Finding Your Voice: Insights from Speaking Mentor Chris Murphy

In our latest episode, Chris Murphy, also known as 'The Speaking Mentor,' joins us to share his journey and expertise in helping people find their voice and improve their speaking abilities. We delve into the psychological barriers people face when it comes to speaking and how he helps clients overcome these fears through group sessions and individual coaching. Chris emphasises the importance of addressing the root issues rather than just providing quick fixes. We also touch on the importance of self-awareness, personal growth and accepting your unique voice. Chris offers practical advice for those looking to improve their speaking skills and gain confidence.

• 00:00 Introduction and Welcoming Chris
• 00:13 The Concept of Finding Your Voice
• 01:31 Overcoming Speaking Fears
• 03:40 Real-Life Examples and Group Dynamics
• 07:26 Chris's Journey to Becoming a Speaking Mentor
• 20:05 The Importance of Practice and Feedback
• 28:55 Understanding Audience Perception
• 34:15 Embracing the Unknown
• 35:13 Understanding Fear in Public Speaking
• 37:27 The Joy of Making Mistakes
• 39:08 Teaching Children vs. Adults
• 42:30 You Are Good Enough
• 43:27 Handling Criticism and Staying Calm
• 47:14 The Power of Mindfulness
• 50:58 Chris Murphy's Personal Journey
• 53:10 The Speaking Mentor's Approach
• 55:17 Connecting with Chris Murphy
• 58:50 Final Thoughts and Farewell

About Chris: I trained as a Chartered Physiotherapist in London and during that time discovered my dislike for public speaking. With a mixture of sweat, shaking hands and a full body blush, I decided to make a change. 

Things progressed so much that in May 2020 I was a double Toastmasters UK public speaking champion.

I changed career and moved into teaching both adults and children the skill of speaking to others. I do this 1-1 and in groups and I’ve worked with individual, business and corporate clients across the globe.

Aside from speaking, I love the outside and relish the planet we live on. I grow vegetables on my allotment and nourish the local slug population with a varied stationary buffet.

Connect with Chris : 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thespeakingmentor/

Website: www.thespeakingmentor.co.uk

Email: chris@thespeakingmentor.co.uk 

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Homework for this week:  

Challenge Limiting Beliefs: Make a list of beliefs that might be holding you back from speaking confidently (e.g., “I’m not interesting enough,” or “People won’t want to listen to me”). For each belief, write a counterstatement that affirms your value and uniqueness (e.g., “I have valuable experiences to share,” or “My voice is unique and worth hearing”).

Share your counterstatement with us and we will remind you pf it each week! If you’re happy to, be brave and post it on social media, tag us and use the hashtag #reignmaker 

Thank you for being

Transcript

 Welcome to How To Reign When It's Raining, the podcast for aspiring and current entrepreneurs who faced life's toughest challenges and are ready to transform their mindset for success.  

Music plays. 

Hi, and welcome back to the How To Reign When It's Raining podcast with Dolina and Abi. We've done something a little different this week, and we're so excited about this guest interview that we decided to release it early.

We had such a beautiful, juicy chat with Chris Murphy, the speaking mentor recently, and his passion for helping people find their voice. His approach and his deep understanding of human nature offers invaluable guidance for anyone looking to improve their speaking skills.  Learning to speak effectively is a journey, and with the right mindset and techniques, it can also be an incredibly rewarding one.

So please listen for the key takeaways and action steps at the end, and please welcome Chris Murphy.

Hello. 

Hello, Chris.  

Boom. 

How are you? 

Bright and breezy. Woo. Two, two. Pip pip, pip. How are you?  

Yeah, good, good, good. I love your energy. 

Yeah, absolutely. Great energy! So  Chris, I just wanted to say welcome and thank you for being here with us on our podcast.  And I was just looking at your website and, uh, I love your tagline, find your voice. 

Oh, it's a bit hack. It's a bit cheesy, uh, to be honest with you. It's, it was kind of the, the, the website was put together in a hurry a few years ago to get something up there. And it's changing and morphing. And the, if I, if I was going, if I was to tweak it and change it now, it'd be more about  something it's equally hacked to just believe in yourself or know yourself or something like that, that seeing the change that's happened over the last few years.

Is everybody has a voice in whatever way, even when they're not speaking, they have a voice and it's how you put that across and for the majority of people in relation to speaking is they don't believe they've got a voice or they don't, they believe they have worth or they don't believe anyone's listening to them or they don't believe that anyone's going to be accepting of what they're going to say or they have anything to offer and a whole host of other things. 

And so there's an element about belief and knowing. And that, that'll be the change now. And so in finding that belief, I think then people find their voice. 

So you've, you've just mentioned, it's the thoughts and beliefs that people have,  about what they believe speaking is, how do you overcome that when you're working, with your clients?

Ah, well,  good question. In this, starting off gently, and because what happens is, in, in a, my favourite thing ever is to work in a small group, the reason being is that people are in front of, of having to speak in front of other people, which is ironically the thing that they've all come there to do, but people often don't spot that early on.

I've kind of given the game away a little bit. So they're doing the very thing, they come there. To learn to do because they're afraid of it and they're doing it from the word go, you know, from the, from the get go. And, and in doing so, what I encourage people to do is to voice what is going on in them at that moment.

So, so say for example, someone's about to say something and then there's this,  oh, no, no, no. In that moment, in the, ahem, oh no, no, no, what happened there? What happened in that exact second, microsecond?  And it's usually something dismissive about themselves, that it's not worth it, it's a silly comment, that no one's listening, people think it's stupid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, this whole host of other personalised, individual reasons. 

That if you gave the, that has them stop in that moment,  and it's catching that in the moment and dealing with it in the moment, as opposed to thinking, think back to the last time you spoke.  No, no, no. You've lost the heat. The heat's gone. And so for me, it's catching them in that microsecond and having them voice that.

And 99 times out of 100, someone else will say, Oh my God, that's exactly the same for me. Or that's something I experienced. Really?  No, no, I thought it was just me. No, no, it's never just you.  And so what then happens as the time builds with the course, so people voice this more and more and then we explore it.

in different ways about what's going on for the audience, what's going on for the, the speaker, what's going on for the other speakers listening to that speaker.  And I was  talking to, I was teaching a leadership team  a little while ago, and it was a group of seven people. And so there was the CEO, finance director, head of HR, head of social media, sales director, two regional sales managers.

I think that's the right numbers for seven.  And, We were fairly early in the session and about, about half an hour in, four hours we had together and the head of HR had said they were at this regional sales meeting, all of them presenting, and she said, of course, I completely, you know, mucked up this thing at this point in time,  and I said, oh, just going to pause you there.

