Have you ever needed to speak in front of a crowd or stand up at the front of the room to deliver a speech?  How did it make you feel?  If you were nervous leading up to it, or felt your stomach turn whilst making your way to the front of the room, then this technique is for you!

By using this technique you will be better prepared to deliver a speech, seminar, or any other public performance without experiencing the nerves and the apprehension that has previously plagued you.

By using this technique along with our Lockbox Technique, you’ll be sufficiently equipped to deal with almost any public speaking situation.

The Technique

1. I want you to relax and think back to the first time that you had to deliver a public performance and felt nervous.  For most people, this goes right back to primary education.  It might have been a “show and tell” experience, or reading a paragraph from a book in class.  Once you have the earliest reference you can find, keeping searching and thinking back further.  Does anything else spring to mind from an earlier time?  Once you’re confident that you have the earliest memory of a nervous public performance, please move on to the next step.
2. Focus on the memory that we established in step 1, and start to play it through in your mind.  Re-live that experience and notice the way in which you approached and handled the situation.  How could you have done things differently to change the experience into a pleasant one?  Consider your body language and your thought process leading up to the occasion.  Given the experience that you have at your disposal now, could you have handled the situation differently to your advantage?
3. Realise that you now have many more references and abilities in your arsenal than you did when this experience took place.  Compare yourself now to the person you were when this original event took place, and be aware of these differences, and the way in which you would handle the situation if it happened for the first time today.
4. Now cast the previous memories aside and imagine that this is the very first time that you will be delivering a public speech.  Imagine a time when you became excited about the unknown – It could be the excitement leading up to the anticipation of buying a house, a car, or visiting a new place.  Any time in the past where you were excited about something you’ve not experienced before.  Now remember how that made you feel.  It was something unknown, yet you were excited about it… so in that case why should you be nervous and anxious about something else that you’ve never experienced?  In the same way that you became excited about the “good things”, transfer this feeling of excitement into the prospect of delivering a great public speech.  Imagine yourself walking up to the front of the room with your shoulders pushed back, chest puffed out, and head held high.  Give yourself a proper smile – don’t just crunch up your mouth muscles, take it right up to your cheeks and your eyes, and even feel your forehead starting to pull.  As you approach the front of the room, see yourself up there from the eyes of a third party sat in the audience.  See how big you look?  See how confident you look and the respect you’re commanding in the room?  Everyone is there because you have something that they don’t have, and they want it.  They want to know what you know – you’ve got one up on them and they’re waiting for you to share this knowledge with them.  Now continue to play out the scene.  There’s a gently buzz of noise in the room, and then you stand up and begin to address the room. The room becomes silent as the audience listen to your every word with intrigue.  They want to know what you have to share with them, and they’re engrossed in your speech.  Notice as your words light up the room and the audience sit attentively waiting to hear more.  Play through your whole speech.  Everything is going to plan.  Everything is just right.  Now when you’ve finished your speech, see yourself wrapping it up and concluding your talk.  Notice as the room becomes alive with the buzz of a satisfied audience.  Notice their positive reaction to the end of your speech and the sight and sound of the occasion.
5. Now reflect on this event.  Did it go how you planned?  How does it make you feel about delivering the speech now?  If you’re still unsure about it, or feel that the way it plays out doesn’t suit your needs, then repeat Step 4 again, this time substituting the negative aspects of the event for elements which better suit your needs.  If you need an extra boost of confidence, now is the time to combine this method with the Lockbox Technique.
6. Now you should be raring to go and full of confidence.  Keep playing through this new imagery at least once a day, ideally twice a day until the night before you’re due to deliver the speech.  Each time you do this, create a physical cue to associate with this new feeling of confidence.  It could be pressing your finger and thumb together, tapping your hip, scrunching your toes, or any other quick and simple physical gesture to yourself.  On the day that you’re due to deliver, play it through in your mind first thing in the morning – you can do this whilst you’re in the shower or eating your breakfast – by now it’s so matter of fact that you don’t even need to concentrate on imagining it – you’ve done it so many times before.  It’s as much of a natural occurrence as sneezing, blinking, or itching your nose.
7. It’s now time to enter the scene for real!  Remember how you’ve played it through in your mind so many times, it’s become a natural event.  You’re full of confidence and you’re sure of yourself.  Your physical cue is armed and you’re ready to use it to invoke that extra boost of confidence and familiarity whenever you need it.  You know what you’re talking about and your audience and there because you have information that they want to hear.
8. You’re ready!

It’s a fact that first impressions really do count.  Whether you’re in an interview for a new job, meeting new colleagues for the first time, approaching someone you like at a bar, or meeting your partner’s friends or parents for the very first time.

Any of the scenarios mentioned above are likely to be high pressure and nerve-wracking times where many people react in a panic, often resulting in appearing on edge, hysterical, or foolish.  It doesn’t take me to tell you that the first impression you are likely to create in that mental state is far from being a true refection of your real self (unless of course you are naturally on edge, hysterical, and foolish!).

A good way to handle the emotional intensity and worry of these situations is to take a few minutes in the days leading up to the encounter to align your thoughts and feelings with your true self.  You can use a simple technique that I personally use and also teach my private clients which will allow you to draw on positive and resourceful emotions and experiences in order to give you the confidence to carry these past successes into present and future situations.  As a result, you will be able to create a more positive and productive first impression helping you to secure the job, set off on the right track with your new colleagues, positively engaging the girl or guy at the bar, and helping the future in-laws to adore you!

