How to overcome your fear of public speaking - Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate School of Business

what's the best communication advice you've received this advice came from my mother it happens to be seven words long so I actually fit my own criteria I know she didn't create it but the advice is simple [Music] team Matt Abrahams is an incredible expert on Communications and it's such a treat to have him on Power Hour with us today so Matt has taught how to communicate well at Stanford for over 15 years he's won numerous teaching awards for it he also published a book on how to overcome our fear of public speaking it's called speaking up without freaking out he's the host of Stanford jsb podcast which also happens to be one of spotify's top podcasts called think fast talk smart and today with him we've learned concretely how to overcome your fear of public speaking how to speak strategically to achieve the goal you have in mind and if you're in Tech and affected by the layoffs how to interview well and if you're unfortunately a manager tasked with laying folks off how to do that in a respectful way so without further Ado guys here's Matt Abrahams hi Matt hello hello how are you I'm wonderful flexibility around the timing of all of this of course it's such a treat to have you on so thank you for coming on you're such an expert in communication I myself was a little nervous before this one no reason to be nervous like I hope I communicate well but I know that by the end I will have all the tips it'll be much better let me set the bar low [Laughter] amazing So speaking all the tips and you being an expert I was thinking we'd Dive Right In because I think we've got a wealth of knowledge to cover is that what that's right yeah amazing so Matt in your book speaking up without freaking out you cover 50 actionable tips for Millions who suffer from anxiety and public speaking settings I feel like this has to be almost everyone who suffers from this and public speaking so I'd love to get into those with you but before we do that I want to cover some helpful groundwork I am an avid listener of your GSB podcast think fast stock smart during which you've talked to several experts about what physically happens in anxiety and some of those include Kelly McGonagall and Andrew huberman and I'd love to have us just cover that so that we're all on the same page with what's happening in our bodies when we feel this way yeah so first and foremost thank you for having me here I am thoroughly excited to chat with you and you're right the anxiety that we all feel around speaking in in front of others can be very very challenging uh research suggests 75 percent of people have this fear uh and I think the other 25 are lying I think it is ubiquitous and uh those of us who study it like I do uh believe it's built into our biology So speaking of the biology our body sees speaking in front of others in high-stakes situations as a threat and it responds in kind by invoking the fight or flight response so as soon as you detect this threat your body releases a Cascade of neuro hormones designed to protect us the first thing that happens is our heart beats faster the idea is we want to oxygenate our bodies so we have the ability to move quickly if we need to so what do we do the heart beats faster in order to get the oxygen into that blood we breathe more shallow in that shallow breathing can cause us to speak fast for many of us our voice changes it gets wispier and lighter in tone and then as part of that we are pumping more blood our body tenses up so we've got more blood going through tighter tubes which leads to an increase in blood pressure and this makes people sweat and perspire and and blush and then finally along with all of this your salivary glands shut down uh your internal intestines are like we're not going to be digesting food so you might feel like you have to go to the bathroom you you get dry mouth all of these are normal in natural symptoms that your biology is invoking to protect us the problem is all of these things actually work against what we need in the moment of speaking so that's a quick biology lesson of what's going on and that's what I've learned in my research but also in my interviews with the people you mentioned and others it's really helpful to know that 75 and definitely more are going through the same thing and we're not so unique but it's a very natural response so then how do we speak up without freaking out Matt well so I could go on for a long time I wrote a whole book on it and I've spent a lot of my career focusing on it let me give you two general approaches when it comes to managing anxiety around speaking we have to take a two-pronged approach it's about managing symptoms and sources so symptoms are the things that we physiologically experience when we get nervous it's the rapid heart rate it's the shakiness it's the dry mouth and then there are the sources of anxiety these are the things that initiate and exacerbate the anxiety and I can give you if it would be helpful some examples of how to address both of those would that be useful okay so when it comes to the symptoms first and foremost the best thing you can do is to take some slow slow belly breaths the kind you take if you've ever done yoga or Tai Chi or Qigong it's where you fill your lower abdomen by inhaling slowly best through the nose to do that the key to breathing is you want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhale all of the goodness that happens with the relaxation response happens on the exhale so the rule of thumb or I like to say the rule of lung is exhale twice as slowly as you inhale and you only have to do this two or three times to get the benefit now because we're breathing lower and slower our speaking rate will slow down the wispiness of our voice will slow down so that's a really good one if you're like me and I perspire in blush when I get nervous those are my big signs of anxiety holding something cold in the palm of your hand will actually reduce your core body temperature the palms of your hands are thermoregulators for your body and it's a way of cooling yourself down in fact I bet you on a on a cold morning have held warm tea or coffee and felt that it's warmed you up we're just doing the same thing in River verse so those are a few examples there are many more I could dive into of ways to address the physiological symptoms that we have but there's still those sources the things that initiate and exacerbate and there are many of these