How to Have Emotional Mastery as a Speaker & Leader

Life-Changing Strategies for Speakers & Leaders - How to Have Emotional Mastery

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Remember the time when you felt like the world was against you? That everyone was out to get you?

Have you felt that way when you were in front of your audience?

Being a leader and a speaker can be scary. You put yourself out there and you make yourself vulnerable, and that can be challenging at times.

Therefore, it is important to have emotional mastery skills.

​The fact is, even if you have all the strategies in the world around speaking and around leadership, if you don’t have emotional mastery skills, at the end of the day, you’re still going to feel disconnected, you’re still going to feel unfulfilled, and you’re still going to feel unsuccessful.

I don’t want that for you. So, I am going to share with you my three Mastery Tips on how to have emotional intimacy, plus read through to the end for my Golden Strategy.

MASTERY STRATEGY #1
Empathy

It is important to be able to become intimate and gain mastery with your emotional world through EMPATHY.

Now, remember what Brendon Burchard explains, “Common sense is not always common practice.” So I want you to bring on the learning mindset and be open to learning something new. Because the fact is, we can all be more empathetic, right?

Remember the time when things just built and built and built and all of a sudden, you exploded, and you’re like, “And I probably could’ve been more empathetic about that person.”

Let me share a little story with you. Many years ago, when I was absolutely drenched and overwhelmed in limiting beliefs and in low self-esteem, I was fearful of people’s judgment all the time. I went to the bathroom sometimes 15 times a day to make sure there’s nothing on my face that people could make fun of me about... I was in utter despair about the world and people‘s judgment.

On one of those days, while I was crying and crying in my room, my mother walked into the room and said, “Jody, the world is not all about you. The world doesn’t revolve around you. It’s not all about you.” I remember my heart was in pain as I heard her words. I didn’t feel any better.

But, as she elaborated and as I allowed myself to be open to what she was sharing; a few days later, I was walking down the street when I realized people were looking at me. Automatically, I thought, “those people are judging me. What’s wrong with my outfit? What’s wrong with my face? What’s wrong with my hair?” I was so ready to think people were judging me.

And at that moment, I thought, “Do I really feel like everything is about ME?” And it was this huge paradigm shift; I was like, “Woah! This is something I do all the time.”

Now, empathy is where we stop being “me! me! me!”. And we allow ourselves to look through the lens of curiosity, of contribution as a speaker and as a leader. It’s not about ‘me, me, me’ on stage. Whatever your stage is, whether it’s a Facebook live, with your family, in a meeting, on a panel, actually in front of an audience, or on camera --- as a leader and a speaker, you make it about the other person --- your audience.

What are their challenges? What are their struggles? Get into THEIR world. Go into their space and give them the solution. Give them value. Lead and show them their potential. If you make it about them and have that empathy, everything shifts. Your fears and your doubts begin to wither away. And through what I call the Contribution Mindset, you can really make a difference. So, have empathy.

Finally, empathy doesn't mean we have to have gone through the exact experience of someone else to be empathetic. I once had a friend who was really upset about something that she went through. Before I even said a word, she said to me, “But you wouldn’t understand because you haven’t gone through this.” Now, she was so lost in “Victim” that she believed no one else in the world could possibly have gone through what she was going through. She didn’t believe that people would understand how she felt.

But the fact is, we are all humans. We’ve all gone through pains, struggles and challenges. We’ve all gone through hardship. We’ve all gone through different rays of joy and light and sadness and darkness.

So, it's important to understand that even if we haven’t gone through what someone has gone through, in the same way, we know how that emotion and pain feels or we can at least empathize with how they might be feeling.

So, put on your empathy cap. Live through contribution and you’re going to have way more success as a speaker and a leader.

MASTERY STRATEGY #2
Self-Awarenesss

Mastery tip number two is to ensure that you have SELF-AWARENESS.

Now that we’ve focused on others, we need to focus on who we are and what our Emotional Reactivity Raw Spots are. What are the things that you get triggered by? Just know, the world isn’t triggering you, you are reacting to the world because of your childhood, because of what you’ve gone through, because of experiences and challenges.

“We don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as WE are” - Anais Nin

So, instead of going into “the world is against me” and it’s “me, me, me”. We should go - “Well, this is really interesting. I’m really emotionally reacting to this thing that someone said, to this particular thing that I saw. I wonder why?” Remember what I’ve shared in my previous blogs and videos, bring Curiosity back! Be curious about your internal world, and be willing to be brave, vulnerable and courageous enough to heal and to allow yourself to be supported through that healing.

