Is this you?

Are you overthinking…

• What people are thinking about you, and how many people are thinking about you?

• Believing that how you feel inside when you speak is how you LOOK on the outside -  “they” can see all your anxiety. (They can’t, but it feels that way.) 

• Thinking that you are broken inside somehow, and it’s just you who feels like this.

•  Having spent years avoiding these feelings, and realising that avoidance hasn’t made them go away. And is probably making them worse.

• Worrying about being the centre of attention, and feeling as though you’re being scrutinised.

• Struggling with the feelings of anxiety, and trying not to feel it at all, often making it far bigger and harder to handle.

• Believing your own thoughts about what other people are thinking when you’re anxious (usually highly critical of you). (Actually, you don’t have that superpower.)

• Thinking that practice, practice, practice will eventually help—but often just practising being more scared, and nothing changes. 

• Overthinking blank faces in an audience (it’s just the normal way people listen, but you read it as hostility).

• Feeling that you are not _______ enough (good, tall, thin, together, intelligent, clear etc.) Many people have an acute sense of lack.

• Thinking that one day confidence will just turn up some day as you get older. So you keep on putting things off that  you really would love to do…

• Thinking you should put on a performance and somehow magically be better than you normally are.

• Being very self-critical and harsh about yourself, believing that’s the only way to get better. And yet, it hasn’t worked so far. But you keep on doing it.

This is very normal. All very human. 
Underlying public speaking fear is this whole set of human wonkiness. We forget that we have a stone age brain that hasn’t been upgraded much since we got language! That’s the wonkiness.
And on every course, we talk about these things in a gentle way. My work is to help people rethink all of this. In order to do public speaking, we need to get out of own way.

We share so much around anxiety that it makes it possible to work on reframing and seeing public speaking differently in two days.  I want to explain this but  not in my words. The participants’  feedback below is from the last seven months and speaks of the re-thinking that can be done in two days to help us with our public speaking…

“I gained not just public speaking tools but a much deeper understanding of how I perceive myself versus how others perceive me, how my brain works, and how to manage emotions when speaking. I left with more peace of mind, not because I had no negative thoughts, but because I learned to accept and manage them. That shift has been transformational.”
Carlos

I understand so much more about the WHY which has really helped me realise how much I was in my own head vs what people can actually see.
Holly

The course was truly transformative. It gave me clarity, language, and tools to better understand my own internal chatter and step forward with more confidence — not just in public speaking, but in how I show up every day.

Aurore

I liked how it focused on the feelings behind public speaking rather than “how to conduct a presentation”. It honed in on why people hated talking in public, what things made people uncomfortable with it and how to combat or live with those things.
Liam

I do feel more confident in public speaking but also every day interactions.  I used to feel that I had to hide my nerves but I’ve realised it’s okay, everyone has adrenaline and as such we all get nervous.   I realised that I’m quirky and wonky and although I came on the course wanting to become a smooth, robotic presenter I’ve realised that I don’t listen to presenters that are  too smooth and actually being my authentic self is so much more interesting than being robotic.   John’s course made me feel comfortable in my own skin and that’s why the course has had such a fantastic knock on effect into all areas of my life.
Heidi

The biggest 'like' for me was the fact it looked under the bonnet at confidence and the psychology of being centre of attention. I ended up enjoying speaking towards the end, and also not dreading standing up. I was buzzing afterwards
Jack

It is very possible to make a huge difference to how you see public speaking in two days.

There is more feedback with more  detail and depth here