Helping Create Success
Is Your Self-talk Toxic or Strategic?
Our inner monologues never seem to take a break. We have a running commentary on our existence, 24/7. I don’t know what the current statistics are, but the percentage of negative or disparaging thoughts that any one of us might have in a short period of time can be shockingly high. We’d never tolerate someone else speaking to us the way we talk to ourselves
The fix for this is two-part. The first is to catch yourself having the negative thought in the moment you’re having it. This can be tricky if you’re so used to having toxic thoughts that you no longer notice when you’re having them. You can’t adjust what you can’t perceive, so tuning into your thoughts is the only way you’ll be able to do that.
Find Your Mantra
Once you do realize that you’re focusing on upsetting outcomes, interrupt the thought at once and pop in its opposite. Tell yourself what you want to do (which is an action) instead of thinking about what you want to avoid (the less dynamic reaction.) Here some suggestions for you:
- Soaring arrow…
- Fly high, land soft!
- Grace and gratitude are mine.
- I am sleek, smart and strong.
- No limits…I am unstoppable.
- Blast it out of the park!
Now, you might have snickered in the past at those motivational business posters, like the one with the mountain climber triumphantly conquering the summit with the words “Reach your peak!” But really, which is better? Saying to yourself, “I’m going to blow it,” or latching onto more inspirational thoughts?
These short bursts of moral self-support and healthy psychic re-alignment are called mantras, self-cues, slogans, or my favorite, shibboleths. Always use them in the present tense: “I am” instead of “One day I will be….” This makes their energy immediate and real rather than postponing their potency for some later time.
The psychology of using self-talk solely for a positive outcome is smart and useful for keeping a productive frame of mind. The brain doesn’t know or care which path we take, positive or negative. It’s an equal-opportunity conveyor of thoughts. As Hamlet knows, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
As long as we have a choice in the matter of how to think (and if we don’t control our thoughts, who does?), we should always choose in favor of ourselves.
Using Speaker Slides for a Smashing Success.
The first step to creating a riveting slide deck for a PowerPoint presentation is to step away from the computer! Instead, go for a walk, a swim, a yoga class-anything that will let your brain come out to play.
- Get clear on what you want to say, and always remember, “It’s not about you, it’s about your message.” (that’s my quote and I spout it endlessly because it’s true).
- Determine how you can best express the message verbally.
- Decide which visuals will complement the verbal.
Audiences can most easily remember pictures and stories, so use a photo, or diagram or drawing to illustrate the story…i.e. one financial analyst I coached told a story about visiting a microchip factory in Ireland, so I had him include a few pictures from his trip…much more interesting than graphs and charts.
- NEVER read the slides to the audience. This is the single biggest mistake I see. You are only competing with yourself for their attention when you do this. Instead, when a slide with bullet points comes up, give them 3-4 seconds of silence so they can read them. Then, pick up the conversation from there.
- Slides should never be busy-it defeats the purpose. Less is more, and more is less.
- Bulleted points should not exceed 3-5 per slide; just make another slide if you have more.
Font and background colors should contrast well and be easy on the eyes; you can use your color palette to set a mood- i.e. using a light green background for a presentation on environmental health.
When slides are used the right way, the presentation will soar. One client just gave a talk with slides about her 5 day wilderness training as a way to mend her heartache over her divorce. The story alone is remarkable, but with pictures it was a smash hit and two people in the audience immediately invited her to be guest speaker at their events. It doesn’t get better than that!
How I Handle My Hecklers.
Heckling-
1) transitive verb 2) to harass & try to disconcert with questions, challenges, or jibes: badger
Last year, I was giving a presentation to a room full of entrepreneurs. My slides were in order, the handouts were pre-set and I was prepared, fortunately, for what happened.
Maybe 3-4 minutes in, and a woman interrupts me with a question while I’m in the middle of making a point about…audiences, of all things. I pause, answer her question, and move on. She interrupts me again. This time I expand on my first answer and get back to my talk. She waits about 5 seconds before suddenly veering into dangerous territory, the Nazis and being Jewish in New York City…completely out of the blue as I’m talking about how to give a speech.
This woman was also my invited guest (I’d met her at a networking event) as well as cognitively impaired. My guess is that she’s used to interrupting and getting away with it, and I could also see that she was craving the attention. Do I take it easy on her? Let her enjoy a few minutes of the limelight?
Absolutely not. I stopped her, kept my gaze intently on her, and interrupted her every time she opened her mouth. It finally boiled down to a staring contest, with the rest of the room ping-ponging their heads between the two of us. Then I picked up my speech again, and that was the end of it.