the one I like to address first with most people is what makes us very nervous is our fear of not achieving a goal that we have for ourselves so when we communicate we have goals and if we get nervous about achieving those goals it can really make our nervousness worse so for example the students I teach they're nervous about not getting a good grade the answer entrepreneurs I coach are afraid of not getting funding all of these are fears of a potential negative future outcome so the way to Short Circuit this is to not be in the future and worried about it but to be in the present so there are lots of things we can do to become present oriented you might have tried techniques from mindfulness have you ever done mindfulness practices yeah so so that can really help uh taking some deep breaths helps doing something physical like walking around the building or some jumping jacks you know uh actors before they go on stage or athletes before they do their sport they'll do something physical to get themselves in their body and in the present moment you can listen to a song or a playlist we see many athletes do that you can start at 100 and count backwards by some tough number like 17s that gets us in the present moment so when it comes to managing anxiety you have to deal with both symptoms and sources and in so doing you can put yourself on a path to feeling more comfortable and confident I can totally see how that can lower our heart rate I am also one who perspires especially in my palms and I also run cold and I definitely do the hot tea to warm up and this is a great tip for me to hold something cold in my arms then I love what you said about living in the present I know that you are you're a big fan of movement you know you do Jiu Jitsu I personally like to work out in the morning because I feel like it really helps me be my best self a more productive version of me and that's absolutely something I need to do before I am hoping to perform at my best one other thing that comes to mind for me Matt I don't know if you've seen this across the people and folks that you teach is I notice that when we tend to care a lot about the outcome we tense up and this makes us becoming the a worse version of ourselves a less funny version a less personable version and that tends to detract from the outcomes we would like for instance with entrepreneurs that are going to fundraise is tend to be so nervous that they're not showing their full charismatic cells and that might affect investors same in public speaking I think an audience will tend to gravitate toward a more interesting personable speaker than one who's very robotic and so that's another way where I can see trying to calm down and just be present and be your full self is really helpful for me a way that I like to do that is maybe call someone who's really close to me who I enjoy talking to maybe it's my mom obviously Machi and my husband or a really good friend who gets me laughing and excited and that tends to really bring out my best self and before a public speaking event absolutely and there's a lot of research to back that up when we feel supported and cared for we're able to relax and as you said bring our best self to what we do and because we're so passionate a great way to address the anxiety that can come from like I really want to do this Justice is to remind yourself that when you communicate you're in service of your audience you're there for them and when you put that Spotlight on helping others rather than worrying about yourself communicating as effectively as you can it can make a tremendous difference so I totally get that I get very passionate about talking about communication but I remind myself that if I can help others get better in theirs that's my real goal and that takes the pressure off me doing it right or doing it the best I can I just have to do it to help people I love that so much it's not about you get get over yourself it's about the audience within what value you can provide to them okay so recapping before a public speaking event if you tend to run anxious or nervous calibrate your temperature your body temperature you can try and get some exercise try and talk to folks that you know you're tackling both the symptoms and the root cause anything else you want folks to know about before they pick up your book everyone so there's a whole piece of this that has to do with your content that you create you know if you feel confident in your content not just that you know it but that it's structured well that makes a big difference so so another aspect to this is that when you think about your content it should obviously be relevant and valuable to your audience but if you structure it give it a map for yourself it helps you feel better the biggest fear people report is that they're going to forget what they want to say and it's hard to get lost if you have a map so if you have a structure or a structured approach to your content and by a stroke immunological connection of points not just a bullet point list or a series of slides it can make a big difference so that's the one thing I would add to the the summary that you gave is thinking through that structure and I have lots of ideas about what makes for good structure but you should have a structured presentation for sure I'd actually like you to share a little bit on that because it's so important and I've heard a little bit on your podcasts you've you've talked about starting from the end goal speaking of value creation for your audience what do you want what's the one thing you want them to take away and working backward yes and but how else can one think about the logical points of the structure of their content great well you're a good student I know you're a good student at the business school and you're a good student of the podcast thank you uh for listening and for for bringing that up so to my mind all high-stakes communication I don't care if it's at work in your personal life must have a goal and to me a goal has three parts information emotion and action in other words what do you want your audience to know feel and do the knowing is the information the feeling is the emotion you want people to have excited concern fear of missing out and then the action most communication not all but most communication is action driven so if you have a clear goal that's tailored to your audience so if I if I have the same content and go to a different audience my goal might have to change that goal then directs what you're going to say and perhaps