She said, you completely mucked that up, Sadiya.  And I said, when was it? And so she explained it. And I said to the rest of the team, I said, were you there? And they said, yes. Did you experience that? Did you notice that point when she completely mucked up? And I said, no. And I said, well, I  noticed you paused.

And then you carried on speaking. Someone else said, well, I noticed you stopped to have a drink of water, went back, and then carried on. Didn't notice.  She was incredulous. Incredulous, looking around wide eyed, saying, you are joking.  And I said, yes. That was your experience of completely mucked up.  And she said, that was a drop mic moment.

She said, I'm done, that's my value from this session. She said, I'm leaving, I'm getting like teary thinking about it now. Wow. And she said, I cannot believe that everyone didn't notice that and everyone in that room was thinking, what a complete muck up. And I said, there was only one person. Based on the evidence we have here. 

She said, I find that incredible.  So it's catching those moments for people. But also then starting to gain data from elsewhere where everyone thinks this. People are believing this. Okay, let's stop. What are people believing? And then they say what they're believing.  And I honestly don't believe people are thinking, Oh, I'll just say that's to be nice.

Because I say, what did you think? What were you noticing?  And that question is a real key one. What are you noticing? What did you notice?  And that's the way we start to explore it. So don't give them tools. Don't give tactics. I don't think, when you think this, just focus on your feet.  Let's deal with what's going on.

Yeah, you go to the root of the problem. 

That's, it's so powerful what you were just saying. So it sounds as if people Open up to you, Chris, then, 

uh, happens daily. Yes,  exactly.  But the key thing with that, that's where people, I mean,  people have equated it to therapy before, but  I don't need to know the detail either because the work is done in them. And  so with regards to people think, Oh, I've got to spill my guts.

And so we, you know, what we do is we catch you in the moment and then. People are really clever.  They start to make connections, and I give a framework that allows people to start slowing things down, teasing things out,  so that in doing that,  they then start to understand themselves, they understand the connections they made, and then thinking, well,  is, it was a cheesy question, but is that the most helpful thing to think?

Is that true? You know, what's my truth in  And by slowing that down, allowing them to do the work themselves, then they think, well, that's completely made up.  I've got zero evidence. And we'll put,  we'll demonstrate things, we'll show things in the room, but this is with groups especially, because  to challenge where someone believes something, and then, as I said earlier about other people are believing something different, but also I've, the way I've explained things over the last few years and other ways of putting things across such that, People have a different perspective and in having that other perspective, they then can start to challenge their beliefs, their truths. 

So let's just rewind then a bit, Chris, to, you and your reasons for starting. Your business as the speaking mentor.

So, before I start that, the one thing that I always find fascinating looking, certainly in my career, and also when my wife and I talk about where we are in life, is when I look back now, it makes perfect sense as to how I got here.  If I was to sit, if you were to sit me down at 18 years old and said, and by the way, You know, 50 something, you'll be doing this.

It was like, uh, it, so kind of, and I say that deliberately for people who are early on in their career thinking, what am I going to do? It's like, I, I had landed doing the thing that I absolutely adore. I don't have a particularly spiritual belief, but I was put on this earth to do what I do now.  And so I speak to,  I am, Again, another phrase that people have now, living my best life, but it's happened through increments.

I'm on my fifth career now, whatever, and, and, and I adore what I do now, but every single thing I've done today feeds into what I do now, and I believe makes me better at what I do. And so that thought earlier on where people look and say, Oh, what am I going to do with my life? .

Do a job, learn from it, move on, and then do something else and change and go and morph and, and grow and learn, because it all feeds into what you do and you have to learn what you don't like as well as what you like. So that's my kind of quick  caveat, which is I know not what you asked me to answer your question.

No, it's excellent advice. 

So to answer your question, very long story, very short. I did drama as a kid. I was, I used to go to church and loved performing in front of people. Went to university to study physiotherapy  and stood up in front of my peers. They said, Oh, we need someone to do a presentation. Oh, bright red, blushing, heart racing, shaking.

Couldn't get my words out. And it was, what on earth happened here?  And  frankly, unable to do it, scared of it, but nobody else put their hand up and I thought, well, I can carry on doing this and learn to do it, or I can avoid it. So I took the plunge and I said, well, I'll keep putting my name forward. And it gradually got easier and easier and easier, not hugely, but it did get easier through practice. 

And I can, I can talk about practice later on a little bit because people think, oh, if you just carry on doing it, it gets easier.  And so I've qualified, worked in the NHS, worked in private practice. And did more speaking and begin, began to gradually enjoy it, which isn't a word that most people connect with speaking in public or speaking to others, as I often refer to it. 

Worked, I went off and did a master's degree, did more speaking in relation to that, then got a job as a university lecturer, I started a business. which is a training business for health professionals, weekend courses, CPD courses, et cetera. And so all of those little amalgamations carried on until the business took over and it became a more than full time job, 110 hours a week, seven days a week charging around the country. 

And I suddenly realised I was an administrator  and I hate admin.  And so around 2015, I closed the business. I had an epiphany whilst weeding my potatoes.  I was listening to an audio book called Profit First, which isn't quite what you might imagine from that title. And I realized I'd got my priorities a little wrong.

Had a chat with my staff  and 12 weeks later, my last member of staff left. I made them all redundant to help them get other jobs. And over two years, I closed the business  and they, they, they said, I told them the problem and they said, well, there is any one thing you can do. It is close the business. And so I helped them get other jobs and still on friendly terms with all of them. 

And I closed the business over two years. I ran it down because it wasn't going to make very much money. It was taking a toll on my health.  And I then reached that point when that was about 2018, what was it? Then 46 or so, 46, 44. I can't remember doing my maths now, 46. And I thought.  What should I do with my life? 

And I met my wife and got married and moved down to Tunbridge Wells in Kent. And I took a couple of years off to rebuild this house.  Whilst doing that, I joined a public speaking club because I'd become fascinated by speaking  and in joining the club. It was a failing club. I didn't want it to fail for selfish reasons, so I helped all the positions, the president, the secretary, the marketing, so on, built it up.

Then I started entering speaking competitions, who knew there was such strange things,  and I did quite well, and I won locally. And then I won nationally a couple of times,  and I started in teaching for kids and for adults.  And there's two things that came out of all of this long, long story was that I adore teaching.

I adore being with people and being a facilitator for their learning. And I deliberately used the word facilitator there in terms, it's not me teaching. It's allowing people to discover stuff. I adore that. Tell me to stand up in front of a group and tell them stuff for 60 minutes. I'd rather eat my own foot. 

And the second thing.  is with regards to speaking, people having their voice, saying what they believe, being able to speak to others, being able to speak up when they might have chosen not to speak up,  and to have their voice without sounding too hack. And, and so then I  had a turning moment about 2019 and I said, what should I do with my life?

