Speaking empowerment coach Linda Ugelow helps readers transform their experience of public speaking from dread to delight – online, onstage, in the media or the meeting room. This accessible self-discovery guide toward confidence and mastery is designed to help anyone who ever dreamed of acing a speech, or even giving a TED Talk.
According to Ugelow, the fear of being seen, springing from unhappy experiences, negative thoughts, and other reasons, often inhibits a speaker. Getting rid of whatever holds you back and clearing the clutter from your “psychic closet” helps you unpack the emotional baggage weighing you down.
Her program offers techniques and action steps. It also references clients’ successes and the author’s own challenges on her path to becoming a confident speaker. Discarding the old recommendation to “feel the fear and do it anyway,” she offers the Inner Freedom Framework, a three-part process: Reveal and Heal, to investigate fear and heal its root causes; Restore Safety, to find inner safety and re-create it, and Repattern Your Habits, to abandon old ways of holding tension and use your voice to best advantage.
Once readers identify their impediments, they use a set of techniques in each of the three parts, including creative visualization, free writing and list-making, Emotional Freedom Technique (also called Tapping), mindful meditation, mental rehearsal, solitary dance/movement and other healing modalities.
Although the book sometimes feels like a mash-up of pioneering texts in the field (e.g., Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends & Influence People and Konstantin Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares) with familiar sources of contemporary psychology and East-meets-West spirituality, Ugelow is a terrific synthesizer. This handbook provides a prescription fulfilling the author’s promise to turn hesitant, tentative speakers into confident, articulate, eloquent, effective presenters.
Readers who appreciate Jack Canfield’s Success Principle, Gabrielle Bernstein’s The Universe Has Your Back or Marie Forleo’s Everything Is Figureoutable will embrace Ugelow’s guide.
Also available as an ebook and audio book.
