Pamma Durnin and I met some years ago, I’m unsure how anymore. She helps so many people to find a place of safety within which they can find and speak from their authentic selves. She offers this article to us as her gift.
“Just Be Yourself!”
I’ve had clients say to me that they didn’t want to “be themselves” because they didn’t “like themselves,” but when I then asked them to tell me about times – even just one time – that they liked their own company, they remembered how happy they felt just being them!We all have a “best self” – this I believe is our true self. And it is this true self that I am referring to in this article when I speak of “being yourself”. We could also refer to being ourselves as being authentic. To me, authenticity simply means that we are sincere, and that our actions – and our body language – meet our words.
What does “being myself” look like?
When we are being ourselves, we feel comfortable, relaxed and at ease. It’s easier to be spontaneous or funny when we are being ourselves and in this state we are more likely to be heard by others, perhaps because we are less likely to worry about what others think of us. Why? Because simply put, we are happy in our own shoes, and when you’re okay with it (or ‘you’) so is everyone else.
How do I know when I am not “being myself”?
When we are not being ourselves, we likely feel discomfort, anxious or uneasy. And we know that others know that we are not totally being ourselves and this makes us feel even more uncomfortable! And to compensate for this discomfort, the masks come on even stronger – before we know it, we are feeling entirely “fake” and are saying or doing things that do not feel natural at all.
How can I just “be myself”?
I believe there are two steps that we can take to relax more into our authentic selves.
1) The first thing we need to do is to let go of perfectionism. As speakers we are all guilty of this. We need to realize that none of us are perfect – not us and not our audience. When we can accept ourselves in the moment, with all of our limitations, grace enters our lives. We feel freer to be ourselves because we are not putting so much energy towards being perfect. We also become less judgmental, not only of ourselves but of our audience. People know and respond to people who do not judge them – they open up and they too will feel freer in your presence. All this by letting go of perfectionism.
2) The second step that we can do to feel more like “ourselves” is to focus more on our message and less on ourselves. Our society has become very “I” focused, which is a stressful way of thinking and behaving. When it comes to public speaking, this looks like, “what do I look like, what do I sound like, what will people think of me, will they like me, and the list goes on. When instead we focus on what message it is that we want to deliver and in so doing how we can help our audience, this takes the pressure off of us to perform. So, not only will we feel less pressure by focusing on our message but we will also feel more valuable in that we are helping other people. We are then freer to “just be ourselves!”
Simply put, we feel good when we can just be ourselves. We feel more empowered to speak our truth and we feel more relaxed to do it.
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For more articles and information, please visit: http://www.speakease.ca/
Pamma Durnin is the founder and president of SpeakEase, an organization dedicated to helping people overcome their fear of public speaking and to speak with ease. A lifetime of stage fright, including an experience nearly 20 years ago of “blanking out” before an audience of 2,000, motivated Pamma to develop a gentle yet highly effective program of transforming fear into confidence and inner power.
She is a workshop facilitator, keynote speaker, personal coach and EDxTM practitioner. EDxTM, similar to EFT, is a form of energy psychology which addresses the root of the issue, leading to lasting results.
Pamma is very skilled at creating a space in which people’s most magnetic, authentic and confident selves emerge.