And someone said, oh, you could go back to physiotherapy. I  said, I've kind of done that for 25  years or whatever it was then.  And So I said, so I said, what about speaking? And I said, Oh, would anyone pay me?  And this was at the club and someone who'd been visiting two or three times said, I'll pay you. Oh my God, I'll be your first client.

And they were.  And up until about a year ago, when they got made redundant, they still were. Other people in their company and,  and then it's grown from there. And COVID was funny enough, good for me. I worked with people in Dubai, in Qatar, in Germany, in America, all over England. And now I've tipped back towards doing more face to face because I enjoy it even more, but I don't want to deny my online work and because I can speak to anybody there anywhere in the world.

And that's the story really that ended up where I am now and  someone said, Oh, what, what you need to do is you need to go. publish loads of online content and you, you need to go and do this and you're like, do I need, do I need to do that? Would you like me to do that? Is that what you think I should do?

And I plod away now. I teach my small groups. I adore it. I do some work for companies. I do work for individuals. I do work for schools, which is sometimes unpaid, sometimes very low rates. That's not my charity work, but the goal ultimately would be the 80 20 rule is that 20 percent of my Corporate work and business work allows me to do the other 80 percent  With little to no money and not have to think about it That's the ultimate goal and that's where I am at the moment and hopefully to answer your question.

That's how I Ended up doing what I'm doing now.   

When you said  you were really fearful at the beginning,  do you know what caused that? Did you ever discover what caused that?  

Oh, gosh, that's thinking about no one's ever asked me that.

Uh, let me go back. I think it was the, it's the audience. So for me, it's the audience. I,   what I believe people were thinking about me, because for me, one of the things that was really important is people liking me. 

If people don't like me, My belief system, this is my core belief that's sort of discovered over the years that if I believe that people don't like me, then, you know, that's a major stressor for me, less so now, much, much, much less so now, because that's their stuff, not my stuff. But I know that in the early stages, I didn't know that.

And I thought their reaction, therefore, is my fault.  If they're bored, if they're not interested, if they're irritated, if they're angry. That's because of me, and I know fundamentally now, it's nothing to do with me. 

Mm hmm. 

And that's my, that's my sort of core belief.  

So How did you overcome that belief then?

So, uh, some work, personal work, understanding. There's another thing that I have become involved with over about the past seven years, which has made a real difference to my life. In terms of me being able to understand myself and that's some personal work and it's called presence in action.  And that's really made a difference and flows into a lot of my work. 

Can you just describe what that means, please? Presence in action. 

Yeah, sure. So it was developed by a lady called Dr. Louie Gardner. She was an executive coach. So I'm giving you a bit of history because then that'll, I think, answer your question. And she was an executive coach, but she also  dealt with, in organisations where there are different stakeholders and she would help bring them together. 

And look at differences and, and help people not necessarily come to consensus, but bring them together. So there's a discussion.  And she worked with other coaches and they said this as a supervisor. And they said, there's something different about what you do to other coaches and so on.  And so they worked with her and she worked with them and over seven years, she did her PhD and it's become this thing called presence in action.

And essentially at its heart, it's a way of me understanding myself And how I interact with the world. Why I say what I say. Why I do what I do. Understanding what's going on potentially for other people.  And to slow things down so I'm not living my life reactively.  And patterns that have run for years that I learned in my childhood that perhaps, perhaps supported me then.

Don't necessarily support me as an adult.  So a simple example is when things get particularly, this isn't me, but, but if someone is in a situation where they're, you know,  my label a stressful situation and they said, Oh, so and so blows up, they get really angry and start shouting, and then they storm off. 

That's, you know,  not necessarily an adult reaction, that's something playing out. And so understanding that, slowing that down.  So to come back to your, your, um, question there, Delina, with regards to the audience. So for me, you know, I can answer that question now with the insight that I have,  but  looking back, is it was my thoughts about the audience, as opposed, there would have been stuff about me as I'm not good enough  as well.

And that's, you've got this kaleidoscope of, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy.  They don't want to listen to me. If I don't,  Do a really great job. They'll be bored. They'll think I'm stupid. Oh my God. If they think I'm stupid, then that really reinforces the rubbish that's going on in me. I might as well just not bother and keep myself safe.

I won't, I won't present. Whereas something in me said, no, I  want to get good at this. And maybe I haven't tapped into that. That's interesting. Talking that out. Is it, there was some tenacity in me that said,  no, you're going to do this. You're going to conquer this. 

It's very interesting. Um, Chris, listening to you and the reasons and everything you're just explaining, because it's a lot of things that I come across in my hypnotherapy work,  helping people with all sorts of things, but,  and me myself from, when I was young, I never had a voice.
I wasn't allowed to have a voice.  So, therefore, when, I mean, I've met you before when, um, networking events. I've seen how amazing you are when you present, and I'm always in awe of how easy you make it look.  And I know how much I've been shaking in my shoes a lot of the time when I've been presenting.  I thought practice does really help.
And, but there's a couple of questions that I wanted to ask you from what you were saying. And that is with the people that you have helped,  have you noticed that perhaps they did have some, I'm not saying anything particularly bad, but something, a voice in their heads that have been telling them they're not good enough, or that maybe they've had some adversity in their life where, you know, they couldn't, they didn't have the opportunity to speak up. 
Or do you think that, so there's two questions really, do you think that practice actually makes perfect as well? you know, and how many sessions do you normally have with your clients? So there's a few questions that has arisen from what you've just said.  

So with regards to does practice make perfect, the answer is no, in my opinion.
And  what I often start with wherever I'm teaching, in some way, shape or form, it will come out is that  I believe that speaking is speaking to others. And I qualify that specifically. So people talk about public speaking. I hate the term public speaking because it's labeled as this thing  that's out there.

Oh, this thing that I've got to learn to do, whereas it's speaking to others, whether it be to one person, two people, three, five, 20, a thousand, 10, 000  speaking to a computer, speaking to a camera, it's speaking to others.  And there are different techniques that you might use if you're talking to a larger audience. 

Talking to one person, you know, I'm not going to talk to one person and stroll around the stage, looking all over the room when I'm talking to one person. It's like, um, odd. Whereas if I just focus on one person in an audience, a thousand odd, it's there, there's, there's, there's transitions to make, but it's speaking to people.

And the reason why I qualify that is it speaking as a skill  as a multitude of different things that come together. And so if we label it as a skill. It suddenly then potentially becomes more accessible to people because a skill like brushing your teeth, like walking, like running, like playing tennis is something you can learn.

Now not everybody's going to be a Wimbledon winner.  But everybody can pick up a racket and, well, not everybody, but you know, in whatever form it be, but most people could pick up a racket and hit a tennis ball, or adaptive, whatever, you know, for that individual. And so with speaking, if you then think about speaking as a skill, any skill has four components. 