what you're not going to say so it helps you figure that out and once you have that goal you can then pick the best way to package or structure your information so a structure is just a logical connection of ideas there are many out there I know many of your listeners are familiar with comparison contrast conclusion or problem solution benefit these are structures ways of putting information together I personally have a favorite structure one that I talk a lot about which is the what so what now what structure where you start by talking about what it is you're discussing the so what is why the information is important and relevant and valuable to your audience and then the now what is what comes next is it that we have another meeting is it that you sign on the dotted line maybe it's I take your questions but what so what now what I think is one of the easiest ways to package up your information so it starts with knowing your audience from there you build a goal no feel due and then you determine the best road map or design for your message and that's the structure that you use are there any presentation throughout your years of experience in this that stick out as an example of something that was really great I think you just said I'm old there but no I don't know because being wrong there are countless speeches that I find incredibly valuable let me share one that I think most of your listeners know of you know Martin Luther King Juniors I Have a Dream speech is an amazing speech for so many reasons not just for the values it's aspiring to and and the movement that it furthered uh but from a structural audience focused point of view it's it's a piece of art I mean it's it's very skillfully done at its core although it's never called out is this it is a problem solution benefit oration he establishes the problem of racial Injustice he talks about some ways in which uh it could be bettered and what the light what things might be like if his ideas come to pass so it it's a great example of using a structure targeted to an approach appropriate audience but it is eloquently delivered and it is embellished with rhetorical devices like alliteration and anaphora and analogy and comparison so it to me is an epitome of an excellent speech now most people listening are not in a position to give speeches of that type but you can certainly leverage some of the ideas and Concepts that went into crafting that speech I love that speech so much what a masterpiece Matt would love to talk about speaking in the moment as we are doing right now on this podcast we are live and we are working off the cuff answers Etc what are your tips for for instance answering questions off the cuff and handling full pause off the cuff sure so I have dedicated the last several years of my academic focus and and coaching work to really helping with what I call spontaneous speaking speaking in the moment because if you think about it as you alluded to much of our communication if not the vast majority is spontaneous you know we didn't wake up this morning and open up the PowerPoint deck for our day right it just unfolds and yet we don't learn how to manage a lot of these situations you brought two up but there are many others there's q a there's fixing a faux pas there's apologizing in the moment there's take in introducing somebody when you're asked to introduce them there's giving feedback a lot of our communication is spontaneous and so so the whole think fast talk smart idea was based on a workshop I created at the business school you you very well might have gone through it when you were there to help students deal with cold calling one of the biggest things that are amazingly bright and talented students at the Stanford Business will struggle with and many many people around the world struggle with is cold calling the professor says what do you think and you have to respond your boss says give me your opinion and you have to respond so I designed a methodology a process to help people and so it boils down to what we just discussed structure how do you apply a structure in the moment but before you get to the actual deploying of the structure you have to be in the right place to do it so many of us actually get in our own way we over judge we overthink we over evaluate so we have to start with by reframing the situation changing our mindset lowering our standards and that can allow us to be free to do what's needed in the moment our brains are under a lot of cognitive load there's a lot of pressure going on when I have to speak in the moment answer your question give you feedback and so by giving myself permission just to do what needs to be done rather than doing it perfectly takes a lot of that pressure away reduces that cognitive load so I can then deploy a structure so let me give you one example imagine you and I are coming out of a meeting and you turn to me and you say hey Matt what do you think that meeting went like how do you think it went well I need to respond quickly but the first thing I have to do is try to suss out why did you ask did you ask because you really want to know about the meeting or do you feel like it didn't go so well and what you need in this moment is support so I first have to figure out what's needed in this moment and then I have to remind myself that you came to me asking for something of value so I don't have to put pressure on myself to give you this great bit of feedback you already think I have something of value to say and then I use a structure and I love what so what now what forgiving in the moment feedback so I might say you know that I think the meeting went reasonably well except that one part where you talked about the implementation plan you spoke a little quickly and didn't give as much detail and when you do that so that was the what and when you do that it might make people feel that you're not as prepared or haven't thought it through as much that's the so what so next time when you talk about the implementation plan I'd like for you to give more detail and slow down that's the now what so by leveraging that structure getting my mindset right 8 reframing the situation I can respond in the moment and the same thing works with giving an apology fixing a mistake you've made or answering a question I love the specificity of the feedback which is always so much more actionable because you can dive into the details of what you liked or what you didn't like and then I also like what you mentioned about reframing which is it's not about you think about why did