What is Unconditional Confidence?

Unconditional Confidence® is a training program that gives you the tools, experience and support you need to speak or perform in public with complete confidence, ease and your own kind of creative charisma.

Because everyone has different needs and goals relative to becoming confident, creative and free in one’s self-expresson, all Unconditional Confidence training programs can be tailored to meet your individual needs and desires.

What can Unconditional Confidence do for you?

Well, it will allow you to:

• Never again be tormented by those stomach-churning, mouth-drying, knee-knocking feelings of anxiety.
• Stay focused, fearless and fully present anytime you are expressing yourself so you can always be at your best.
• Have a great time (yes, a great time) when you are expressing yourself, no matter what!
• Make a powerful connection with everyone in your audience, whether it’s an audience of one or one thousand.
• Celebrate and trust your own unique way of expressing yourself and never again second-guess your ability to speak or perform, even if it’s at a moment’s notice.
• Enjoy an unconditional confidence and joy in every area of your life.

How does the Unconditional Confidence program do all that?

By giving you:

• Power Tools to transform your experience of speaking or performing in public so that you can create the experience you want rather than the one you dread. These Power Tools work with every aspect of your experience — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

  These are tools I have collected, distilled and developed through my journey to becoming unconditionally confident. You can read more about the schools of experts who influenced the development of these Power Tools here.

• Experience. As you use these Power Tools your relationship to speaking and performing is transformed so that you start to have a great time every time you are expressing yourself in any way.
• Tons and tons of support and coaching. Developing confidence is a personal journey with ups and downs and everything in between. EVERYONE needs support and coaching from someone who’s been through it! All my programs include lots of support and coaching.
• Fun! The journey gets to be as fun as the destination. In fact, the journey better be fun or perhaps it’s the wrong journey to take. Unconditional Confidence programs come with a high fun factor included.

Since everyone learns differently, Unconditional Confidence offers the “tortoise and the hare” approach to becoming fearless and free in one’s self-expression.

If you just want some quick tips and tools to get you through your next presentation with ease while creating an authentic connection with your audience, you can find what you need in the “Gimme Confidence Quick” programs and products.

If you want to feel an unconditional confidence deep in your bones, if you want to know that you are confident and free regardless of the situation or challenge before you, then the Unconditional Confidence 6-week programs are for you. These 6-week programs are recommended for those who want to experience a profound and powerful internal shift towards living a life of pure positive energy, confidence and joy.

It starts here!

Sign up for “Becoming Fearless,” a monthly e-zine (sign up at the top of this page). Then, be sure to check out the different programs offered on the Programs & Products page. There’s something for everyone. If you have any questions, email me at nancy [at] unconditionalconfidence.com

You can be completely confident and
have the time of your life
any time you are speaking, performing or
expressing yourself in any way.

Do you feel nervous or scared when
you speak or perform in public?

Does your nervousness trip you up
when you’re trying to be at your best?

Is your fear holding you back from
personal and professional success?

Well, cut that out!

You can experience the joy and freedom of being completely confident, powerfully present and perfectly at ease any time you are expressing yourself in any way. Really. No kidding.

My name is Nancy Tierney and I’m living proof that you can become unconditionally confident and have the time of your life any time you are speaking, performing or expressing yourself in any way (more about my background here). I created the Unconditional Confidence program so that no one would have to suffer from the same painful, debilitating stage fright that I once had. Believe me, if I can do it, YOU can do it, too.

Whether you want to speak with confidence and charisma to coliseum-sized audiences or you just want to give a toast at your brother’s wedding without fainting, Unconditional Confidence gives you the tools and support you need to have complete confidence, ease and creative freedom anytime you are speaking or performing in public.

So, take a look around. There’s something for everybody.

Quench your curiosity! Find out about how Unconditional Confidence might get you to where you want to go.

Discover the fun and flexibility of the “tortoise and the hare” approach to our Programs and Products.

Find out more about me and how I became the Diva of Unconditional Confidence.

Got questions? Get them answered at the FAQ page.

Be sure to sign up for the free “Become the Star You Are” TeleClinic and our free monthly e-zine, “Becoming Fearless.” Sign up at the top of this page.

