The Power to Speak Naked

How to Speak with Confidence, Communicate Effectively, and Win Your Audience

Sean Tyler Foley

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781631954467
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Réunions et présentations

The Power To Speak Naked helps everyone unleash the power to speak the raw naked truth. For those who want to advance their career, increase their wage, improve their social standing, and skyrocket their confidence, The Power To Speak Naked gives them proven strategies to crush their fear of public speaking and empowers them to be able to speak in front of any audience, anywhere, at any time. The Power To Speak Naked features techniques that will make any presentation more dynamic, fire up any team, and give anyone the confidence to overcome their fear of public speaking. Within its pages, Sean Tyler Foley presents easy-to-read tips that make it possible for anyone to deliver a presentation that is engaging, persuasive, and memorable. He also presents proven actionable steps that will help anyone advance in their career and life.

Master Your Body, Master Your Nerves

When I was in middle school at age fourteen, I had a chance to speak at a Remembrance Day ceremony, which is similar to what Veteran’s Day would be in the United States. I had been speaking in public for eight years at that point because I had gotten started as a speaker when I was young. By this point, I had won multiple speaking competitions so anyone who asked me to speak knew they could rely on me to do a great job.

I was asked to read a famous Canadian poem called Flanders Fields by John McCrae. It was a huge honor because this poem gets read at every Remembrance Day ceremony. I had the opportunity to read this poem on three prior occasions, so I was comfortable with reading it again.

But this ceremony was different.

I remember seeing this grizzled, weathered veteran being brought to the front row in his wheelchair. He looked as if he had probably seen everything the world had to offer, good and bad. He was wearing all his medals and decorations, and he had a cane which he used to rest his chin on when he leaned forward in his wheelchair. He looked mean and bitter—there would be no smile on this man’s face today.

In my head, he looked at me as if to say, “what are you going to do today to impress me, kid? You have no idea what I have seen in my lifetime.” The enormity of what I was speaking about—what these veterans from the Greatest Generation went through—really struck me. Who was I to be reciting a poem to this man who had lived through war?

In that moment, I felt a pressure that I had never felt before or since. It was the first time I ever felt like I was being judged regarding my speaking.

I also have realized since then that an audience is not there to judge, and they aren’t looking for a speaker to fail. Our minds will always project the worst-case scenarios upon us in an effort to protect us from going outside of our comfort zones.

This man wasn’t mad at me, and he very likely was not thinking the things that I was projecting in my head, but that was the expression on his face, and I let it impact my speech.

The entire poem was gone. I couldn’t recall it, and I didn’t have a copy of it in front of me. I had recited this poem so many times that it didn’t occur to me to have a backup plan.

Catch the lesson: Have a backup plan.

Even the most experienced speakers get nervous or have their moments of agony on stage. My story is an example.

Another example where a speaker let the moment overtake him was Transformers Director, Michael Bay. He was speaking on behalf of Samsung’s new Ultra High-Definition Television at the Consumers Electronics Show in 2014. The teleprompter failed, and Bay told the audience he would “wing it” since the teleprompter wasn’t working. Samsung’s executive vice president was on stage with Bay and tried to assist him by asking for his opinion on their new television. Michael Bay simply froze, excused himself, and walked off stage.

The great lesson is that the moment can overtake any of us, so how should we cope when we get nervous?

When you are getting ready to speak, one of the best things you can do is be so prepared that you’re ready for anything. This means that part of your preparation is to learn how to master your nervous energy. The reason I say nervous energy is that we all get anxious before we speak. Even the best speakers in the world experience some level of anxiety before hitting the stage.

Getting nervous happens to the best of us. Have a strategy for handling anxiety.

Control That Nervous Energy

So, how do we control that nervous energy? There are a lot of techniques that you can use. One of the ways that I have learned to control this kind of energy is to look forward to the feeling. Believe it or not, I have trained myself to anticipate the high and the rush that comes from a well-delivered presentation. It’s not something that I fear anymore. I look forward to those jitters, that excitement, that nervous energy that happens behind the stage. One of the best examples of somebody who can harness nervous energy is Tony Robbins. If you get a chance, watch I’m Not Your Guru and see what he does in his backstage warm-up. He has his little mini trampoline, and he stands there and jumps. He also does some amazing breath work.

That is the very first thing you need to do. Instead of being fearful of being on stage, train yourself to look forward to the opportunity. Here’s the truth: the more you look forward to being nervous, the more you embrace it, and the more you’re going to look for your speaking opportunities. It’s a mindset that begets a more positive mindset. So, my first pro-tip is that you should look forward to speaking on stage.

Now, there are a couple of ways that you can do that. I’m going to share tips which I use that may work for you. Use the ones that speak to you, and throw away the rest.