this person ask you this question and how can you provide the most value to them so that's fabulous to learn and then Matt you teach a course on Essentials of strategic communication at Stanford Business School and I'd love to talk about what are these Essentials of strategic communication as well as we both know there's a difference between doing that in the classroom as well as in the real world and so how can we translate those into the real world yeah so we've already talked about some of these foundational principles that we talk about in strategic communication it really is all about your audience and understanding your audience being very clear in the goal that you have in your communication it's about crafting a message design that is really focused for your audience message design and then the one step we haven't really talked about is the delivery of that message how does that message actually get out to people how do you Cascade a message through an organization through a team with an individual and what's the coordination needed uh there so if you are going through some kind of organizational change how do you frame that change for the different audiences you have internally and and externally how do you Cascade the information out how do the messages reinforce themselves these are all the things that we think about when we talk about strategic communication and then there's the another form of delivery which is your physical way of saying it how do you as a leader or a participant in strategic communication deliver that information in a way that instills confidence and conveys the meaning and emotion that you need so there are a whole bunch of factors that we talk about some of which you and I have begun to discuss and others that factor in but you're exactly right I mean these principles apply in the classroom in the Work World in our personal lives as well and I I hope that my students leave my class feeling like they have a toolkit and have had a chance to practice some of these really important skills I'd love to make it a more specific potentially with a real world example that many are facing today we have these Tech layoffs that are going on yes if we talk through the case of a manager who needs to lay off some of their workers when we talk about delivery what are the essentials there that you believe they should bring together yeah so unfortunately when I was an operator I used to run Learning and Development groups for software companies and had some rather large organizations and and large p l responsibilities and I've had to go through layoffs and let me tell you it is the toughest thing I I have ever done professionally and and it's up there with my personal challenges I've had as well it's really hard so first and foremost as a manager I think being very transparent is critical I think having the facts and understanding as much as you can about the situation sometimes these things can be done hastily or without uh complete information available so you have to do your homework as a manager and you have to really think through how best to frame name the information while for many people it is very disappointing and upsetting to be laid off there are opportunities in that situation and you as a manager have to decide based on what you know about the person you're speaking to about how best to not just give the information clearly you have to say very directly that that your job is no longer here but you could frame things about what what comes next in terms of the package that's offered or guidance that's allowed you personally can share your experience um I I have a story myself of a very close colleague I had to let go uh after being told I would not need to let her group go uh it later came to me that I did have to let that group go very upsetting I actually left the company very shortly after doing that because I wasn't happy with how that all played out um but part of the the process very direct and blunt I said you know I had told you your job was safe and I am tremendously sorry that things changed and and you're in a situation where that's no longer true and you are being let go but we then pivoted and I said here are several of the package components and I know because you and I have worked closely together that you really have a passion towards in her case it was mentoring and mentoring disadvantaged Youth and I said you know here are some resources that are available that you might be able to then pursue that and I'd be you know and I did stay in touch with her and she actually went and launched an amazing mentoring program in the southeast of the United States and and is doing really well now I'm not saying that you know it was is good that she got laid off but the Strategic approach I took and she joined me in which is critical you want to invite that collaboration ended up you know you're a year or so later she told me getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to her now that is certainly not the case for everybody I understand that but I'm just saying that as a strategic Communicator going into this situation I want to be transparent I want to be truthful I want to be respectful I want to acknowledge the emotion that's in the room but if I know something about the person that can help them begin the next steps of their Journey then I might as well include that in that conversation letting people go is definitely one of the hardest things I've also had to do and I think what you can do is treat that person with kindness and respect and also think about how can you continue to add value to them moving forward if that was a productive work relationship and you think that this is a great employee how about on the flip side folks that are now trying to get jobs and are talking to hiring managers and because so many have been laid off they're trying to stand out in the crowd what are strategic tips that they can employ with negotiations or talking to hiring managers yeah so let me just talk about interviewing to start with so interviewing is actually a really important skill and I have some specific advice I think as you go into any interview you should have two or three clear themes that you want to communicate maybe that it's I'm experienced maybe it's that I'm a really good Problem Solver whatever those themes are and then for each theme you should come up with some support that you can bring to bear that reinforces that theme so if I say I'm a good Problem Solver I want to pull in support supporting my problem solving