Thoughts to fill your head with when faced with trepidation.

When was the last time you felt real fear? Many people would say that it was just before they gave their last presentation, but it can happen to us at all sorts of times. Fear strikes different people in different ways, some only get worried just before doing a bungy jump and others fear making a simple phone call. No matter how safe we ”know” the activity is, no matter how much others tell us that “everything is fine”, no matter how many books we read about overcoming our nerves, the fear remains real and affects the way we behave.

Fear or trepidation is based on limiting self belief and, contrary to popular thinking, this is extremely common although many people wouldn’t admit it! Consider this: if you have complete and total belief that you are capable of a task, that you’ll be able to complete all the necessary steps however stressful the conditions become, and that you can handle whatever is thrown at you during the task, why would you be fearful? Many fears aren’t based in truth, they aren’t rational or logical but nevertheless they exist and they can easily stop us in our tracks and prevent us from taking action.

Outside of events like sky diving, which involve physical danger, lots of people avoid fearful situations because they don’t want to fail or perhaps, more accurately, they don’t want to be seen to fail. Failure itself isn’t what bothers many people, it’s the idea that others will see them fail that causes the fear. Public speaking is one of the most common fears in modern society but how much real physical danger are people facing on stage? I suppose you could be hurt by the rotten vegetables but in truth most people are scared of what the audience might think of them.
The athlete who is nervous about his performance faces the same challenge – if he was certain that no matter what he did, he couldn’t lose the race then he’d have no nerves but this situation never exists so the athletes train themselves to use the fear rather than let the fear use them. If we let the fear use us we will run away but if we can harness the fear and use the power that it provides then we can do an amazing job.

The ability to use the fear is what we call confidence and fortunately it’s a skill that everyone can develop. It isn’t genetic, something that only a chosen few are born with, it’s a skill anyone can learn as long as they are prepared to face their demons and attempt the thing they fear over and over again, accepting that failure is a necessary part of the learning process. Action cures fear – nothing else.

It’s interesting but most top athletes will tell you that the fear never goes away, they just get better and better at using it to help them perform. As many people have said; the butterflies in the stomach will always be there, however, with practice, we can get them to fly in formation. So what thoughts should we fill our head with when we face that fear and we want to overcome it? Obviously we need to have high levels of self belief and convince ourselves that we are capable of achieving the task so positive self talk is very important. I suggest saying something like the following (as long as you believe that it’s true):

• I can do this. I’m well prepared, I have everything that is required and I know I have the capability to achieve what I want.
• If Fred Smith can do this then there is no reason why I can’t. I’m just as good as he is and probably better prepared.
• I’m powerful, strong and in complete control, this success is mine for the taking. All I need to do is relax, concentrate on the outcome I’m looking for and stay focused.

Unfortunately many people have a negative self talk conversation like:

• Well I’ll give it a go and hope for the best.
• I’ve never done this before and I’m not very talented at this type of thing.
• Perhaps I’d be better off putting this off right now and waiting for a better time.

You can feel the fear and the failure contained in these sentences and, at best, the person is being tentative. As Anthony Robbins says, “when you are tentative you have no power; if you want to succeed you need to exude certainty”. Your self talk must be strong and powerful even when you don’t physically feel that you have complete control. It’s worth taking the time to plan what you are going to say to yourself next time that fear rears its ugly head and attempts to take over.

Who do you think you are?

Many years ago I heard on a tape by Dr Denis Waitley, a story about a scientific experiment entitled “The Pike Syndrome”. Apparently if you take a pike, a very aggressive fish and place it in a large fish tank along with a number of minnows, the minnows disappear and the pike gets fat! In this particular experiment they then divided the tank into two by placing a clear glass screen down the middle, the pike on one side and a whole new group of minnows on the other. As you can imagine the pike’s first instinct is to chase his next meal but he soon gets to realize that his action only leads to headaches and eventually he stops trying. Some time later you can remove the glass plate and the pike will remain in his half of the tank, leaving the minnows to live a long and healthy life in their half. The pike has been taught to be a “half tanker” and may even starve to death despite being able to catch and eat all the food he needs.

This process is known as conditioning and the pike has developed a conditioned response artificially created for him. Apparently we have all been trained in the same way although for most of us hopefully this didn’t involve tanks, jars or chains!