Strategies

Affirmations

One of the things that I have done for a very long time is utilizing “I am” statements, which are back by science. There is a psychology behind constantly training your mind to think something. I write daily that I am a confident, powerful, authentic, engaging, highly paid international speaker. In particular, I stay focused on the “powerful, engaging, authentic speaker” section of that phrase.

What are some of the attributes that you aspire to be? Whether you already have them or not, those are the things that you’d want to put down in your I am’s. So, if you want to be more confident, say “I am a confident speaker.” We want to change the negative mindsets and reinforce the positive, and this is a powerful tool to begin to do this.

One of the other techniques that I use in order to get in the right mindset is to have a pre-talk routine. For the 15 to 20 minutes before your talk, do the same things consistently. For me, that is finding a quiet area in the auditorium and doing some breath work with visualization.

Piss on the Venue

I know speakers who metaphorically piss on the venue an hour or two before anybody is allowed into the auditorium or room where they’re speaking. What that means is they will push every wall, touch every seat, and get a feel for the venue. They will make it their own, and they will even walk the stage. I love to walk the stage, and I recommend that you do that as well. If you get a moment to be on the stage prior to the audience there, it allows you to do a lot of visualization work, and with that visualization, you can get into a mindset where you can project yourself into the future. You can see the audience because it’s easier since the seats are right there. If you can’t get to the venue, see if you can get a picture of the space you will speak in. Take the time to focus and do some meditation on giving your talk. I’ll discuss this a bit later.

Engaging with Your Audience

One of the other things I would strongly recommend—and this goes to being a good presenter and not simply harnessing nervous energy—is to not memorize a speech (I discussed earlier). If you do that, then you may get into the mindset of wondering what to do if you forget the script halfway through. I always break up my speeches into the five to ten bullet points that I want to cover.

When you have bullet points for your talk, you can put them up on stage, at the podium if there is one, or you can put them anywhere to guide you and center you. But if you are focused on memorizing an entire speech, you’re simply inviting more nervousness. I used to act on stage and in film, and I wouldn’t memorize the entire play. I would memorize my lines and then the lines that cued them. So, try to get away from recalling an entire speech. Instead, commit the concepts to memory. You will be more authentic.

You’ll be able to engage with the audience because you won’t be worried about which word or phrase comes next. You’ll be able to share your story and your content in your own way. Of course, it will change each time, but that’s great because if you have people who come to see you speak over and over and over again, then you’re not giving the same speech repeatedly. You may be giving the same presentation, but it’s never going to be the same talk—if that makes sense. That gives your audience a little bit of extra value, and then you have that feedback from them. Get away from the memorization, and that unto itself should help calm your nerves.

Play with your audience and be one with them. It’s your one job to provide them with value, and the best way to provide them with value is to engage with them. By calming your nerves and not memorizing your speech, you will be able to then interact with and provide them with better value. That’s a better experience for both parties involved, so stay focused on the audience. Instead of focusing on how you feel, focus on how the audience feels. Focus on what you can do to pick up on their cues, and if you learn to read your audience, then the nervousness factor disappears because you can only concentrate on one thing.

If you concentrate on your audience by making sure that you’re reading your cues, looking around, and making sure that you are providing content and value, then you don’t have to worry about what you’re doing. It’s about providing a great experience, focusing on your audience and having a conversation with them. Even if you pick one person in the audience, you were able to look at him or her, focus and really be able to calm yourself that way.

Some people suggest that you picture your audience naked. I have never really understood that advice or what purpose it serves. Another thing people suggest is to look above your audience’s heads. Why would you do this? Instead, look people in the eye.

Really connect with them, and you will be able to get a feel for how you are doing.

Pro-tip: If an audience has come to see you, they don't want to see you fail. That's usually every speaker's biggest fear. The audience is on your side!

Audiences don’t know you have a fear of failing, and that’s the other great thing about going with bullet points rather than memorizing your speech. They don’t know what you’re going to say. Even if you’ve given your talk multiple times, they still don’t know what you’re going to say. Nobody I know has ever gone to a talk and said, “I hope this speaker sucks, wouldn’t it be great if they bomb.” You’ve never done that. I’ve never done that. That’s not the way that humanity works. We go to hear speakers waiting to be wowed. That’s your moment. That’s your opportunity, so get the negativity of projected expectation of failure out of your mind. That audience is there to see you succeed because you are the expert. They’re here to see you. They are already there in support of you, and they want to see you succeed.

Go in focused on success. You are in an auditorium with 4, 400, or even 40,000 people, and they’re there to see you succeed. So, when you’re doing your mental prep, picture the love and the energy of your entire audience there to see you rock your speech. You have their support before you ever get on stage, and when you get onstage, they continue with that support. All you have to do is be there and give them the content that you promised to maintain their support. Give them the experience they came for and they will continue to love you. Focus on that and embrace the nervous energy. Start to love it and know that your audience is there for you, and you are there for them. Love the audience, and all of a sudden it becomes a positive experience. You being on stage is positive instead of negative. You don’t need to be afraid.