You have some existing knowledge or existing skill.  You then practice. You need an understanding of what your results are,  and then you get some feedback, coaching, whatever it be. You then integrate all of that to your existing knowledge and skill, which is now greater, and then you practice again.  So if you take me, like, I'd love to be able to learn the piano, never done anything about it.

Put me in front of a piano in my, You could wheel that piano into my house  and I could bang away on that for years and years. And I wouldn't necessarily get any better because I'm so partially tone deaf. I've got no idea about chords. I've got no idea about how to pattern things and how to use the piano, what the pedley things do. 

So I can practice as much as I like, to little effect. You know, I might stumble on something, but that's a really long way of doing it. And that's what most people do with speaking. They've either seen someone else do something, they repeat it, They have their experience, which is a poor experience.  They then think, oh my goodness me, I'm glad that's over, until the next time, when they run through the same pattern,  and then bumble through it, and they get to the point and think, thank God that's over, I'm never doing that again.

Oh, I've got to do it again.  And so that's their practice, is they practice.  The same,  I want to say bad practice, but they practice the same pattern that they practiced before. I'm not going to get any better doing that. It's me with the PMA. 

Yeah, and your fear is just going to grow as well, which makes it then worse.

Yeah, because then you can kind of reaffirm, oh my goodness, everyone was bored. Oh, I remember the last time with this, everyone was bored. They're all going to be bored again. Yep. You've proven to yourself that you were right. Yeah. Yeah. You find them. Yeah. Yeah.  And so with regards to practice, though, practice is really important because speaking is a contact sport.

A bit like driving. I can think about driving as much as I like. It's not driving.  I can think about speaking as much as I like,  but it's not speaking. I need to speak. To practice the art of speaking and I deliberately say art because the skill and art.  So then,  what is it? So I do my practice. What results am I trying to achieve?

So what was it when I started to speak that I was trying to put across? Do you find out any way of whether you achieve that or not?  So with regards to feedback, it's like different with results. You often ask an audience or people to send that feedback form.  And then they'll say,  what, you know, what did you think of the speaker? 

You're on a scale of 0 to 10. People say, Oh, 10. Excellent. And the speaker gets that and goes, Oh, great, great, great. Absolutely useless feedback.  Useless, useless, useless, in my opinion. What did they learn? 

And so I often go through another way to think about that so that people get some feedback or get the impression and experience from the audience of to what they experience from the speaker.  And then that flows into A, the results, what they're trying to put across, that flows into the feedback section, and that then comes around into the knowledge and skill,  and if the speaker then actively engages with the audience, really thinks about what they're trying to put across, gathers some, the experience of the audience with regards to the results that they gave, you know, after their practice,  get some other feedback, feed that all into the circle, so that every time they speak, they're learning, growing, doing something different, improving, the same way with the piano.

No, Chris, put your fingers here, put your fingers there, that's it, that one, that one, that one, that one, on that, ah, no, no, lighten the pressure off that one. And so  then I get better at the piano, because I've had that information, I've had that coaching, I've had, so people within, within that knowledge and skill, come see me,  and then I'll do it, Help you do all that. And so that's the, the process that people can improve  themselves and that can be accelerated with input from others and people like myself  and so on. And so to answer your question about practice, no practice doesn't make perfect,  but focus practice. with improving your knowledge, understanding the results you're trying to get, gaining feedback, and then integrating that into the knowledge and skill you have.

Have you heard of a Venn diagram?  Those three circles that you see where they're overlapping in the middle. 

Yes. 

And I love a Venn diagram.  And someone said to me once, with regards to speaking, they said, if you had to simplify public speaking, my caveat is speaking to others, into its most simple description, what would it be?  And I thought about this for a while, and I said, well, speaking to others is made up of three core things.

What you think and feel, what you say, and what you do.  And so if you think of those three circles overlapping, you've got think and feel, say and do. And the sweet spot is in the middle, where you're aware of what you're thinking and feeling,  both about yourself and thinking about the audience, what's going, what's going in the future, what's happening in the moment.

You're aware of what you're saying,  and you've constructed that, so there's interesting words, you're engaging the audience, you have beautiful stories to tell, you know, you have a lovely structured presentation with wonderful transitions and signposts and so on and so forth, not jargon filled, and what you do, engaging the audience, it might be that you have visual props, it might be you're getting the audience involved, how you use the stage, etc, etc. 

And so if you have that wonderful connection between those three in terms of what you think and feel, what you say and what you do,  then they are the key components for an engaging, interesting presentation. And most people, what happens is that think and feel circle becomes so big and so separated and their focus is entirely on that,  that what you say and do shrinks away, almost shrivels away. 

And so they don't have the capacity or awareness to think about what they're saying or what they're doing. It's, I'm going to get through this and I'll say the stuff almost, I'll read out the slides.  Because my awareness is so much on what I'm thinking and feeling.  And so with regards to your question,  Dolina, with people, for some people, because of what's happened and because the patterns that they've learned in terms of protecting themselves, then that's the thing they managed to survive on a day to day basis, to have that awareness and to keep themselves safe and to keep their mind,  or to keep themselves safe.

I'll summarize it with that. 

Yeah, because the brain is there to keep us safe and it likes the familiar. So when you tell it a different story, it takes a while for that to go in  and for the brain to accept the different story to make the unfamiliar familiar. 

yeah. Um, you know, we, we tend to, our, our brain is on alert for keeping us for it spots the unfamiliar and keeps us away from that. You know, we're tribal  groups, we grew together. There's a story I sometimes tell, I will come back to the adversity. I've still got it. I've locked that in my head. There's a story I sometimes, Or an example I sometimes give for those on courses, and they say, well, why is it when I stand up in front of a group that everything suddenly changes for me? 

I said, all right,  I said, you're on the TV watching a David Attenborough  wildlife program, and he's going, Here, the herd of buffalo are eating their lunch, chatting away,  in the savannah, and so on and so forth, and the camera suddenly pans. Off to the right slightly, and it shows one buffalo on his own on the right. 

I said, what do you immediately think? What do you two immediately think? You see that one buffalo on its own, there's a herd over there, and that one on its own.

It's gonna get eaten.

It's gonna get eaten. There you go. So something's gonna go wrong with that. The results are not good for that buffalo. And 95 percent of people, that's the answer they come up with straight away. 

So if you take a group of people and you stand one person separate from them, in front of them, while everyone's looking at them,  we're not Buffalo, but the thing is this is not right. Being separate from a main group is a really dangerous place to be.  Perhaps something in our core is fired up, you know, we want to be in the group, we want to be playing, we don't want to be on our own.

The alternative thought about that, which a few people sometimes offer,  Is that that's the leader and they're wandering off and they're going to lead the group somewhere else and you see that too, but that's not where most people go. 

I know what that's like because that was my life growing up. Yeah.  I was separated from everybody else. 

