Insight

It takes courage to speak in front of a new audience. It also takes courage to speak publicly in settings you feel nervous or self-doubt.

For me, courage is a decision and action. A few dictionaries also define courage as something that requires mental or moral strength. To me, this highlights that courage is similar to your muscles, you need to train them to maintain or enhance it. I know through experiences of using courage to speak in settings I was afraid to speak in, that confidence is a positive consequence or result.

So What?

Confidence became a positive result for me when I used courage to make a decision to speak and then acted on it despite feeling fear. The positive results of confidence became consistenct when I did these things:

Had an open mind to be curious and learn from feedback and observations when I prepared and then spoke publicly without being attached to what I discovered.

Worked with the complete realisation that I can only control how I define my experience when I spoke publicly and not others, though knowing my audience and listening to understand them helped me calibrate what I wanted to say and how to say it.

Acknowledged with gratitude the experience I gained for going through the fear.

Tip to Apply.

Please get some paper and a pen to write down your responses, or you can do this digitally or record an audio answer.

Observe over the last week, times that you acted with courage. If you think the answer is zero, expand your reflection to include all things you do outside of typical public speaking but still require communicating with someone. Write down these moments. For example, it could be writing a tough email with kindness, exercising with a friend when you didn’t feel like it, being in a work meeting where you didn’t like someone, asking a question in a webinar you went too.

Now reflect back to the last four weeks where you were courageous when speaking publicly and in other settings. Write these reflections down. Approximately how much confidence did you have before and after these moments?

This practice helps you remember all the times you are already courageous in your life. It is to open up to remember the many moments you used courage, so much so that you have so much confidence that you no longer realise it takes courage to do these things.

Congratulations, I am proud of you.

All the best, Susan.