Breathing Exercises

Another great thing you can do to master your body is to breathe. If you have done any form of meditation, you might be familiar with Prana Breath; it’s one of the techniques that I have learned to use. It’s a subset of a tantric work. If you want to know the science behind Tantra, breathing, or meditation, there are a lot of resources. Reach out to me, and I can send you that information. It’s about breath and connection. As a speaker, we want to connect with our audience and, in a larger sense, with our world which is what got me into the breathing exercises. Remember when I was talking about how some speakers will touch things in the room, and they will touch the walls and the chairs? I don’t do it physically, but instead, I do it metaphorically.

I like to breathe my energy into the room, so I will do my meditations prior to it on the stage if I can. If not, I will do it backstage, and I will breathe my energy into the room. That’s how I get started. I want to extend my energy out into the area so that it is now my space, and I get to welcome people into my zone and give them an experience.

The way that I do it is through Prana Breath, and I use three different cycles. Typically, a breathing meditation will be seven to ten minutes, sometimes as long as fifteen. I like to do three cycles in seven-minute segments so that it takes up my twenty to twenty- one minutes of prep time prior to going on stage.

The order of my three breathing meditations is that I clear my mind, I calm my body, and then I finish with power breathing. With a clear mind, it’s simple breaths in and out. With Prana Breathing, it doesn’t matter if you’re breathing in through the nose and out through the nose, or in through the nose, out through the mouth. The key is you’re not going to breathe in through the mouth.

Now, with a clear mind, it’s simple breaths in, and then out. But what you do is change the timing on the inhalation versus the exhalation. Take three seconds to breathe in and then take nine seconds to breathe out. Now, when you’re breathing out, you want to do a full exhale. Work through the diaphragm and breathe in from there, then fill up your lungs. When you breathe out, start from the lungs and then finishing by collapsing your diaphragm. That’s the cycle: in out, in out. I use a metronome to keep a consistent and steady pace that is set to sixty beats per minute, which is one beat per second. I listen to it—tick, tick, tick—and then I count in my head, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

It helps that I’m a drummer, but if you’re doing that correctly, you’re going to have a total of five breaths per minute. If you’re breathing in for three seconds out for nine, that’s a total of twelve seconds. Twelve seconds divided by sixty, five breaths per minute. That is what I do to clear my mind.

The next breathing pattern I use is ‘calm’, and it’s a little bit of a different cycle. It’s three seconds in, six seconds hold, three seconds out, six seconds hold, but here’s the hitch. It’s like a singer’s breath. A lot of these techniques are used by professional singers and vocalists, and they have power in their voice. So, when they talk, they project from the diaphragm. That’s why we want to breathe in through the diaphragm because if you get used to doing that—and if you’re doing it for twenty minutes prior to going on stage—your body naturally wants to start breathing in from the diaphragm. Suddenly you’re breathing in that manner. You’re supporting your voice. When I do this, all of a sudden, I’m really loud and can fill an auditorium without actually ever having to breathe.

I can probably sustain thirty seconds of talk in one breath because

I supported the breath through the diaphragm, and I very rarely use a mic in large auditoriums. In a small auditorium that fits 500 seats or less, I’m all me all the time, and I’ve never really had a problem. That’s why we’re talking about breathing because it is so effective. It will support your breath very much like a singer, and you’re able to speak and project for longer periods of time.

So, the calm breath works like this: you’ll take three breaths. Breathe in for three seconds, then hold it for six seconds, and then exhale for three seconds. Continue this cycle for seven minutes.

Let’s explore this a little further. After you do your initial breath intake for three seconds, you’ll want to sustain that breath within your cavity for six full seconds. Then breathe out for three seconds, releasing all the way. About 90% of your air should come out in those three-second breaths out, and then again, sustain for six. You have to be calm doing that because otherwise, you’re going to metabolize the oxygen within your system. That’s why it’s calming, because you need to control that breath so that when you are in those plateaus—both above and below, breath in and breath out—you’re able to control your body and control your oxygen. Again, it’s backed by science. You can look into it, but know this technique will work. It will force you to calm down. If you do that for seven minutes, you will have taken three and a half breaths per minute, so you’re slowing your breathing down significantly. Now let’s explore power breathing. I like to move into power because, again, I like to bring my energy out into the room. If you take that power and if you get into the mindset, then this is when you can really start focusing on your breath, focusing on your venue, focusing on your audience, what you want to do, and what you want to deliver to them.

The breath cycle for power is three seconds breathing in, six seconds sustaining, and then six seconds breathing out. After you breathe in, you’re al...