ability into my mind there are three different types of support there are examples those are anecdotes and stories you can tell I could tell a time of a when I helped solve a really important problem there's data in statistics I can bring to bear that show the amount of money I saved or the efficiencies I brought as a result of my problem solving and then there are third party testimonials somebody who's not Me Maybe I received an award maybe they're my manager or some senior leader commented on on what I did and you want to have a whole stockpile of those by theme so that when you're in the interview you can pull these examples out very quickly it's like when you cook it is much more efficient to follow a recipe if you have all of the ingredients prepared in advance everything's chopped everything's laid out you've got everything measured so in the moment of putting the recipe together assembling it I just take from what I already have the same is true with interviewing identify your themes generate your support and then you can practice there are lists of interview questions that exist you can talk to people who've recently interviewed for that company or for a position similar learn what the questions might be like and then practice assembling creating those recipes to help you do better in the interview on a similar note Matt these days one in four folks are working remotely and we have much more collaboration than ever before which means it's also much harder to stand out from the crowd than ever before you have entrepreneurs cold calling investors or Partners or customers and you have students reaching out to all sorts of folks how can folks stand out from the crowd and be memorable yeah that's a big challenge right I mean our most precious commodity in the world today is attention and just getting people's attention and then I think what's even more important than attention is what I call engagement sustained attention so what we know and there's a wonderful book made to stick I think everybody that should anybody interested in improving communication should read made the stick maybe might be everyone right but in that they talk about how do you make your ideas stick how do you make yourself stand out and a lot of it has to do with a few with connecting on an emotional level sharing some kind of engaged emotion we and those of us who study this we call this immediacy it's called warmth how do I connect with somebody so we remember those connections right the famous quote I I might not remember what you say but I remember how you made me feel really important if you want to stand out now I'm not saying be schmaltzy and over the top and dramatic but there are ways that you can tell stories in your answers to questions or if you're pitching paint a picture that connects with people don't just give data and bullet points so one way of getting to what you're Str you're asking about is through emotion and through storytelling really really important another way is through concrete detail being very specific our brains are designed to remember detail so if I can give detail in the stories I tell or the information I give now you can you can take this to an extreme and give too much detail but thinking about that many people in interviews for example or pitches stay very high level and our brains aren't really good at the gist or high level notion so get specific and when it comes to engagement there are really three things to do physical engagement get people physically involved asking a question having people type into the chat those are all really good ways to get people engaged and they'll focus more there's mental engagement again questioning can help get people thinking using analogies is a really powerful way people will remember the analogies that you used and then finally language linguistic involvement using people's names is a great way to connect with people using what I call time traveling language if I can put you into the future imagine what if picture this those are all phrases that get you seeing things in your mind I transport you into the future I can also take you into the past remember when think back to when that language brings you back to that point and again it's activating more brain systems and the more brain systems you activate the more memorable you will likely be so it's all about emotion and storytelling it's about being concrete and specific and using physical mental and linguistic engagement do any examples come to mind for you Matt when folks have really stood out in their Communications to you the thing that I think is most critical in the things that impress me are when people can bring me into the conversation when they pull me in so when they ask me to imagine or they give me some direct input or feedback that really makes me part of the conversation or they paint a picture that I really see those are are really really powerful you know I was very now this has been several years and unfortunately we've had some repetition of this but um in Florida with the Parkland shootings at the high school I was so impressed so impressed by those students who who became politically active to try to stop those horrific tragedies from happening and if you look at what they did it was just so authentic it was so connected it was so uh emotional they did and they were all uncoached untrained you know they did I was a master class in how to really engage and connect with people in a way that that blew me away I was absolutely floored by what I saw there and and those elements are in lots of the communications that impress me yeah speaking from the heart right where it feels like you're really getting to hear from the raw human and we're all human and we can all connect with each other's stories so just being really authentic to your story wonderful Matt so I want you to remember back to your podcast you ask your guests three questions and I'd love to ask you I've been dying to know what your answers to these questions all right all right I'm ready amazing okay so you typically ask for this to be summarized in a five to seven word slide presentation title but I'm not going to do that to you here what's the best communication advice you've received this advice came from my mother it happens to be seven words long so I actually fit my own criteria I know she didn't create it but the advice is simple tell the time don't build the clock many of us myself included can be clock Builders you've heard in some of my answers to you I went on longer than I probably