Stop being yourself

Welcome back to the LIFT Your Impact newsletter, where you can learn how to achieve your goals by LIFTing others. Here you will gain insights and top tips on leadership, communication, and storytelling. I also provide daily video tips on Instagram here!

My team at Body Talk delivers powerful, proven training on the science of communication, and we offer a wide range of virtual training options. Or click here if you would like to book me for a speaking engagement (virtual or in person).?

Some of the worst advice I hear when it comes to effective communication is, “Just be yourself.”

It sounds reassuring. We all want to be ourselves. However, we all have a lifetime of bad habits and behaviours that we need to strip away in order to connect with people more successfully.?

In acting school, we spent the entire first term learning how to breathe properly. I remember thinking: this is a waste of time. I’ve been breathing my whole life! What more could I possibly need to learn? The truth is, as we grow older, we spend a lot of our lives restricting our breathing, and it takes intentional practice to reconnect with our breath. It’s why babies can scream all day without losing their voices. They haven’t been taught to restrict themselves yet, which causes tension and can lead to damage in the vocal folds.?

Reconnecting to your true self is no different. Think of a time when you were fully present in your life. What would it mean to go back, revisit, and reset how you communicated when you were habit-free?

In order to understand my own habits, I thought back through my journey from expressive child to awkward teenager and on to self-conscious adult. Suddenly the road that led to my studies in this area became clear. I became shy and quiet in order to protect myself, but that’s not who I really am.?

Think back to your earliest memories. Can you find any moments when you felt unable to express yourself, or when you were rejected or mocked for giving your opinion? These moments may have been the first stages of building the armour you now wear in front of people.?

How do you drop the armour?

The following questions are intended to get you to think about events from your past that could be affecting the way you communicate with other people now:

• What events have most challenged or questioned your communication skills?—at school, at work, and throughout your life? Think about such things as an interview that may have gone badly; a speech when you felt embarrassed; an event where people teased you for how you spoke; or times when you felt ignored.
• How did these events change how you feel about expressing your ideas? What strategies have you developed to help yourself cope?
• What habits, armour, or protective behaviours do you think you need to let go of in order to communicate more freely??

The armour was put there for a reason. You thought that you needed it. And maybe at a certain point in your life, you did. You can thank the armour for protecting you, and gently ask it to go away. You don’t need it anymore. You don’t need to defend or shield yourself from open and effective communication!

This work isn’t easy, but just as you can learn how to breathe again, whether you think you need it or not, you can also learn to reconnect with your true self, armour free. You will be surprised at what you will find.

Your challenge for the week:

Consider one situation during which you felt rejected. Now look at it with a fresh perspective. Find three positive things that this situation has given you. Perhaps it taught you that you have resilience, or has given you greater empathy. Once you can find the positives in your experiences, you will be able to start letting the armour go.?

Take a deep, unrestricted breath. Feels good, right?

Thank you for reading! You can connect with my team at [email protected], check out my linktree, or sign up for one of our virtual masterclasses.

To book me for speaking engagements, please email [email protected] or check out my conference speaking page here.

Don’t forget to subscribe for more biweekly tips and tricks on how to achieve your goals while LIFTing others. Together we can tilt the world in a more positive direction.