Yeah.  And that's, that's there inside you, that's  imprinted, and , those things , run us largely as adults. We're, we're not, you know, children aren't little adults, adults are big children. And, and so with respect to that, the adversity is if they're the sort of lessons that you've learned about yourself, they're the lessons you've learned about other people, they're the lessons that you've learned to keep yourself safe. 

Well, in situations where it's more stressful, apart from a group, they're going to play really strongly. They're going to play.  So the adversity, you know, whatever it be, we've all had adversity, we've all had trauma. There'd be different types, different amounts, so on and so forth, but we've all learned the lessons that we've had through the things that have happened in adversity generally. 

And that's generalisation, I realise it's not quite as simple as that.  But that stuff plays out when we stand up in front of people and, and so yes, that's going to be a factor,  but it doesn't have to be and things can change and morph. That's the wondrous thing.  Absolutely. And I'll say is, is ourselves, is that we can change on an hourly basis, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, every single day. 

Yeah. Absolutely, we're so adaptable.

Yeah, yeah, completely,  completely. 

We just need to tell her our minds a different story, so, 

but that's the thing it's not telling is that, you know, if people tell you to do something, 

no, no, no, I'm saying ourselves. 

Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's, it's nurturing, being compassionate to ourselves, understanding ourselves.

Giving ourselves the space, holding ourselves, taking things slowly.  I should, ah, stuff I should. 

You're brilliant, I think you're great, I could talk to you all day. 

There's something that you said earlier as well that I want to go back to, because you said , I don't like public speaking. It's not public speaking. It's speaking. Okay. And I see that you had something. I'm just going to refer to a note that I made of this. 
You said about Dumbledore and 'the fear of a name increases the fear of the thing itself'.  Can you just explain that? 

No, you caught me off the hoof. I haven't read that quote in about three years since I did the web, four years, four years since I did the website. Remind me of the quote one more time, Dolina. The quote was, it was, came from, Harry Potter and Dumbledore.

Yeah. 

'Fear of a name increases  fear of the thing itself'. 

So there's two things to take from that. One, so you then asked me about something, which I put on my website.  And so what, in the instant that came up in me, I felt panic. I'm thinking, Oh my God,  I don't know that.  And so then I can go in a few ways with that thinking, Oh my God, I should know that.

I'm going to look stupid now. Or I'll fluff this. I'll try and explain it. And this whole thing that happens in a microsecond.  And so for me, I then thought, I haven't read that in years. Well, I could say that out loud. And I'm thinking, I've asked you to repeat it. I've written it down.  And so now I think, Oh, okay, that's quite a good quote.

I'd forgotten that I did.  Yeah, I'd put that on there. 

And it didn't sound bad. It wasn't negative. It wasn't, we weren't sitting there thinking, oh gosh, you shouldn't have said that. Do you know what I mean? It was, yeah, there was nothing wrong with you responding that way.

It is what it is, and it's what will serve me best in the moment, for now, because I can try and, and so, the often thing people say, what if I don't know the answer?
Say you don't know.  

Absolutely right. 

There's, in England, there's a thing called ZOE, which is an organisation that does a lot of research in relation to diet and health and so on. 

And I was listening to a podcast and one of their scientists, their lead scientist the other day was Dr. Sarah Berry. And I was reading something about her and she has this position of authority, knowledge and so on. She said, I love saying I don't know. She said, I'm really comfortable saying I don't know that.

Because there's something else to learn. And this idea that I should know, that I should be the authority. Oh,  as soon as you set yourself up on a high throne, the only place that is down really. Yes. And when you meet a lot of people that seem to know everything, which, uh,  I find, uh, I find happens sometimes in life.

These two words are probably the worst that you can say. I know. 

I know. Oh my god.  Oh the irony. Oh the irony!  I'm so short of irony.  

Oh my gosh. It's funny. 

Coming back to your comment there, but fear is often if, what happens in my experience for most people, fear, which is what, oh, I see it go off in a few different directions with this, where my mind was just firing off to,  was that if you read most books,  or most things about people.

Speaking, public speaking,  is that they will deal with fear as the same thing in every situation. That's a generalisation. But you have the sensations associated with adrenaline  and your autonomic nervous system, your sympathetic nervous system firing up and so shaking, Guts, you know, stomach wrenching, dry mouth, you know, whatever it be. 

And the advice is normally about how to deal with that.  Or, imagine the audience naked, or whatever it be, to try and change that sensation. Whereas as we talked about earlier,  it's going back and understanding what's going on in you in that moment. And  so that's the key thing with regards to the fear aspect, is that what is it that I'm imagining in the future?

What is it I'm imagining is happening now? What's my truth in all of this? And so looping back to what we said, if that's the pattern that runs every time, then if you're imagining something,  That is going to happen.  What most people do is they'll be quite dismissive afterwards, say, well, God, the only reason that didn't happen is because of this and I got lucky, but next time, yada, yada.

And it's these narratives that run. So at the heart of that, of fear is what, what is the narrative that's running?  And if people don't do something, well, then you can imagine whatever you like as that that was what was going to happen, but you've got no evidence to counter that. So it's the fear of the name that increases the fear of the thing itself.

Yeah, it's what is it? What, what is public speaking? So public speaking, oh, all eyes are on me. I will be out the front. Everyone, I've got to entertain everyone. If I don't, if someone's bored, that's my fault. Um, I've got to move around this stage seamlessly. I've got to be word perfect. Like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And all this rubbish.  You said earlier, I smiled when you said earlier about,  The business meeting that we, we met at Dolina and  you weren't there three weeks ago  when I stood up and I started to tell a story  and I, to this day, I don't quite understand what happened, but the buzzer when you have 60 seconds to say your, your, your story.

And I kind of got caught up in my story a little bit and I realised that. Where I thought I was going to go, I didn't go. And I got to the end of my 60 seconds, I haven't even vaguely explained what I wanted to say. I got to stop mid sentence. And I laughed. And I said,  at the end I said, So if you want to learn to tell a story with no point, no structure in 60 seconds, come and speak to me, Chris Murphy. 

And we all laughed. And we all laughed.  Because theoretically, I should be good at this. And someone, they said next week. is there's an award where you get the two minutes, so if you do the best presentation each week, you get the two minutes the week after. And at the end of that week, the lady who was judging it that week who'd had the two minutes, she stood up and so she said, there are a number of contenders this week, she said, I have to make special mention, so Chris Murphy though, because I've written next to your name, Not a contender, which is the first time in four years, so I am delighted to write that.

We laughed, and my 60 seconds the next week was all about what happened for me the 60 seconds the week before.  No one died.  We're all still alive. No one died public speaking. 

Yeah. 

Unless they're assassinated, of course, but that's something else,  

So what's,  what do you find then, Chris, is the biggest difference between helping adults,  to speak and helping children?

