loving presence.
Mal: Oh, thank you. Thank you.
Linda Ugelow: You’re welcome.
Mal: I love the idea, you say, practice this. It’s funny, when I know I’m going to have a difficult conversation with somebody, I rehearse it. In other words, I write it out what my intention is, what I want to communicate in that conversation, I make notes and then I go over it a few times. So that when I go into a situation where I’m having an important conversation or a difficult one, I’ve got something going on in my head that kind of guides me because I’ve rehearsed it, because I’ve practice it a little bit, have an idea of what I want to communicate rather than just going in cold. I think practice is very important when we’re speaking.
Linda Ugelow: I totally agree and I love that example and it’s not just in your head that you’re doing it, you’re doing it in your whole body.
Mal: Yes.
Linda Ugelow: [19:31] You are creating that neural pathway that has already have like a groove and it, so that when you go to speak, it’s already, it’s already part of you. It’s already, it’s not brand new.
Mal: Right.
Linda Ugelow: And I think that’s the importance of mental rehearsal as well. It does the same kind of thing. And you know, it’s interesting because this is the same place where I first began using this technique was in difficult conversations. And I would, you could name that or rename that as a high stake conversation. And speaking from a stage or speaking on a video is a high stake conversation, really. It’s one where you are asking people to give you their attention for a period of time.
Mal: No, no, that’s true.
Linda Ugelow: Right.
Mal: You mentioned that you have some favorite modalities that you like to use. Would you share one of them?
Linda Ugelow: Yeah, I’d be happy to. [20:37] So mental rehearsal is one. I sometimes call it creative visualization or which is very akin to hypnosis or self-hypnosis. Another one I use is EFT, emotional freedom technique.
Mal: Oh, wonderful.
Linda Ugelow: And I’ve been playing around with my own kind of version of it. I’ve been calling it emotional freedom journey because I feel like I teach people a script, a way of using a script in order to bring themselves through a process of healing these particular experiences that keep them from feeling safe, being seen.
Mal: I like that. I like that. The other thing I use too is, and I will and it’s probably similar to what you’re talking about with the visualization. Sometimes I will just get very quiet, do like a meditation, get myself in that just very calm, emptied, so that, you know, the monkey mind isn’t going. A quiet, meditative state before doing something that requires an important conversation, is just to ease into it from a place of peace and calm and being centered really, really helps me. If I try to get into an important conversation and I’ve got a thousand things going on and there’s, you know, millions of ideas racing through my head, I can’t converse.
Linda Ugelow: Because you’re not present.
Mal: Right.
Linda Ugelow: And so you put yourself into a state of place of presence. I agree with you. [22:26] I think that finding and having a way to prepare yourself before speaking is really important. I call them pre-speaking rituals. And there are a whole number of things that you can do to shift you in the kind of state that you would like to be in. Some people, I used to actually, before I discovered this process, I used to like do a lot of vigorous exercise because I had so many jitters in my body. I just needed a place to put them out. But then afterward I needed to center myself to bring myself to, as you say, that place of clarity and focus and there’s a chakra meditation that I like to do now in order to bring myself, I feel like I bring all my capacities together in doing that. It’s fun. I mean, you can choose and play with all kinds of pre-speaking rituals to get you to the place you want. You might see, oh, I know what I was thinking of like Tony Robbins, they have a shot of him backstage before he goes on and he does this twirl and just kind of like in the vortex and his energy and he comes up with his energy. And so it depends like what you’re trying to bring to that experience. Like if you want to bring a lot of dynamism and energy, then you’re going to want to put that in your body. You need to embody, that’s where the neuropathway comes in. [23:56] You need to embody the energy that you want to bring.
Mal: Love it. You have a very generous offer from your website, for the listeners, would you tell us about it?
Linda Ugelow: [24:06] It is a guided visualization for speaking confidence. So just kind of along the lines that we’re speaking about. It guides you into relaxing your body and from that place of deep relaxation, envisioning how you want to feel and seeing yourself on the stage the way you ideally would like to see yourself. And so again, it’s a way of patterning in that experience so that when you were there, you’re already, it’s already been rehearsed in your body. And what I love about this is knowing that Olympic athletes use this technique and peak performers use this technique. It’s very, very effective and I’ve had people who have come back and who haven’t even worked with me, but by just using that guided visualization and listening to it several times before a talk had huge success in staying calm and focused and feeling like they performed at the best of their ability.
Mal: Wonderful. How can people get a hold of you, Linda, the audience? What’s the best way to reach you?
Linda Ugelow: I would suggest, you can go to download that guided visualization at lindayugelow.com/speakingconfidence. But if you just go to my website, lindaugelow.com you’ll find the same download right there on my homepage.
Mal: Wonderful. And I will put your domain address, everything in the show notes, so they’ll, there’ll be a link there for them.
Linda Ugelow: Thank you so much.
Mal: Oh, it’s a pleasure to see you today and connect with you. Wonderful and I’m really looking forward to your book.
Linda Ugelow: I am too.
Mal: Delight in the limelight.
Linda Ugelow: Yeah.
Mal: I’ve seen the cover, so I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the book released.
Linda Ugelow: Thanks so much Mal.
Mal: A wonderful, thank you.
SHOWNOTES
[00:33] Mal’s introduction of Linda Ueglow
[02:32] Linda highlights that even though we speak 24/7s we are still uncomfortable when speaking. Each individual is different and shares different fears. She talks about the different fears that exist and we all have our fears when speaking be it in front of a video, on stage, networking circles.
[03:21] Linda states that our insecurities come from past experiences in our lives.
[03:59] Linda agrees with Mal that insecurities start at a small age. She stated that individual experience, family messages, and culture affects why we have fear.
[05:52] Linda states that being ridicule while growing up can make it unsafe to express your fears and insecurities.
[06:55] Linda believes that there are steps and practices that can help to build confidence. Fear must not be ignored but be looked at, honored and put away.
[07:45] Linda states that fear is something that is triggered by the past.
[08:54] There is a 4 step process that Linda uses and it’s called the four Rs. The R is for Releasing the Fear by Review, Resolve, Repattern and Restore.
[09:15] Step 1 is Review, this is to look at those past experiences that may have caused fear while growing up.
[12:02] Step 2 – Resolve. What did you find while looking at those past experiences? Think about what was happening then, even with the other person. In doing so you will expand your sense of self-compassion to others.
[13:46] Step 3 – Repattern. Replacing old ways of responding and reacting with new ways. Linda stated that she read a book called ‘The Perfect Wrong Note’ and she highlighted that there is nothing too small to practice. Practicing repatterns your way of expressing yourself.
[19:31] Step 4 – Restore. Linda talks about creating a neural pathway when you release what you are going through by rehearsal or practicing.
[20:37] Modalities that Linda uses are Mental rehearsal or creative visualization which is similar to hypnosis or self-hypnosis. She also uses EFT – Emotional Freedom Technique and her personal one EFJ – Emotional Freedom Journey.
[22:26] Linda talks about finding ways to prepare yourself before speaking is very important. She talks about Pre-speaking Rituals.
[23:56] She concludes by saying that we should embody the energy that we want to bring in.
[24:06] Linda has a special offer on her website, it’s a Guided Visualization for Speaking Confidence. This can be downloaded from lindaugelo.com/speakingconfidence.
