If you are comparing yourself with others

'I used to be scared of public speaking, so I took some public speaking courses,' Jamie Smart told me a couple of months ago.

Jamie is a well-known author, speaker, a trainer in the UK and a brilliant coach.

'The trainers offered all these approaches that they used to deliver a good talk. For example I they told me I should:

• Write the whole thing out.
• Practice it at least 3 times.
• Visualize myself giving the speech.
  
  

These approaches sounded logical to me, but I could never make myself follow them.

Instead, I would worry for weeks and beat myself up for not doing these things before a talk or a course.

Then I would write 6 bullet points on a piece of paper just before I’d go up on stage and I’d run with that.

My talks always went really well… but afterwards I always felt BAD about it.

I was convinced that it would have gone so much better, if I had just prepared more in the ways I’d been told I should in the public speaking courses.

I didn’t realize that it went well not despite but BECAUSE of the way I’d prepared.

What I did was aligned with my natural way of doing things.

My Natural Advantage is that I’m able to spot the 'gold' in the moment and to instantly see how to use it to have a maximal transformational impact on my clients and audience.

I usually have a direction I want to go into with my audience and maybe some points I want to touch on during my talk. But my actual speech or presentation is created in the moment, in real time, where I’m able to calibrate my audience.

If I try to prepare like I was told to in the public speaking courses, I LOSE my mojo: my ability to react to what is happening in the moment and use it to everybody's benefit actually diminishes.

When I realized this, I stopped beating myself up about preparing like I did. I stopped worrying about it. And it has been great ever since.’

I can tell you that the situation Jamie describes is very common.

You maybe even recognize it for yourself that it is sometimes difficult to see you did well even though everyone around you is enthusiastic and you enjoyed yourself tremendously.  

When you keep comparing your way of doing things with how you think you should have acted, you feel that you lack the capability, and you experience stress and worry.

If you find yourself stressing over the ‘right’ way of doing things that the experts recommend, even though you’re having fun and everything is going great, then you can be sure that you’ve stumbled upon a crucial clue as to what your Natural Advantage entails.

It is worth exploring those situations to find out more about your Natural Advantage and unique way of doing things. This way you can stop beating yourself up and you can return to enjoying your natural way of being and contributing to the world. Just like Jamie did so many years ago.

If you need help uncovering your Natural Advantage and your unique orientation to the world, just let us know. We then can schedule a call and see how we can help. 

To your Natural Way of Being,

Marloes

PS. Interested in knowing more about uncovering and working from your Natural Advantage?