This concludes the Special Report, "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." A quick Summary, and a new definition.

In Summary

So, there you go! The Diva’s 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing in Public With Confidence, Ease and Your Own Kind of Creative Charisma.

How do they feel to you? Do you feel you’re ready to start integrating these Secrets into your expressive life? Can you feel how they could transform your communication and public self-expression?

If you’re ready to go for it, I suggest you start by focusing on one or two of the Secrets that really resonate with you now. Let yourself play with them in your daily life. All of these Secrets apply to all aspects of your life, not just when you’re speaking or performing for an audience. Then, play with a few more of the Secrets. You’ll discover the ones that are perfect for you.
 
These Secrets are explored and integrated in the advanced Unconditional Confidence® trainings, so if you want some coaching around these Secrets, please feel free to contact me through this blog or website. I offer several teleclasses, teleclinics and individual coaching programs that will allow you to fully integrate and expand upon these Diva Secrets.

Now, I promised to share with you my new definition of the word, Diva. 

A Diva is anyone who is connected to their own divine, creative source and true spirit AND is able to freely express themselves from that state of connection, in their life, work or art.

That’s my new definition. How do you like it? I know, it’s a bit nebulous. It’s a work in progress. As you will read in the Appendix below, I tried to use the best of the original definition yet make “Divahood” available to everyone. Because everyone has the ability to connect with one’s divine, creative self, one’s true self, and express oneself from that place of connection. Don’t you think?

Continue reading "The Summary & Appendix to
The Diva's 7 Secrets!" »

Posted by Nancy Tierney at 01:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Continue reading "Secret #7
You Gotta Have Fun!" »

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Thus continues the Special Report, "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." One more Secret to go after this one!
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Secret #6
Allow Your Audience to Be Who They Are

Doesn’t it feel great to know that you have full permission to just be who you are when you’re speaking or performing? Well, it will feel even better when you give your audience full permission to just be who they are, too.

This means that if your audience is bored, tired, or disinterested, that’s okay with you! If they are crazy with enthusiasm, well, all right! That’s okay, too.

You don’t have to control your audience. You don’t have to take care of them. Unless you’re performing for a group of infants, chances are they can all take care of themselves. Allow your audience to be as they are. They may very well be tired. That’s okay. They may want to be somewhere else. That’s okay, too. Don’t take it personally. They are just being who they are in that moment.

I have a friend who is wonderful professor of psychology at a college. She loves teaching. She loves interacting with her students during class and they love her as well. Recently she told me that she can be having a great time presenting something to her students, but if there is one student in back who is falling asleep, she feels compelled to grab his attention and make him to join the party.

“Why?” I asked her. “Why are you focusing so much energy and attention on the ONE student who could care less when you have a whole room full of students who are hungry to hear what you have to say? Stay where the party is. Let that student sleep it off. Leave him be and stay connected with those students who are available to connect with you.”

I would tell you the same thing. If half of your audience seems to be falling asleep, stay available and receptive to the half that is paying attention. Allow yourself to be with those who are available for connection rather than wasting your attention on those who would rather be someplace else.

Continue reading "Secret #6
Allow Your Audience to Be Who They Are" »

Posted by Nancy Tierney at 01:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Thus continues the Special Report, "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." I am posting these Secrets one by one every week. Until I run out.

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Secret #5
Connection Comes Before Content

Have you ever talked with someone and immediately felt a connection? “Wow, we really connected,” you say to yourself. It’s as if something clicked in and opened up and there was an exchange of energy that went beyond the words spoken. You feel it, and if feels great.

When you are speaking with an audience or performing, you can create this same kind of magical, palpable connection. All you have to do is listen out loud.

This is not a technique or trick. What I call “listening out loud” is a state of being in which you are simply present, resting inside your own skin, and allowing yourself to be completely available, receptive and responsive to the presence and energy of your audience. It’s as if you are listening to your audience even though you happen to be the one doing all the talking.

Now, you’ve probably always thought that in order to be a great speaker or performer you have to go out there and give your audience all you’ve got with passion, enthusiasm and excellence. But in a way, the opposite is true.

Continue reading "Secret #5:
Connection Comes Before Content" »

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Thus continues the Special Report, "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." I am posting these Secrets one by one over every week.
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Secret #4
You Can't Make A Mistake

Oh, we’re so afraid of making a mistake! Especially publicly.

You were taught to fear mistakes at a very early age. You learned that if you made a mistake, you could be punished, either by your parents, your school or your society. If you did anything that was displeasing or judged as inappropriate by the adults around you, you were admonished, sometimes ever humiliated in front of others. You figured out that there must be appropriate ways to behave and that if you “misbehaved,” you were “bad” and subject to rejection, isolation and pain.

Now, that can really screw up a person’s sense of self-confidence in their own self-expression, don’t you think?

Even now, as adults, our fear of mistakes cripples so much of our potential creativity and confident self-expression. We’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, of forgetting what we mean to say, of doing something “wrong.”  Huge chunks of our creative, expressive selves have been strangled because we long ago decided these parts of who we are might not meet the approval of others.

A day doesn’t go by without someone telling me a horror story about how they were humiliated or made to feel “wrong” or unworthy by either a teacher or some authority figure. These humiliations and the habits we’ve formed around them continue to haunt us. In an attempt to stay safe, we’ve stopped owning and expressing our true voice. We’ve allowed ourselves to become silent and small.

But here’s the good news.