Every one of our past experiences in our lives, our successes and failures, our embarrassments and our victories, our highs and our lows are all stored in our memory banks. This includes all our past interactions with the people around us, those who help us and those who try and harm us. Our memory banks also contain all the standards that society has placed upon us and all the media’s perceptions of what is happening in the world. All these past experiences give us a sense of who we are, how right or wrong we are, how good or bad we are, what position we take on the list, whether we are at the top or the bottom and we use each new experience to strengthen what we know about who we think we are.
By the age of 30 you’ve had more than a quarter of a million hours of this external conditioning from family, friends, teachers, peer groups and bosses, from the environment around you and from the media and some studies suggest that more than 70% of this conditioning is negative. Many of us have been told that we are not old enough, tall enough, good enough, intelligent enough. We’ve been told we are too young, too fat, too nice, too hard on others, too trusting of people. The media tells us we need to have flat stomachs, big boobs, white teeth, and society says that we need to be more aggressive in business, caring and kind to others, well disciplined, relaxed but focused etc.

But this external conditioning is only part of the story. Who do you talk to the most? Who is it that does the most conditioning and damages your self esteem more than anyone else? Psychologists suggest we talk to ourselves more than 70% of the time and very often we are much harder on ourselves than we are on other people. When we fail to achieve our desired outcome we might say something like “Typical, you always screw things up”. If we don’t make an important deadline we might beat ourselves up with a comment like “Late again, when will you ever learn”. Even when we succeed and produce an outstanding result we may be tempted to take away some of the potential positive feelings with a comment like “You were lucky there, you don’t usually do that well”.

Now I don’t know how much of your 250,000+ hours of conditioning has been positive and how much has been negative but I do know that if you come along to one of my motivational talks hopefully you’ll get one hour of positive messages. However, how will that one hour stack up against the pile of negative hours you may have stored in your memory banks? You may leave my one hour talk feeling positive and motivated to raise your game and set your sights a little higher than they were, however the 250,000+ hours are waiting for you just round the corner to set you straight and put you back in your place!

All of your past conditioning has created what you currently believe you are capable of, and as we all know we can never exceed the level of our self image. However the good news is that our future self image can be changed by changing our current conditioning. This isn’t a quick and simple job, we may have a lot of negative past conditioning to overcome, but with constant effort we can change what we believe about ourselves. Have a look at the questions below and see if you can find some areas of conditioning that you can change.

Who do you see on a regular basis that doesn’t support your efforts, runs you down or is critical of your goals? Other than yourself who are the people who damage your self esteem the most? Can you limit your exposure to them?

What TV programmes do you watch that send messages to you about life that are less than positive? What could you do with the time that you currently waste damaging your self esteem watching these programmes?

Do you have a support group that you meet with regularly whose job it is to build you up and support you despite any setbacks you may experience? If not, who would you invite if you formed one?

What do you say to yourself when you fail to achieve your goals, meet your deadlines or produce a poor result? Are you critical, damning or even abusive towards yourself? What could you say instead that would build your self esteem?

How do you treat yourself when you succeed, what language do you use to raise (or lower) your self esteem? Is there a time of day that you could use to give yourself a positive uplifting pep talk, something that you could walk away from feeling good about yourself?

Let’s make 2009 the year we take control of the conditioning process and stop ourselves becoming a half tank pike!

A friend swam the English Channel last year, a great achievement. Now the swim has become part of a music video and it looks great - click here to view! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCxv74aYB98

2009 Bootcamps - Hong Kong and New Zealand

Fast track your speaking career with the
Speakers Boot Camp

Let professional speaker, John Shackleton, teach you how to:

‘Work for an hour - get paid for a week!'

Would you like to:

· Earn a 6 figure income from speaking?
· Rise to the top of the best profession in the world?
· Learn the secrets of successful speakers?
· Get more bookings from the Speakers Bureaus?
· Avoid the pitfalls that many speakers make, early in their career?
· Know what promotional materials you must have to succeed?
· Up-sell clients and get repeat business?

· Make better use of your marketing material to promote yourself?
· Understand the use of promotional video and produce one yourself?
· Create product and use it to double your speaking fee?
· Have more control over your audience and get standing ovations?

Your presenter and coach: John Shackleton CSP

Australasia’s number one performance expert, with more than 25 years experience in the speaking industry throughout Europe and the USA. John emigrated to New Zealand in 2003 and built a 6 figure speaking business from scratch in his first year! He went on to achieve his CSP qualification from NSAA in only 3 ½ years. This qualification is only awarded to the top 5% of speakers worldwide and usually requires 5-7 years to complete. On this Boot Camp John will share exactly how he achieved this phenomenal success in such a short period of time.