should have we need to be concise we need to be clear and telling the time instead of building the clock is a great way to remember that so that Mantra helps me as I prepare my lectures as I prepare my Keynotes as I write and it's something I'm still working on but concision Precision in our communication really matters in a Marketplace of lots of information there's lots of noise there's lots of information be clear and concise totally I wonder whether that comes from a bit of self-doubt in oneself of oh I'm not sure if this really straightforward answer will suffice for you so let me add a few more things to it whereas that actually tends to detract and dilute your answer so love that just tell the time I think you're right I think you're I think it's that we're doubting and I think for many of us especially when it comes to answers we're discovering our content as we're saying it and so where we keep going and that that leads us to say more than we need to totally and then the communicator that you admire Matt besides your mom yeah actually my my father is the better Communicator than my mother but my mother just has these great sayings they're both good communicators my mother was a teacher for decades uh but my dad is really the the oratorical expert in the family um there are lots of people I admire there is a speaker her name is Brick Brittany pacnet she talks a lot about confidence not just confidence in speaking but just being confident in general she has a wonderful Ted Talk and other things and I came across her because obviously I am somebody who's interested in confidence around communication and she just has an engaging style it's very warm but she's able to to challenge people and and her advice and ideas are great so I I love listening to Brittany young young powerful woman doing good work so I I I enjoy her communication very much lovely we'll have to check her out yes and then Matt the first three ingredients for you and any successful communication strategy are it's not going to surprise you it's all about the audience it's all about having a goal and it's all about having a structure that you can deliver confidently those are the three fundamental ingredients I believe and the nice thing is you know being a podcast host who's been doing this for many years now when I asked that question of my guests by and large those are the answers that I get it's about audience it's about structure it's about being focused um if you were to to do a word cloud or some kind of technical analysis of the answers to those questions that would essentially be what people are saying makes sense and I like that it starts with the audience again all right Matt if you'll let me I'd love to ask you questions now that I get to ask each of our guests please I love your personal get to know you a bit better so you started with an undergrad in Psychology and then transitioned into the communications world what's the biggest challenge you've had to overcome and how did you do it yeah so I can very easily get in my head and be very worried about the future to me it's about being present I've been working on this for for many many years and I've made some progress but I have a long way to go as you alluded to I've been doing martial arts for for decades and the martial arts are a great way to work on being present oriented because you get immediate feedback when you are not present oriented and that feedback can can hurt you psychologically but it hurts you physically too so the biggest challenge that I've had in the biggest setbacks in my life have been around not being present about being too much in my head and worried about consequences or options and Roads not taken and I have found that when I let some of that go and adopt you know from from improv which is something I I lean on a lot although I'm not very good at it the yes and mentality the the do what's needed mentality my life has gotten better so that's been a big challenge for me yeah we just recently listened to Andrew humeren's podcast on meditation and he was talking about introspective versus extra actress X how do you say this word extra special maybe I haven't heard this I I'm a big fan of Andrew and I I was very honored that he was on my podcast um but yes being being internal focused or external focused for sure right and thankful that is and this is something I've like everyone can relate to um and and it's all a work in progress and like I said earlier for me as well it's about movement and like letting go of all these consequences and being easier on ourselves which you mentioned also setting the bar a little lower and also just being more open to other outcomes like there are many more possibilities that we're not necessarily allowing ourselves to consider and 100 right being more open to them lovely and then on the flip side Matt what do you feel has contributed to your success what are qualities or experiences you've had that are helpful to share a continual thirst for knowledge and appreciating that I don't know it know nearly as much as is available I believe if I have had any success it is based on my curiosity my willingness to ask and I always try to say yes to opportunity at first I think those are the key ingredients if I've had any success is is really knowing I don't know everything and wanting to learn more and being curious and having the confidence to ask and to demonstrate I don't know what I don't know uh very very important in my life and I encourage my children I encourage the people I teach and mentor to to be open to the possibility of what could be and be curious about it stay curious stay learning I also love how folks who know more tend to be more humble and tend to feel like they know even less yes and it's such a beautiful thing lifelong learning my parents always told me that no one can take your education from you and that's the most important thing you can invest in yourself is just learning and and what a beautiful thing in life we're constantly learning even from your children from my nieces so thanks for sharing that Matt this was lovely I love loved having you on thanks for making the time absolutely thank you for having me what you're doing is great I love your podcast [Music] thank you for listening don't forget to subscribe and if you like what you hear leave a review and share [Music]

Channel: The Jennifer Kamara Podcast

Views: 40,667

Keywords: public speaking, power hour

Id: GRdm4Iweuz0

Length: 38min 35sec (2315 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022