Earlier in my speaking career, I might have gone along with being interrupted, but I’ve learned that there can only be one presenter. If some else tries to steal the focus from you, stand firm no matter what. You’re doing the audience a favor, as well as yourself.
I Knew He Was Lying By the Way He Said He Wasn’t!
Oh, I really don’t like liars and cheaters! Well, who does? But this one guy was so transparent in his fibbing to me that he deserves to be written about here. It happened last week, when my husband and I drove to Coney Island to check it out- I’d never been there.
We get there and look for a place to park. I see a big, abandoned lot that has cars in it, and drive in. There’s a man there, directing people where to park. He motioned to us, and I rolled down the window and asked how much it would be.
“$20.” My reaction was pure New York shock, as in “I live here and you’ve got to be kidding me!” It was an empty lot, with broken glass and litter everywhere. I said “$20? That’s too much.”
And then I realized that he was gaming me because I’m a blonde person, native American, with pale skin. He was non-native and not pale. He’s profiling me and trying to rip me off!
“It’s the same price for everyone,” he added. “Believe me.” Well, that’s precisely when I knew he was lying, or he wouldn’t have said it. The added “believe me” made me certain. My trusting husband was meanwhile saying “Just park here Katie-it’s fine!”
But it wasn’t fine, and so I gave the man a pained look and slowly drove away. Two blocks later, I parked on the street, for free. We had a blast just walking around and people-watching, looking at the guys fishing and staring at the ocean.
The best part? We each had a Nathan’s hot dog and an ice cream, for under $20
Clutter in the Convo.
Spring lends itself perfectly to sloughing off layers of life that we no longer need. Blankets, hats, excess pounds, and unused “stuff” —it’s safe to shed what you won’t be needing.
This includes your style of speaking!
How you come across in front of others makes all the difference in where you might want to go with your career. If you want to go far and wide, you’ll need to be ready to speak up spontaneously. Shakespeare was right- “all the world’s a stage.” Let’s make sure we’re ready to go on:
1) Are you padding your sentences with extra words and industry phrases when you talk to colleagues?
On a recent bus ride through the Lincoln Tunnel, I was reluctantly privy to one side of a typical work conversation. My young woman was liberally using industry-speak on her phone call. Those are the filler words, buzz-words, phrases, and things that everyone else says but no one gives much thought to.
I’d say it took up about 2/3 of her sentences, leaving her caller (and myself) with the remaining 1/3 to try to glean her meaning. Because she was asking a lot of questions, this back and forth went on for way too long. If she had just cut out the flabby words and phrases she was larding her sentences with, she could have finished her call in 1/3 the time and I could get back to my book!
This is an easy but deadly trap to fall into, because all of those industry words can add up. If you’re not getting mileage out your speaking, but are saying the same words that everyone else does, I encourage you to find a different approach. Words without significant meaning to the speaker are verbal clutter. They will eat into your listeners attention spans, without advancing your ideas.
2) Make sure you can be heard. Audio crispness- in phones, cameras, etc. has been in steady decline for years, and clear sound is never a given.
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire.
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Abraham Lincoln
Oh, the fibs are flying these days! Brian Williams commits the journalist’s version of “Stolen Valor;” Lance Armstrong drives drunk, crashes and says his girlfriend was at the wheel; and Tom Brady has nooooo idea what happened to his footballs. Really……… REALLY??
Of course not… which makes these lies all the more embarrassing. People, according to Lincoln, are not stupid. At least not all at the same time. It is so easy these days to get to the truth of some matters, with video clips, audio recordings, photos and eyewitnesses, not to mention good old-fashioned common sense.
The temptation to lie seems to be rooted in an instinct to make a person look better, in some way. It might not even matter to others, but to the liar, it’s important. My professor at The New School cautioned our class on plagiarizing, saying that it’s better to hand in nothing at all, rather than a paper that’s been plagiarized. The software to detect it is sophisticated, and she had caught one of her students trying to pass off a paper that wasn’t his. He was expelled from the school.
In the case of a known liar like Lance Armstrong, the hits just keep on coming! He got himself into trouble when he drove his car into some parked cars (“Lance had a little bit to drink”) and then sent his girlfriend scurrying in the snow wearing 6” heels to apologize to the owners of the cars. She said it was all her fault, they would pay for repairs, and then she and Lance took off. The police quickly got to the bottom of things and announced that it was Lance who was the drunk driver. What a guy.
Tell the truth, as best you can, and as often as you can. It’s easier. It’s classier. If you can’t do that, then remember what George Washington said: “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
Clutter in the Closet.