John has a background in Sports Psychology and worked with 3 New Zealand athletes who achieved top 10 places at the Beijing Olympics. His ability to inspire and motivate from stage is legendary and his recent clients include Air New Zealand, IBM and Coca-Cola. He has won numerous awards including 2007 Speaker of the year from the National Speakers Association NZ.

Check out John’s website (http://www.johnshack.com/) where you can see a video of him in action or read some of his articles here.

This 3 day Speakers Boot Camp will give you all the Business and Platform Skills that will fast track your speaking career to the next level and it comes with 100% money back guaranteed!

At Speakers Boot Camp you will learn how to:

· Develop a killer keynote
· Make your presentation come alive with stories
· Position yourself in the marketplace
· Use the media effectively to promote you
· Hold your audience and control their energy levels
· Set goals and create a business plan for your success
· Establish a speakers office
· Create more audience interaction
· Handle hecklers, interjection and apathy
· Make your presentation more humorous and entertaining
· Create product that can double your income
· Give the Bureaus exactly what they want and therefore get bookings from them
· Produce loads of referral business from your current clients
· Overcome your nerves and get rid of presenter anxiety
· Increase your confidence and ‘own the stage’
· Handle the awkward questions
· Leave your audience demanding more..!
· Video footage of you presenting that you can use to make a promotional video.
· Promotional photos taken by a professional photographer.
· Samples of proven marketing material that work.
· Hundreds of ideas that you can implement immediately
· A real passion for what you can achieve!
· Access to 1-on-1 coaching from John Shackleton.

Get your speaking business on the fast track.
Don't miss this Boot Camp.

Watch John’s video about the Boot Camp and view testimonials from boot camp attendees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3KGcmb6wog

Your 100% money back guarantee.

Because we know that you will receive real value we offer you a 100% money back guarantee. If, by the end of the first day you are not totally delighted with the program, you can simply return all materials and you will receive a full refund. No questions, no hassles, no fuss.

When, where and how:

Hong Kong First time in Asia!!!

Dates: June 5th, 6th, and 7th 2009
Times: 9:00am to 5:00pm each day
Venue: Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island
Investment HK$6,188
Early bird price - $4,988 if you book before 8th May
To book email John at john@johnshack.com
or call Merrin on +852 9154 9590 (Hong Kong time)

New Zealand
Dates: October 9th, 10th and 11th 2009
Times: 9:00am to 5:00pm each day
Venue: Auckland. Actual venue to be confirmed
Investment; NZ$1,499
Early bird price - $1,199 if you book before 18th Sep
To book email John at john@johnshack.com
or call John at +64 9 294 8570 (New Zealand time)

Here's what some Boot Camp graduates have to say:

Getrude Matshe - International Motivational and Inspirational Speaker

‘Speakers Boot Camp changed my life as a motivational speaker. I had no idea how much I was worth as a speaker and needed desperately to place a value on what I did best….speaking.
Boot Camp transformed not only my thinking but my whole life and I am now a sought after and well paid international inspirational and motivational speaker.

Six months after Boot Camp I have spoken in Australia, Los Angeles, Knoxville, Scotland, Singapore and London.’

Deb Bell - Speaker, Facilitator and "Her Business" Networker of the Year

‘Boot Camp is an amazing opportunity for total immersion in a supportive environment that stretched me to the next level in my speaking career. It’s not often that you can be with professionals who are where you want to be and who shared so freely.

Boot Camp was fabulous for my self confidence. It does not teach a cookie cutter approach but helped me to showcase my own story, delivery and style and gave me valuable feedback.

Observe the masses and do the opposite.

Walt Disney had an interesting view on success. He suggested that as our results in life aren’t random successful people must be doing something different to the unsuccessful ones. Since success is rare (something the masses don’t achieve) then Walt’s suggestion on how to achieve success was to observe what the masses do and do the opposite.

I think this is great advice and if you look at the most successful people you know I expect you’ll be able to see how they have achieved their success by using this principle. So what exactly can we do to achieve greater levels of success in our own lives? As you look at the following list notice how common the second half of each statement is and how rare the first half is.

For sales people:

• Give more value, don’t discount.
  