Uh, oh, that's, that's interesting.  It's There's Yeah. Yeah.  At the heart of it, little. At the heart of it, it's the same. Because with adults, they're just big children  with more ideas about responsibility and what they believe they should be like and so on and so forth.  But it's the same stuff that, that kids are going through, and it's usually more about what other people think, what they believe other people think about them, and about how they should, and doing things right. 

Because with the wonders of social media and so on and so forth, people can edit, they can change, and so things look smooth, and they, they think. That's how it's got to be every time. It's like, no, no, the joy in making, there's joy in making mistakes. My example from that last week. And yet there's this, you know, societal pressure. 

For things to be perfect, for things to look beautiful and so on, which is of course complete drivel in my opinion.  And so it needs to be more fun with children.  Um, but with adults, the general thing is that things therefore shouldn't be fun with adults. And I disagree with that because they'll say, Oh, that's childish.

And it's like, that's childlike. We're all still children at heart. We, so the difference is, I think the patterns that run out the same.  They're slightly more acute in kids, but then equally so that they're,  I think it's more important to learn these skills as a child.  Because then they'll influence everything that goes forward.

You're not trying to backtrack a bit like with my career that I alluded to right at the start. In all those different stages of my career,  there's been learnings. There've been times when I've been challenged. There's been times when I've told myself about my things, about myself that I then believed.

And so with kids, they've had less time to learn that.  And  a good example of where I learned so powerfully, I was teaching at school  and there was two schools that had put in eight students each and it was children that had been labelled as shy  and so I had them for six sessions over six weeks.

And after the end of the first session, I did some of the things I normally do with adults. And I think one, one of the children murmured one word.  Okay, this is a tough crowd.  And my job is to help them speak up.  In the second session, they got a little bit more. And so I threw out everything I was going to do in the third session.

I thought, right, I have to get back to the drawing board now. I've got to rethink all of this.  And by the end of the third session, There was a lot of chatter. By the end of the fourth session, I was having to shout to have myself heard over the group.  And in the, by the end of session six, it was this wild, wild banshee of children, banshees of children running around saying, We want more of this.

Can we carry on? Now what happened with them? I don't know. But we made it playful. I came to their level. I met them where they were at.  It wasn't trying to set this goal. I want you to be like this. And this is how you're going to present. Because I've got no idea how people are going to present. Because they'll present the way they present.

They're not going to present like me, because I'm me. Yeah. Individual to them. Yeah. And , it's, I suppose it's helping people validate that , they're good enough. They're good enough as they are as them.  And some will be quieter and some will be louder. And some will be faster and some will be slower.

And some will be more technical and some will be more ethereal, but they're all  right as they are. 

It's amazing. I love it. When you actually, you're sitting there and you're saying,   they're good enough  

and that just tears up in me because I, I truly believe that. 

Yeah. All the time, all the time, in, in the work, sorry, Abi, in the work that I do, you know, it's, you, you are enough, you are good enough, you are enough and that's huge and that's so important for people to realise that.

Sorry, mum, I was just going to say that I thought you'd finished that. So important for anybody listening to this as well.  Yeah. Because, you are enough. 

Example, sorry to throw one example in that was from last night for me is there's a, an app and a website in the UK called next door, and it's a community app where.

At its heart, you think, oh, that'd be great. You can, somebody say, I need a garden. Oh, so and so did my garden. They were wonderful. Fantastic. Our businesses could advertise. And what it becomes as well as a moaning platform where people have a go at each other and some people say, oh, I came off the next door because of the negativities.

Okay.  So my wife and I went to need a new mattress. We went down to the industrial estate the other day and they changed the car park layout. And we were driving in this new entrance and I suddenly thought, I said, oh, there's a curbstone ahead. Well, it's not particularly obvious, so I turned, and as we parked, a car came in and went bang, bang over this kerbstone.

And the guy was like, oh my god, you know, what's that got done to my suspension, so on. And I said to the late people in, in the bed store, I said,  this person's just driven over that. They said, oh, it happens a couple of times an hour.  So we went out and we put a couple of trolleys over this kerbstone so that people would see the trolleys. 

So I put something on next door and I said, I do a show for local radio station. I said, Oh, maybe do a piece on this. Has anyone had their car or damaged their car going over this curbstone? And a number of people came on and said, Oh, I've noticed that the layout is terrible. They need to do something about it. 

One lady came on and said, my car's been, I went over the curbstone. I said, is your car okay? She said, yes.  And someone came on and said, It's a kerbstone. It's really obvious. You know, everyone, anyone who hits that is just looking 12 feet in front of them and not looking where they're going.  And so I had, and oh, they also said to me, the first thing they said was, um, oh, you know, what sort of advert are you for the radio station?

Um, you know, oh, you are starting, you're the chairman of the, oh, I dive over kerbstones because I'm blind society. You're pathetic.  And, and so I read that and I thought, oh, that's a very interesting reaction.  And I thought, I wonder what's going on inside them. And I had a gut reaction in me where I wanted to strike and go, stop you, rah, rah, rah, rah.

And I thought, oh, that's, I'm defending myself. And I thought, so what's going on here? What's going on for me? So I believe that they're attacking me. I don't like it if I'm not, you know, people attacking me. That's not very nice. They don't like me. I like to be liked. Okay, so that's what's playing out in me.

Right. Take a breath. Take a pause.  And so my reply to them was.  My intention was to raise awareness that people don't damage their cars as a number of people have. You know, or people stop hitting the  kerbstone potentially damaging their cars, as the evidence is a number of people doing that every hour. 

And they came back and said, oh, you know, the only people that hit that are blind. That was the response to that. And so my response to that was, I disagree.  And it's not, I'm not striking out to them. I'm kind of coming from a place of calm and being able to re evaluate this. Notice what happened in me. My desire was to strike out to them and say, right, you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Don't be so rude to me. La la la. And all this stuff. That's all my stuff.  And that's a choice example of being able to do something in the moment, catch what's happening in me,  process it. And then respond  from a place of presence, which is that presence in action stuff. And that's what I help people do in relation to speaking.

Slow things down, catch what happened in me, notice my reaction. It doesn't mean that I have to then do something straight away in that moment. I can pause  and then say, what's going on for me in this moment now here?  Yeah, that happens.  Sorry, go on. No, then be able to choose whatever response  And I say it's appropriate, but, but to choose a different response.

Yeah. 

Yeah. And do you know what? I was just thinking when you were saying that, that it's, I've learned that, going through my own personal journey of self development over the last couple of years. And actually there's so much of that within mindfulness, you know, questioning. Okay. Why was I going to react that way?
Where is that coming from? Learning about yourself and stopping yourself from doing that. And it's something that , I've been doing myself over the past, particularly the last few months, the more recent months. And it's just really interesting that's something that you use because it's such a powerful,  I don't want to say tool, but it's such a, it's so powerful, to think that way and to acknowledge those things.
And the fact that you're using that in your teaching, as we said before, it's really going from the root of the problem.  It's not sticking a plaster over it. Like mum says with her hypnotherapy,  she really goes to the root of the problem rather than the Rather than sticking a plaster over it.

