Secret #7You Gotta Have Fun!

This is the last Secret from the Special Report, "The Diva’s 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." There will be a summary, though.
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Secret #7
You Gotta Have Fun!

I have a friend who always says, “Fun comes first!”

When it comes to speaking, performing or expressing yourself in any way, let your sense of fun lead the way. Let your priority be to create an experience that is fun for you. Be very selfish about this.

How can you have the most fun ever while you are presenting or performing? How can you create that for yourself?

Sometimes when I present this Secret to adults they just don’t get it. “What’s the point of having fun? Who cares about that? I need to make this sale, close this deal.” Or they say, “Fun? How can I have fun speaking in public? I just want it to be over fast!”

Let me help you out with this a little.

When you connect to what is fun and enjoyable and playful for you, you are connecting to your creativity, your aliveness AND your natural confidence in who you are. When you allow yourself to play and have fun, there is an energy that surges through you to carry you to where you want to go.

And when you allow yourself to have fun, your audience will find you irresistible. Even if they can’t understand a word you are saying, they will be drawn towards your energy.

Now, some of you may be saying, “But I’m talking about serious things here. I can’t be having fun!”  That’s just not true. You don’t have to be silly and irreverent to have fun. It’s all about enjoying yourself to the maximum and allowing your playful, creative energy to be present no matter what you are talking about.

If you are still tripping on the “fun” word, let me ask you a different question: how can you create an experience that you thoroughly enjoy?

One of my clients gives presentations at industry conferences. The material is dry. The format is dictated by the rules and guidelines of the conference management. It’s a hard environment in which to imagine having a rip-roaring bit of fun when so much of what you are allowed to do is restricted by all these rules.

Nevertheless, I told my client, “Just imagine there are no rules, no guidelines, no restrictions. Just for now, imagine this is so. How can you create a presentation that would be outrageously fun for you?” Starting from this intention to have fun, my client was able to create a playful, slightly zany way to present his rather dry material and still stay within the regulations of the conference. And because he called upon his own inner resources of what would be fun for him, rather than me telling him what I thought would be fun, he created something he could do with a natural confidence and ease. As a result, he was the star of the conference and his self-confidence soared to an all-time high.

Now, for those of you who can’t relate to fun (and that’s okay if you can’t; I didn’t for years) go for what has heart and meaning for you. How can you create an experience for yourself that has heart and meaning for you? What would you do or say that would allow you to feel connected to your sense of purpose, your passion, your intention?

I once worked with a woman who was absolutely petrified of speaking to groups of people. She couldn’t even get herself to raise her hand to ask a question when she was at a workshop or seminar her fear was so great.

But she loved these elephants in Thailand. She was part of an organization that was trying to fund a sanctuary for these elephants so they would be safe from poachers. In her efforts to raise funds, she needed to speak to large groups of people about these elephants and her cause.

I told her to focus on her intense love for these elephants and to stay connected to that feeling of love whenever she started feeling scared or nervous. While she was still very nervous before speaking to a group, as soon as she started talking about her beloved elephants, she was a woman on fire. Nothing could stop her. Not even her fear.

Go for the fun! Go for the heart! Create an experience that will be totally delightful for you. It will super-charge your confidence, allow you to have a blast, no matter what. And remember, if you aren’t having a good time, no one else is really having all that great a time either. Speaking and performing gets to be fun for you and your audience.

The next time you have an opportunity to speak or perform, ask yourself, “How can I make this outrageously fun and enjoyable for me?” Just see what comes up when you ask yourself that question. Let yourself play with the possibilities. And if you can’t get into the fun idea, go for what has heart and meaning for you.

Tags:

 Public Speaking Self-Confidence Speaking Performing Performance Presentation Fear of Public Speaking Confidence Self-Expression