• Over deliver, don’t over promise
  
• Close, don’t assume they won’t buy
  
• Fix the problem, don’t look to blame others
  
• Make the call, don’t wait for a better time
  
• Approach, don’t stand back and wait
  
• Arrive early, don’t come late
  
• Try again, don’t quit
  
• Listen, don’t talk
  
• Look for solutions, don’t dwell on problems
  

For leaders:

• Lead from the front, don’t hide behind others
  
• Take responsibility, don’t abdicate
  
• Coach, don’t teach
  
• Listen, don’t talk
  
• Ask, don’t tell
  
• Apologise, don’t look for someone to blame
  
• Have an open mind, don’t be opinionated
  
• Make time, don’t tell people how busy you are
  
• Say please and thank you, don’t shout and expect people to jump
  
• Compliment, don’t criticise
  

For everyone:

• Help, don’t complain
  
• Give, don’t take
  
• Act, don’t observe
  
• Tolerate, don’t hate
  
• Smile, don’t be a grump
  
• Volunteer, don’t wait to be asked
  
• Take the stairs, don’t use the lift
  
• Eat well, don’t give in to the cravings
  
• Exercise, don’t tell us how tired you are
  
• Build your self belief, don’t care what other people think
  

SELF DISCIPLINE – The key to success.

If there’s one thing that my coaching and my own participation in sport has taught me, it is this: You will never achieve any modicum of success without being self disciplined. It would be ridiculous to think that you could go to the pool once and suddenly become a world class swimmer. The acquisition of the skills and the development of the necessary fitness require a high level of consistent commitment over a long period of time. In sport, champions often start before they are 10 years old, train most days of their lives and don’t achieve their success until they reach their twenty’s or thirty’s by which time they have dedicated most of their life to the attainment of their goal.

I believe the same is true for success in any activity, however many people in business baulk at the idea of repeating an activity that they aren’t very good at, over and over again in order to perfect it. I’ve heard many people say after a couple of small failures in their job, that they don’t have what it takes to be successful. I wish I had a dollar for every sales person who has said to me that they don’t like cold calling or for every manager who says they hate presenting to large groups.

Do you think a top athlete “likes” getting up at 5 am on a cold winter’s morning and putting their body through a couple of hours of painful training? Do you think they “like” going to bed early most nights and having little or no social life? Do you think they “like” having to regulate what they eat and drink so as to keep their body fat levels as low as possible. What they know is that if they want to win then they have to be disciplined with all the areas of their life that affect their performance.

If you want to be the top sales person in your company, a world class communicator or a great manager you will need the same levels of self discipline. You’ll need to have a commitment to learning the necessary skills and an extremely high level of consistent repetition of those skills. You will need to experience many failures in order to get good at something and then many more to become excellent at it. You will need to perform the things that you feel are “painful” until you perfect them and then raise the activity level so that the new task becomes “painful”.

An individual who has learnt self discipline and applies the skills to the attainment of their business goals is the type of person that every company is seeking to have on their staff.

Now lets face it, everyone knows what self discipline is and how it can be achieved, but as usual just “knowing” something doesn’t ensure we can do it. Keeping ourselves focused and disciplined often takes massive effort but this ability is not restricted to the talented few, anyone can achieve these levels of discipline. Perhaps the reason we don’t stay focused is that don’t understand what mental habits top sports people are constantly striving to achieve. As you read the list below, score yourself out of 10 on each of the attributes.

1. COMMITMENT. An athlete will often decide on a 3 or 4 year training plan to achieve a relatively small increase in performance. The key to their success is the discipline to stick to that plan. Commitment is doing what we said we would do, when we said we would do it, long after the mood in which we said it has passed.

2. A “DO IT NOW” MENTALITY. A sports person knows that they cannot make up for lost time. If they don’t go training, compete in the race or take the action NOW, that opportunity is lost to them forever.

3. A BELIEF IN “PAYING THE PRICE”. Because of their commitment to training all athletes know that there is no such thing as something for nothing. Anything that is worth achieving will require hard sustained effort. Instant success with no effort is either cheating or it does not exist.

4. CONSISTENCY. A sportsman keeps a training diary which logs every action he takes, no matter how small, and what result that action produced. How else can he discover which of his actions are working and which ones are not and therefore what to modify in the plan?

5. CONTROLLING FEAR. You will rarely hear a sport person say something like “That goal is too hard” or “I’m not good enough to achieve it”. You will usually hear “What do I need to do in order to get my goal.” To an athlete there can be no such thing as failure, only learning. If they have a poor performance or lose a race then they MUST learn from the event or they will never correct the mistake.

6. FAITH IN THEIR COACH. Every sportsman will decide whose comments and advise he will be using and whose words he will ignore. There are many people in this world who seem to enjoy finding fault in others efforts and achievements. An athlete has to develop total faith in their coach and in the coach’s training plan. Only then will they be able to give 100% effort.