When it comes to self-expression, there are no mistakes. There are only spontaneous, unplanned opportunities for connection.

Keep reading...

Continue reading "Secret #4
You Can't Make a Mistake
Because There Is No Such Thing!" »

Posted by Nancy Tierney at 09:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently wrote a Special Report that I'd like to share with you. It's called "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." I'll be posting these Secrets one by one over the next few weeks. Enjoy!

__________________

Secret #3:
Be Yourself

Tell me the truth. Can you just be yourself when you’re speaking or performing?

Can you just show up and be who you are without feeling that you should be someone who is more articulate, more talented, more experienced, more dynamic, more interesting, more funny, more SOMETHING?

The reason I’m asking is that most people feel that if they are going to stand up and speak in front of an audience, they need to be MORE than who they are. They need to be like that electrifying, laugh-a-minute speaker they saw last week. Or they need to be an extraordinary, super-duper, high-gloss version of themselves.

Well, that’s nuts.

You get to just be who you are. As you are. Not some better-than-ever version of who you are, but who you are right now. In this moment.

You get to talk the way you talk everyday to your friends and colleagues. Really. Just talk to your audience as if you were talking to a friend over a cup of coffee. Be present and available and just talk like you talk. Not only will you feel natural and at ease but your audience will, too. They will find it easy to connect and engage with you because you are just being you. In fact, all your audience really wants is to be with someone who is real, authentic, and genuine.

Sometimes, when I tell people they can just be who they are, I get this objection. “But I can’t be myself! No one would want to listen to me. Who I am is a very shy, quiet person!” Listen, what choice do you have? You are who you are. So, if you’re shy, then be shy and speak from that shyness. It’s okay. You don’t have to be explosive, aggressive and loud. You don’t have to be any certain way. Just be real. Be who you are.

Secondly, if you try to pretend to be someone you’re not, it’s not going to work. You will be so busy trying to pull of a charade that you are going to feel even more panicked and nervous. Besides, people can smell a fraud and a fake from a mile away. And as soon as they get a whiff, they retract, get suspicious and choose not to pay attention.

Continue reading "Diva Secret #3
Be Yourself" »

Posted by Nancy Tierney at 02:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently wrote a Special Report that I'd like to share with you.
It's called "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." I'll be posting these Secrets one by one over the next few weeks. Enjoy!


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Secret #2
Focus on the Fabulous

What are you thinking about right now?

Whatever it is, it’s effecting your experience and creating your future.

According to the Law of Attraction, whatever you think about, give your attention to and focus upon is what is created, or attracted into, your life. There is an energy and vibration in your thoughts, and that energy attracts more of the same. In other words, whatever you feed with your thought and energy, grows and expands into your experience.

So, what are you thinking about when you’re about to speak in public or perform onstage?

If you’re like most of my clients, you’re worrying about all the things that can go wrong. “What if I mess up? What if my body shakes uncontrollably? What if I forget what I’m saying? What if I trip? What if…”

Stop it!

This kind of thinking is not helping you. It’s only scaring you and making you feel more anxious. And, this kind of thinking is feeding what you don’t want.

When you catch your mind spinning with all the disasters that may befall you, just stop and choose to start thinking about what you DO want. “I want to feel relaxed and at ease. I want everything to go smoothly. I want to make a great connection with my audience. I want to express myself freely. I want to tell people what I know. I want to really enjoy this opportunity.”

By thinking about what you do want, you get your mind working for you rather than against you and you start attracting those things you want into your experience.

Continue reading "Diva Secret #2
Focus On The Fabulous!" »

Posted by Nancy Tierney at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently wrote a Special Report that I'd like to share with you.
It's called "The Diva's 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing With Confidence, Ease and Charisma." I'll be posting these Secrets one by one over the next few weeks. Enjoy!

___________


Several years ago I was singing in a small nightclub in San Francisco called Piaf’s. The host of the evening , Wayne, would introduce me to audience as “The Diva of the North Bay.” This title would make me cringe.

The title of “Diva” didn’t sit well with me because the word had come to mean “a narcissitic, self-absorbed, conceited whiner with more attitude than talent.” But I also knew that the original term was given to true Divas, singers who’s ability to be so connected to the divine, to something larger than themselves, that they sang with the ease, power and beauty of the heavens.

In order to find peace with my new title, I had to redefine the word “Diva.” And in doing so, I realized that a true Diva has valuable secrets to share, secrets about how to be powerfully present, completely confident, connected and charismatic when presenting, speaking or performing.  These are the Secrets I’m about to share with you. The Diva’s 7 Secrets to Speaking or Performing in Public With Confidence, Ease and Your Own Kind of Creative Charisma.

You will find these Secrets exciting but challenging because they ask you to change the way you think about yourself, your value and your relationship to speaking or performing in public. They may rub up against some old concepts and beliefs you have about what it means to express yourself in public. This is good.

Because if you are reading this, chances are that you want a change, yes? A change that allows you to feel completely confident, authentic and free in your self-expression? A change that allows you to break free of all the fear and anxiety and self-sabotage that has been keeping you from the joy of expressing yourself fully and fearlessly?

Well then, let’s get to it!

As for my new definition of the word Diva, I will share it with you in the Appendix of this report. It can wait because I know you’re anxious to dig in to these Secrets right now. Just read through them and imagine how it would feel to fully integrate these Secrets into your life and your self-expression. If it feels good, go for it!

Continue reading "Diva Secret #1
You Can't Care What Anyone Else Thinks" »

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