I don’t teach anything that I haven’t gone through, struggled through, and then got results with myself. I share what works for me. I share what works for all the people that I’ve helped. And the fact is, it’s challenging to help someone else through something unless you’ve allowed yourself to walk through the door of self-awareness and growth yourself. So, allow yourself to be supported, to think of your childhood, to realize your Raw Spots so that you can take an autonomous responsibility for your emotions in the workplace and personally.

When you are public speaking, it means you can lead and rock on even if something emotionally triggers you; you can rock on and then give yourself the time after that moment to feel it. When you are aware of your emotional world and Raw Spots, you can also tell someone, “Let’s circle back in 10”, as Brene Brown explains, “I’ll come back once I feel a bit more settled.”

Thus, go and feel your emotions. Emotional Mastery doesn’t mean you push your emotions away --- oh my gosh, no! It means you can feel all of your emotions and can welcome support through this also. I’ll write about how you can actually do that emotional support for yourself in another article, so you can heal and then rock out as your best speaker-self, your best leader-self.
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 So, ensure that you have that self-awareness and allow yourself to feel.

MASTERY STRATEGY #3
Healthy Boundaries

Tip number three is HEALTHY BOUNDARIES.

Now that we’ve focused on others through empathy, and have self-awareness for ourselves, we need to be able to have healthy boundaries.
 
Part of healthy boundaries is knowing what is okay and what is not okay for us. Let’s be reminded of Gwyneth Paltrow’s words, “We’re not learning anything unless we’re having tough conversations.”
 
Allow yourself to be brave enough to put your healthy boundaries into place, because guess what? You’re holding back in your life. You’re not allowing yourself to be fully seen or stepping up in your career or in your personal life, because deep down, you are afraid that you won’t be able to handle what other people put on you, or what other people share with you, or how the world reacts to you.
 
The fact is, if you have healthy boundaries, you have the superpower to say NO. You have the superpower to be able to understand what is okay and not okay; what situation you want to be in, and what you want to remove yourself from. With healthy boundaries, you surround yourself with people who lift you up.
 
So, guess what? A lot of your barriers are around boundaries.
 
Like Brene Brown says, “The kindest people in the world have the biggest boundaries.”
 
BE AWARE of what’s okay and not okay for you so that you can then share with others your healthy boundaries. Also know, you cannot respect other people‘s boundaries until you’re able to respect your own. So, make sure that you’re able to put your boundaries in place, so you can respect other people‘s boundaries.
 
As a speaker and a leader, your success is going to flow from there. People will feel safe when they know your healthy boundaries and how far your kindness can stretch. Make sure to have your healthy boundaries, and courage, assertiveness, and healthy anger. Put those boundaries in place with a sense of living into your values.
 
I trust that I have added value to you through my three mastery tips so far.

Golden Bonus Strategy
Limit Reactivity
 
In this technological growing age, it’s too easy to fall into the trap of reaction --- reacting to your emails, everyone else’s needs, the news and updates, etc.
 
This can send us into an emotional reactivity downward spiral.
 
So, RECLAIM YOUR PROACTION!
 
Set a time where you will disregard your phone, email, the radio and other things. Do nothing. Feel the moment. And think --- How are you feeling? What are your goals for the day? What are your intentions at the end of the day? Make sure you also set up a time before you go to bed for retrospection also.
 
DO NOT OVERWHELM YOURSELF. I understand that you want to do a lot of stuff and achieve a lot of things, that’s why you are a High Performer. I get it. So, start small --- In the morning, start with 10 minutes of no reactivity and 10 minutes at night, and build it up from there.
 
As soon as you are able to reclaim your peace from not being reactive, the sooner you reclaim proaction. Reacting to the radio or news, for example, just hypes up your fears --- why would you want to listen to the news first thing and fill yourself up with fear? The sooner you reclaim that proaction, the sooner you reclaim back your life!
 
Your emotional mastery will help you become an extraordinary speaker and leader.

I trust that these mastery strategies and my golden strategy have supported you.
 
As always, as Denise Burchard explains, “In this world, we can choose to be ordinary or we can choose to be extraordinary.”
 
So, what I’d love for you to do if you want to be an extraordinary speaker and leader, and human being overall, is to message me here, or email me at [email protected] with topics I can make videos on and write about for you.
 
What are your challenges and your struggles that I can support you with? Make sure you share your needs so I can support you. Also, make sure that you reach out if you feel ready to fully breakthrough as a speaker and leader with my personal help.

As always, go out there and choose to be EXTRAORDINARY.
 
Be Brave. Be Vulnerable. Be Kind.
 
With kindness,

P.S.

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