7. CONTROLLING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS. How stupid would it be to stand on the start line and be thinking “This is going to hurt” or “I’m not going to win this race”!

8. FOCUS. How much mental focus does an athlete need in order to perform at their best? What happens to their performance if they get distracted and are not concentrating?

9. DECLARING GOALS. All sports men and women have stretching, well defined, accurate goals that are constantly discussed and modified with their coach.

10. SELF BELIEF. How well does an athlete perform when their self belief is low? How hard do the athlete and their coach work on that self belief?

Now add up your score and see what figure you get out of 100. Not only will this tell you how well you’d perform as an international athlete, it will also tell you which attributes you’ll need to work on to become indispensable to your employers or clients.

Staying positive

10 Practical tips to help you feel more positive in these tough times.

Raise your game. The saying goes that when the going gets tough the tough get going and that couldn’t be more true right now. This is the time to put in more effort than you normally do, focusing on the activities that bring in business. Remember: Anyone can succeed when the conditions are easy, it’s the tough time that really define us.

Turn off the TV. The media delight in telling us how bad things are at the moment and the more we listen the more we buy into their message. If you want to stay positive then don’t listen to their messages. Turn off the news and watch a Billy Connelly DVD instead!

Flush the negative people. Have you ever noticed how, if you let your guard down, the grumps of this world are able to bring you down to their level. Now is not the time to spend time with the negative people that you know, seek out the positive ones and spend your time with them.

Focus on your successes. The simplest way to get depressed is to focus on all the failures you’ve had in your life. We all have failures, challenges and bad times and the more we focus on them the more we feel negative. When we focus on our successes we feel so much better.

Get out of bed on the right side. Most people struggle out of bed and spend their first few moments of their day in a sleepy haze. Zig Zigler, one of the original ‘Motivational Speakers’ used to preach the following morning routine: Throw the bed covers off, leap out of bed and shout “IT’S GOING TO BE A GREAT DAY”. If you follow this routine I bet you won’t be able to stop smiling all morning!

Read some good stuff. The computer industry used to use the following to describe bad programming: GIGO: Garbage in, Garbage out. If you apply this to your brain you’ll understand why it’s so important to read uplifting articles, books and magazines if you’d like to stay positive.

Listen to some good stuff. I hope your car is like mine, full of motivational and inspirational CD’s. When we listen to the radio not only do we get the news every half an hour but we then have no control over what goes into our brains. Turn off the radio and control your input.

Attend uplifting presentations. When you hear speakers tell positive, uplifting stories doesn’t it make you feel better? Attend at least one positive, motivational event every week. Join a networking group that contains positive people, attend breakfast presentations and conferences to ensure you stay informed and positive.

Smile and walk tall. Our physiology dictates our mood and if we slump, walk slowly and look at our feet all the time we’ll find it difficult to feel powerful and motivated. Next time you are taking a walk try this: Imagine that you’ve just won the lottery and you are on your way to pick up the ticket before the deadline expires. Smile and the rest of the world will wonder what you’ve been up to!

Take regular exercise. Everyone feels better after they’ve exercised. Go for a swim at the early morning session, park your car away from the office and walk the last few kilometers, don’t take the lift use the stairs and then go to the gym on the way home from work. Exercise is good for you and it’ll make you feel great.

The swimmer with no arms.

During my time as a coach I’ve been very fortunate enough to work with some great international disabled athletes, both swimmers and triathletes. I’ve loved working with them and have always come away from the experience having learnt something about life and about myself.

I suppose it’s having to accept and deal with their disability which makes them so strong but they often seem to have a greater capacity to deal with adversity than able-bodied athletes. If our goggles break on the starting blocks then many of us are likely to go to pieces and swim badly but I’ve noticed many of the disabled athletes just seem to accept any problem which comes their way and get on with it.

As an Inspirational Speaker my job is to inspire the audience to greater levels of achievement and many of the other speakers I compete against have a disability. Some of you will have seen Tony Christiansen or Mark Inglis speak and know that they do a great job. In fact Mark and I once joked about how in our profession he had the advantage over me because he’d had his legs amputated! To make up for my disability (of not having a disability) I often show my audiences a video taken at the Sydney Paralympics in 2000 of a Chinese swimmer with no arms called Baoren Gong. I find that after I show the video people in the audience don’t tend to tell me that their life is too tough or give me an excuse as to why they can’t do something.

Take a look at the video below - I’m sure you’ll be in awe of what Gong does and I just pray that he never decides to become an inspirational speaker.