Powerful Presenting Yakety-Yak goes public! What fun we had.

I had such a great day today - it was our very first FREE public speaking training day for our new company Yakety Yak, held at North Weald Golf Club. What a lovely and peaceful environment to hold an event in, worth checking out http://www.northwealdgolfclub.co.uk. Tim, the Manager sponsored the event by giving us their beautiful first floor conference rooms for our event.  Olly, Natalie and I worked with thirteen participants from a very wide range of organisations, all wanting to spend the day working on their public speaking and presentation skills. From the beginning of the day, everyone was on board, ready to share and learn. Music, flowers and fruit set the atmosphere we wanted, and the sunlight streaming through the window was just lovely. Creating a safe space to learn is essential to get the best out of any programme. The commitment and energy was great, lots of laughter as people made up stories on the spot, worked physically on voice, breath and body. Its probably no surprise to anyone that in the UK public speaking is the second most feared thing, after spiders! Often people have an unconscious belief that they can't stand up in front of others, and guess what, that belief easily becomes a reality! Today we explored how a thought about something, anything, sponsors the emotional reaction which in turn sponsors the physiological response. We have a great knack of convincing ourselves that"such and such" is true, only to discover that we do indeed have extraordinarily powerful imaginations. Today we focused on where we place our mental attention, and how this in turn impacts directly on our whole systems. Learning to go into the "presenter" state was key today, encouraging peripheral vision and awareness brings us into the zone, which allows us to access with ease all that we know. I love the idea that everything we have ever done or ever learned is simply sitting there in our unconscious minds, and it really is only a matter of finding the key to unlock the treasures. Today I shared a new technique I have developed ( very simple and easy and only took 30 years to discover) called the Finger Stickies!  By the end of today's session everyone had found their own way of using the technique and making it their own, and by 4.30 everyone had created their 5 minute presentation without notes and shared it with the rest of the group! What a great joy it is to see people having fun and enjoying standing up in front of others and sharing themselves. Thank you to everyone who came from Bishops Stortford, Cambridge, London.  I will post forthcoming programmes shortly and if anyone is interested in 121 coaching just give me a call on 01371 878315.  It was wonderful to be in concert with such a great group of people today - so now I can enjoy the weekend with a big smile on my face!