Even if you’re not an opera fan, you’ve probably heard of Beverly Sills, one of America’s greatest opera stars and a true diva of the opera world. She died on Monday of lung cancer, even though she never smoked.

As a singer, I have always admired Beverly Sills for her amazing career, her decision to retire in her prime, and her endless devotion to the arts. But I never knew until today just how wise she was. She knew the essence of confidence. Here is a quote of hers that I found on Michelle Bennett’s blog:

Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality.”

This is the essence of confidence, knowing you are complete and whole now. There is nothing you have to achieve to be whole, to be who you really are. You are already great. You are already worthy of everything you desire.

One doesn’t develop confidence. It came in your starter kit when you arrived here. It is part of the package that is you. As Beverly says, you are already whole and complete. You just need to come to an understanding of that, experience it, and know it as your own reality.

This is an adventure of re-discovering what is already there.

By the way, Beverly Sills was known to never experience stage fright. And now you know why.

Here are some more wonderful quotes from Beverly Sills:

I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity… I didn’t feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not – more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.”

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.

Tags: Beverly Sills Self-Confidence Stage Fright Performing Opera Confidence Singing Confidence Self-Expression

Even Saturday Night Live comediennes can be horribly afraid of pubic speaking.

Molly Shannon, comedy film star and well-known contributor to Saturday Night Live, was a guest co-host on ABC’s The View today (damn, I miss Rosie on the show sooooo much), and she talked about how extremely nervous she gets if she has to make a toast at a wedding or speak in public in any way.

"I get so nervous that I can’t enjoy myself until it’s done," says Molly, "It’s one thing to be a character where you’re disguised, but I’m much more nervous and shy as myself."

This seems to be true for a lot of actors. They feel comfortable in a role, but if they have to speak as themselves, eeek!

One of my big tips for people who are nervous about speaking in public is, Be Yourself. But for some people, this is a hard thing to do. Why? Mostly because they feel that if they just show up as themselves, they somehow won’t cut the mustard.

And maybe some actors feel this same way. Or perhaps there is a certain vulnerability they feel if they are just being who they are. As Molly said, you’re not disguised. You have nothing to hide behind.

But why do we need to hide? What’s going to happen if people see who we really are?

I had a client the other day who told me he was feeling so vulnerable the day before he was to give a presentation that he had been working on for some time. His feeling of vulnerability sprang from the risk of sharing something that he had devoted so much time and love and effort towards.

When we really care about something, we feel vulnerable. It’s as if we are at greater risk of being hurt in some way.

But here’s the truth. You can still feel vulnerable and tender yet not be hurt. You can decide to feel the love and care you have for your message or even for your audience AND not let the opinions or judgements of others effect you in any way. You can create your own safety by deciding that no one’s opinion can really hurt you unless you choose to let it do so.

By the way, Joy Behar only suffers from stage fright when she’s doing her stand up routine. And Barbara Walters only gets nervous when people watch her dance.

Tags: Public Speaking Self-Confidence Speaking Fear of Public Speaking Confidence Self-Expression The View Molly Shannon

Is it a sin to use notes when giving a speech? Should you have your presentation memorized and so well practiced that you never need to glance at a note card?

According to Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen and an email from Eric Feng at The Public Speaking Blog, you should never, ever use notes or cue cards. To do so, according to them, means certain death as a speaker.

I wholeheartedly disagree. There is nothing wrong with using notes as long as you don’t misuse them.

But before I dig into this, you should know that both Garr’s and Eric’s directives were inspired by Cingular’s CEO Stan Sigman’s recent speech at MacWorld back in January. Apparently Stan bored his audience by reading his speech from his 4×5 note cards. Ugh! Not only did he lose his audience but he inspired the online insults and distain of several bloggers who were in attendance.

But was Stan’s demise because of his use of notes or his misuse of notes? I believe it was the latter. I agree that no one should read their speech from there notes. If you’re going to read it, you might as well not even bother to present it.

There is a way to use notes effectively and confidently. To ellaborate, let me jump off of the points from Dale Carnegie that Garr used in his blog post. (They appear near the middle of his post).

Point One: "Notes destroy fifty percent of the interest in your talk."

My Take: Only if you read them or are so tied to them that you aren’t able to speak conversationally, naturally. Notes won’t "destroy" anything if you use them as a tool to keep you headed in the right direction.

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