What is something Chris that you would like our audience to take away from your experiences?   

With respect to speaking, I  guess that message, you are good enough, you have a unique perspective on a world, on the world, because you're you. And  with respect to speaking,  there's not necessarily a panacea, there's not this instant cure where, Oh my goodness, I can go from this in this instant to talking to stadiums of 10, 000.

And the path to improve can be really fast for some, and these major things drop, or slower and a bit more of a plot, like it was for me, but, so even if you're on your own, slowing things down, finding opportunities to speak, celebrating the opportunities when you do speak. For some people, having a conversation with one person  is a major  gain or a major step forward.

Great, celebrate that.  As opposed to, oh, it's not 20. No, no, it's one. It is one. You've done that. Fact. Tip. Well done.  And celebrate the things that you do and, and slowing things down in relation to catching the thoughts where people say, oh, I'm not going to be able to do that. Or this is going to happen. 

That's all in the future. None of that's happened, but it's not ignoring it or dismissing it. It's saying,  but noticing it  and then sitting with it and saying, is that true? What has my experience been today and slowing that down a little.  And so taking steps forwards.  To gradually do things that you might feel uncomfortable in, and uncomfortable is a really normal feeling.

Whatever that emotion is, whatever that sensation in your stomach is, it's a really normal feeling.  We all feel it in different situations. It's not a reason not to do it.  It's a reason you're stepping into it. So you're stepping into something that's unusual and different, and the only way we learn is by doing things that are unusual or different.

We don't learn by doing the same things, we learn the same stuff by doing the same things.  We learn by being challenged and by doing stuff that's unusual or different. And so if you have a reaction in relation to that, that's okay. It's signifying that something about this is different and you've got to learn how to do it.

So go and do it. 

That's making the unfamiliar, familiar.  
You managed to get that in there. 
Um,  it's, um, 

I, I love this.  I absolutely love this and you know how it all comes down to very similar things  to therapies and you know what you're doing. And just Reverting back, Chris, just very briefly to your own journey,  from where you started,   did you ever feel the fear and do it anyway?  Or , did you always feel confident? in your own ability that you would succeed in what you're doing? 

I can't really answer yes and I can't really answer no to that because in the moment, coming back to what I spoke about in that moment, there'd be, there'd be doubts, there'd be uncertainties because I don't know the future.  So  the simple pithy answer would be Yes, I did feel fear and anxiety and uncertainty and concern and despondent and  shame and guilt and anger and all sorts of other emotions within that. 

But  I also had a gut belief  that there was something driving me forward in terms of people. I've always been a people person. I've adored being with people and helping people learn. And so when I was teaching at university, people said, don't teach like other teachers.  And it's, it's about, Being humble, I suppose, within that.

So yes, I had doubts and I had, I had, you know, doubts daily as to, you know, what am I doing? Maybe I should do this and I'll be more successful. And then I come back to what is I'm doing at the moment? Am I enjoying my life? Yes, I'm having fun.  There's plenty of people in my age bracket who are driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis and big Yeah, that's fine.

Great. I have no desire for that. I like my bicycle. I like my allotment,  you know. Yeah, you're growing your potatoes.  

And it's, it's what success means for you.

Very much so. It's very individual and says, I say humble, but I'm kind of  appealing to what I want for myself as opposed to what society is appealing or advertising as measures of success and how I should be.

Yes, I agree. 

The doubts come in, but then I weigh that up with what I'm doing now, and  I have a wonderful life. It's very simple in many ways, and I get to interact with people and hopefully help them discover the skill of speaking and to enhance that, to allow them to go and do things That they weren't necessarily doing before because of whatever was holding them back. 

How many sessions would somebody be looking at? 

So when, okay, the  five seems to be this number that I've fallen onto.  So the small, the small group that I do is five sessions spread over five weeks.  And  because there's space in between to allow people to go and practice, integrate, play, discover, and so on. And people learn stuff over each of those weeks.

When I work with individuals, I generally say, we'll book in five sessions.  

And some people come for one session, some people come for three, some people come for ten,  and it depends entirely. I have a client who rang, who contacted me this morning for a session tomorrow, and we've had,  oh, I don't know, we've had about 15 sessions. Because we've done different pieces of work. I've been writing speeches for them, and they did a big, they're, they're president of this international organisation. 

And so I wrote a half an hour speech for them for their end of their presidency, and they delivered that five weeks ago. Thank you. And now they're doing something else. They've got another presentation to do. So the first thing they do is call me, say, right, can we go through this presentation? And sometimes I've written it.

Sometimes I've tweaked it. Sometimes we've had some sessions with regards to discovering content. And so with them, it's one or two, and then we'll have another one or two or three. For some people, it's a block of five. For some, it's one or two and then there's a three month gap and we'll have another one.

It varies entirely on the person. The main thing  that i've discovered more so now is the gaps in between is where the richness happens  people going and applying integrating  discovering for themselves  And then they go and think, Oh, I can do this. And then they come back with this little spark in their eyes.

I did this, I did this.  That must feel amazing. Oh, it's fantastic. And it's, as I said, I get this, I get this, um, sort of buzziness. 

Buzz. 

And I get, I get a bit teary. I'm a sucker for a film. I'll be crying in five seconds. And.  It's a wonderful thing. I have, as I said, I have the best job in the world. 

So for anybody listening, Chris, where can they connect with you or,  find out more about you? Tell us.  

So some people would stream off social media. I'm particularly allergic to social media. It bores me to tears. You can find me if you want to, but there won't be much interaction, I'm afraid. You'll, I need to learn because I noticed I feel bored very quickly with it.

And the easiest way is my website, thespeakingmentor.co.uk,  thespeakingmentor. co.uk or chris@thespeakingmentor.co.uk is my email. You can find me on LinkedIn, again, search for Chris Murphy, the speaking mentor, and I'll pop up with a headshot of me with slightly crazy hair in my allotment.  And that's the easiest way, My website and my email is the best way. And then anybody, if they think, you know, can you help in this situation, let's have a chinwag, set up a zoom call.

 ou also mentioned earlier that you, uh, sorry, if anybody wants to listen to you because you host a radio show, is that right?  

Yes. Yes. Yes. 

Did I hear that correctly? Come on. 

You did. You did. One person that won't be listening is Mr. People who doesn't like, the person who doesn't like me driving over or campaigning for curbs.

Yeah. 
Yeah. 
Yeah. 