Remember that a person’s first impression of you is based on exactly what you show them.  You can choose to act with sensitivity and compassion, or you can choose to act with guile and grit.  You can be creative and handy, or you can be contemplatory and philosophical.  Many people that you meet will know exactly how they want you to feel towards them and will act accordingly to craft your first impressions.  They do not sit there thinking “I wonder what they will think of me”.  They stand boldly and inwardly state “THIS is what they WILL think of me”.  Ultimately it boils down to focus, self-belief, and an unwavering determination to create the desired outcome.

I’ve used this very technique to help me and many others to produce the resourceful state that they need, and to attain the outcomes that they desire.  I regularly use this method before business meetings, when meeting new clients, and even in shops and amongst new circles of friends.  One thing you must always remember when using this technique is that you are true to yourself.  You may feel you want to push the boundaries and act “above your station”, but remember that you will always be found out eventually.  Over time people will realise that there’s a mismatch between the impression you’re consciously trying to create, and the person that you really are.  A classic example of this is with the reality tv show Big Brother.  Regardless of the group of housemates you will always find in the first weeks that people will act with a sense of grandeur and holyness, and it only takes a short time for the true personalities to come out, denting the trust, affinity and familiarity that the viewers once held.

The golden rule is this: When creating a first impression, make sure that it aligns with your true self.  If you act in any other way, it will eventually come back to bite you, and it WILL hurt!

“Enough of the pretext” I hear you yell… let’s put it into action!

The technique that we will use here is the “Lockbox technique” which is a mental imagery system developed by Break Your Limits.  The Lockbox technique draws on some of the best parts of several other methods commonly used by NLP Practitioners and motivational speakers throughout the world, and it really does work.

In a nutshell, the Lockbox technique gives you the capacity to draw upon any mental state that you desire for a given situation.  You can stockpile an army of emotions to fuel any situation you encounter, including excitement, fear, trauma, determination, compassion… anything you want!

The Lockbox technique can be found here: Creating A Resourceful State With Our Lockbox NLP Technique

Let us know your success stories – we’re genuinely interested in hearing how this works for you!

Break Your Limits has developed a technique to enable you to draw upon all of your positive and resourceful experiences to help you to gain any mental advantage that you require.  Whatever you need to achieve can be stacked in your favour by conditioning your mind to utilise your own experiences as an army of support.  All you need to do is proactively package your past references into little boxes to use at your leisure!

This technique draws on metaphor and imagery and needs a little bit of imagination, so make sure you’re starting it at a time when you’re feeling inspired or creative for the best possible start.  Have a glass of water to nourish your mind, sit comfortably, and enjoy!

Creating your lockbox of positive references

For the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to assume that you’re going to meet someone for the first time and you want them to see your compassionate and kind side.  You need to believe that you really are that way, and to do that, you need to stack the odds in your favour…

1. Begin to focus on what you want to achieve at the end of this encounter. It can be any time where you need to interact with someone to establish a positive first impression as a compassionate and kind person.
2. Think of the qualities that you possess which align with the target’s beliefs, morals, and principles.
3. Cast your mind back to references from the past where you have used these qualities. Draw on as many references as possible. They can be little trivial examples, such as demonstrating compassion by opening a window to let a bee fly out, or moving a frog from the side of the road… or maybe the time when you decided not to pull the legs and wings off a crane fly (that’s a daddy long-legs for the children amongst us – me included!). Or it could be a major act of kindness… helping an elderly person to cross the road, attending to someone as they fell in the street, or telling someone you loved them.
4. Now imagine a box in front of you. In this box you can store all of your memories and experiences to be of benefit to you. You can start to sift through the memories you collected earlier in order to find the really resourceful ones. Anything that will benefit you in this scenario should be copied and placed inside the box. When you’ve finished, close the box and lock it. All of the positive emotions will start to churn and brew and gain intensity.
5. Next, imagine a concrete mould to your left. In this mould you can pour all of the instances where you have failed to utilise these qualities. For every time you pulled the legs off the crane fly, stick it in the concrete mould. For every time you laughed at someone trip or fall over, stick it in the concrete mould. Any instance of a negative behaviour which goes against your desired state… put it in the concrete mould. Eventually you’ll have put every negative state into the mould. Now lock them out forever by setting every reference deep inside the mould. Take the hardened block and bury it deep into the ground behind you. If concrete can contain radioactive material then surely it can keep your negative references away!
6. By now your lockbox of positive references should be ready to open up! Unlock the box and embrace the energy of the positive emotions. Really get immersed in them and draw upon the positivity within them. Really start to understand them and how they have made you into the person that you are and will be for the future.
7. Lock the box again and put it safely in your inside pocket. These are your references and your memories. You can use them whenever you want and you will feel the benefit of them. Keep going back to the box a couple of times a day. Eventually they will become an intrinsic part of you. You won’t need to use the box all the time, but it will always be there to serve you.

Once you have competed this technique, you can take time to repeat it for other resourceful states. Amongst my collection I have boxes to give me:

• Confidence
• Determination
• Compassion
• Competitive drive
• Phobia cure
• Challenging fears

and many more too!

Let us know how you get on with this technique and how it feels. Everybody has a slightly different approach, so experiment with it. Use this technique as a blueprint, try it on your friends, and give us some feedback. All we ask is that you credit Break Your Limits where possible, and give some feedback!

If you would like further help with this technique or any other element of NLP, you can enquire about a private session by emailing info@breakyourlimits.co.uk.