Overcome fear of public speaking

(This question came from a new Silva Instructor.)

Q: Any tips on public speaking?

A: Oh yes! Mental Rehearsal.

I used to imagine speaking to a group of 3. Then when I was comfortable with that - in the 3-Scenes Technique, not in the "real world" - I increased the group size to 5.

Whenever I'd see an empty meeting room, I'd go up front and pretend to be talking to a "full house." Dr. Hahn came to St. Petersburg once time and gave a Graduate Seminar at the big Convention Center over there. As we were walking along, going to lunch, we passed a huge room, set up for people to take some licensing exam - contractors license or something like that. Two chairs at each table... and I think there were something like 500 tables! It was a BIG room. So I got up on the platform at the front and pretended to be speaking to all those "people."

Eventually, I realized that it isn't about me... it is about the students. Once I stopped worrying about how *I* was doing, once I stopped being concerned about making a *mistake*, and I put all my attention on figuring out what the students needed to know in order to be successful, then I was never nervous again.

Then I used a tip from Dr. Hahn: Pretend. Act as-if. Fake it 'til you make it. So I decided to pretend that I was the best Silva lecturer in the world.

But I couldn't do that, it was not believable.

So I pretended I was an actor - no stress there because I have no desire to be an actor, and if I fail at it, who cares!

I pretended to be an actor who was playing the part of the best Silva lecturer in the world, and in this scene, all of the "actors" in the audience were playing the part of top Silva lecturers from around the world who had come to see what I did so that they could also learn how to be better lecturers. Now that was easy for me to do: Pretend to be pretending to be great! First time I did it, everybody in class thought that I was the best lecturer in the world!

You have to work at level, and also work at beta. Jose used to tell us we don't want to be mental giants and physical midgets... we want to be giants in both dimensions.

That is kind of the essence of UltraMind. It is not about getting what *I* want... it is about doing the job that has been assigned to me, and improving conditions on the planet.