There's a, I live in, in Kent in a place called Tunbridge Wells in Kent which is frightfully middle class and frightfully English and I have a show on a Monday morning called West Kent Today and it's on West Kent Radio.  So you can listen online on your smart speaker, there's an app and you can listen on the website westkentradio.co.uk but that's You'll hear me happily making mistakes each week.  Me spending quite a lot of time laughing, saying, Oh, I should have said this.  And they say at the radio station, You should never point out your mistakes. And I always do. I always do. People think,  Oh, it's all going to be perfect. No, it's a great laugh.

I adore it. It's brilliant fun. Yeah. So if they wanted to interrupt there, please do. 

Oh, do you know what, Chris, you're so right, because  when we started this podcast and we've only recently launched, um, so we're quite, we're still fairly new to this and I've always been a bit of a perfectionist in the past and I've learned over the last couple of years to come away from that and do things messy.
And do you know what, even in our, the intros to the podcast. We say, look, excuse the editing. It's messy. We're still learning, this is us.  It's how we're doing it. And do you know what is going back to what we said earlier? People don't want the perfect, if you're watching that film, do you want the perfect guy, girl to get the guy or guy to get the girl?  No, you don't do you.  It's the underdog. It's the girl or boy next door. 

It's yeah. 

And it's the, it's the reality of life.  Well, I was coming, I was suddenly taken back as you said, that with respect to those nature videos and ironically,  where, where I said about the David Attenborough and the, the camera panning across, and yet you have this video of a, a cheetah shaking, a chasing a gazelle or whatever, or Impala and,  and you, you don't want it to get the Impala.

You want it to make a mistake. And there's this irony where you think. It's going to bound across perfectly, taken down with one thing, but you go, Oh, Oh, no, Oh, Oh, left and right again. Get away. Get away. Make a mistake. And yet there's this other irony when we're speaking, whereas don't make a mistake.  

Yeah. 

Oh, I've never thought of it like that. That popped into my head. That's amazing. 

What's next for you then, Chris.  Oh, that's a really good question. I, so for me, I'm redoing all my website, which is a little bit more true to who I am and how I am now.

I've been avoiding writing all the stuff, but that's booked in for next week to sit and spend most of next week rewriting lots of things. I've got this amazing web designer who I'm working with,  and she's got all these ideas, and she said, I need all this stuff from you. I said, oh, I suppose I should do it, really.

I've been facing up to that and having a dose of my own medicine as to why I'm procrastinating on that. So that's next week  and my big push over the next 12 months to two years is, I am going to do some, some online learning for the simple fact I can get out to a wider audience and, and to try and get my message out to help more people.

So I'd love to connect with more bigger businesses and corporates with respect to working with teams and so on. 

I don't work Mondays and Fridays. I don't want to change my life in that sense, I go swimming, I pot around in my allotment and I have a balance of how I want my life to be, but I'd love to connect with more people really and, and to be challenged in my teaching.  And to become a better speaker, an even better speaker.  

I think we can always learn  what's important as well is if you're doing something that you're really enjoy doing and that you're passionate about, for me, it's my hypnotherapy and doing this with Abi, our podcast and helping as many people as we can. And when you're helping people to overcome the challenges and whatever it is like you're doing with the public speaking, then it's just great. Amazing. 

Yeah. 

It's a beautiful work. I know I learn about myself in the sessions and time I spend with others.

Yes.  

Because I come personal journeys well on things that I think, Oh, wow. And they say things. I generally say on the courses is that something will say , somebody will say something on this course, which will be the absolute mic drop moment from you.  And from what people reported about 60 percent of the time, it's me and about 40 percent of the time it's someone else on the course, I said, that says something, I said, it doesn't matter who it is.

Keep your ears open. I said, cause someone will say something that strikes deep to your core and goes.  Oh my goodness me. And that sentence is the thing that was worth being here for if you take nothing from it. And I said, there is no guarantee it will be me.  And I love that. So I'm listening to someone say something.

It's been so lovely to just talk with you.  you're incredibly interesting and very insightful. And, yeah, I think you're brilliant, so thank you so much for being with us. 

And you're very welcome. You're, you're not married to me, so my wife doesn't always say things like that. 

Will you shut up? I say, okay, okay.  

Yeah, but it's only been an hour! 

That's it, that's it. She was saying the first an hour after we first met. You're incredibly incredible.  Apparently I'm not very good at organising the loft, even though I sincerely disagree with my wife. 

And if you want to see a full scale war ensue, put us both in the loft.  We get on beautifully when we're not in the loft.  I love my wife dearly. She's my soulmate. She's a wonderful human being. But God, when she's in the loft, she's rough. 

Really?  Oh my goodness.  As long as you don't lock her in the loft!

She's abroad, she's away at the moment, she's overseas. She gets back tonight.

 She was trying to escape, was she, Chris? 

Yeah, I threatened her with the loft. 

He's lying, she's actually in the loft right now. She's not gone anywhere. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's like, make a noise now! For the broadcast!  

Oh dear. Well, on that note, thank you, Chris.  

Thank you so much. 

Thank you. It's been, it's been fabulous, actually. Thank you so much for coming on to our podcast.

It's great fun.  So thank you so much. Thank you. 

 Thank you so much to our wonderful guest, Chris. We loved spending time with you. You can find out more about Chris and his links to his website and socials in the show notes. The key takeaways are: 

1. Celebrate small wins and progress. 
2. Mistakes are a natural part of learning and growth. 
3. Identify the beliefs that are holding you back from speaking confidently, recognise your value and uniqueness.
4. Anyone can become an effect. Speaker with dedicated practice, feedback and a willingness to step outside their comfort zone.  
5. Be mindful of your reactions. 
6. Growth and learning happens outside of your comfort zone.
7. Stay true to yourself. Focus on your unique presentation style and authenticity.
8. Change is always possible. We are adaptable and capable of growth at any age. 
9. You are enough! 

We're unsure if anyone has done any of the homework we set each week, but we're going to continue it because it will eventually help someone. And that's what this is all about this week to help you on your journey. 

Challenge your limiting beliefs: make a list of beliefs that might be holding you back from speaking confidently. For example, I'm not interested in interesting enough, or people won't want to listen to me. For each belief, write a counter statement that affirms your value and uniqueness. Example, I have valuable experiences to share or my voice is unique and worth hearing.

If you'd like to share your counterstatement affirmation with us, and we will remind you of this each week to keep you accountable. If you're happy to be brave and post it on social media, tag us and use the hashtag Rainmaker. 

That's R E I G N A M A K E R. 

If you have any questions, stories, or episode ideas, please get in touch with us.

Depending where you're listening, you might have a link below. Otherwise, please send us an email or message us on social media. Our links are in the show notes. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and please, please leave us a rating or review. It really helps us to continue to share our message and we can't do that without you, our lovely listeners.

Thank you, Rainmakers!