Everyone has clutter somewhere in their house, or their computer, or their head. It’s an ongoing battle which must be fought-this creep of things, ideas, and information. One place that can always benefit from a fresh look is the closet. I got that chance this morning.
Last night a 5-alarm fire destroyed a condo complex in Edgewater, NJ, our neighbors to the north, also on the Hudson River. 500+ people are homeless. Someone tweeted that among other urgent needs, clothing was wanted.
Clothing that just takes up space … you haven’t worn it in years but hope to fit back into it one day, or you paid a lot for so you can’t part with it, is taking up your energy as well as closet real estate. It influences the way you can see and style yourself.
Too much clutter in the closet is associated with too much weight on the body. Things that need to be repaired, altered or given away will bring your vitality down. This is especially significant when you’re going to be seen and heard in public…you want to be poised and look the part.
While I tend to have a lean closet, I looked at every item differently this morning. Is something that I’ve been hanging on to “just in case” worth more to me, or to someone who’s just lost everything? That made it easy to decide.
The Profound Effect of Clutter on Communication.
“As within, so without.”
Socrates
I once worked with a financial analyst who was bright, charming and surrounded by clutter in his office. It was a beautiful space, with views of Rockefeller Center, but all you could notice was the stuff. It was distracting…photos everywhere, piles of files, books, athletic gear, and a big ball made up of rubber bands that had made the last three moves with him. That’s what most of his clutter was…stuff that he hauled around but never gave much thought to.
We would get together in one of his firm’s meeting rooms, and then go back to his office to set a date for the next rehearsal. The difference in the two rooms was always so striking, that one day I asked him if he was open to cleaning up and clearing the clutter. He blushed a bit (he was known at his firm for his muddle) but immediately said yes.
It didn’t take too long, and it really paid off. We got rid of a lot of stuff, organized what remained, and tossed out the rubber band ball. We re-positioned photos of his wife to places where he would notice them. Colleagues started stopping by, as word got out. Their amazed faces when they walked in told me we’d gotten it right. It was a transformed work space, and now he’d be much better supported for the demanding work he did.
If you are in such a position, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to look at your space with “fresh eyes.” Walk in and notice everything. How does it make you feel to be in your workspace? Are you able to think and focus?
If not, do not think poorly of yourself, which does no good. Just gently start going through your objects, one by one. If you don’t love it, or find it useful, then it’s clutter and it’s having a major, negative effect on you. It’s an energy drain. Get rid of it, and welcome in the energy that the clutter has been blocking!
Answering that loaded question: “What do you do?”
Depending on where you live, asking someone you’ve just met ‘what they do’ can be taken a few different ways. Here in NYC, it’s perfectly acceptable but in Pittsburgh or Atlanta, you’d want to work your way through other topics first.
Last week I went to a sparkly reception, and since it was New York, that was the first thing everyone wanted to know. I noticed a number of people answering with “Well, I do _______, but I also do _____.” You can plug in any job or profession; what they were unwittingly saying was “I’m trying to succeed with a business I care about but in the meantime I pay my bills doing something else.”
If you should find yourself in a similar position, talk about what you love, and find out what the others love. It’s more interesting and more compelling conversation. You’ll be remembered for who you really are, and not what your business card says you are.
My mentor, Alan Sklar, always says: “People like to do business with people!”
John’s Salt: Why Men Will Cheerfully Take Credit For Just About Everything.
Whenever I’m working with women on the subject of owning their skills and contributions in business, they tend to go a little soft and wispy. It doesn’t seem lady-like to speak openly and confidently about yourself.
And therein lies the rub: men do it all the time. Even if they’ve played a small part in a successful project, many are not shy about claiming ownership. It seems to be how we’re wired but I think a little tweaking is needed.
When I recently decided to learn how to make salt, I did some research on the internet. I picked a beach in Truro, on Cape Cod and asked my husband to help with the project. He carried the water jug.
After we collected it, I decided that little salt sachets would be a fine gift for my foodie friends and so I needed a name for my salt. I tried out “Corn Hill Salt,” “Cape Cod Salt,” “Bay Water Salt,” “Truro Salt.” And then my fetching husband came up with “John’s Salt.”
I looked at him and he was quite sincere…no ironic smile or anything, just sayin’ … “John’s Salt.” He just carried the jug. I found this hilarious.
So ladies, I want you to think about this. Everything is relative. If you have a hand in a project, own it. Especially if it goes well and you helped with that. Otherwise, we aren’t worth our salt!