3.28 How to overcome your fear of presenting (with special guest, author Linda Ugelow)

If you dread presentations, or would just like to be a bit more confident when speaking, then this episode is for you! Linda Ugelow, author of Delight in the Limelight, is talking about why so many of us struggle with public speaking and what we can all do to improve. If you listen carefully, you’ll also find out what happened when I was live on stage in a wetsuit too 😊 

You can find out all about Linda here or follow her on TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
You can also buy her book, Delight in the Limelight or find it on Audible. 

You can get her Speaker Preparation Checklist to feel grounded, focused, and energized when you speak.  

If you want a giggle, you can also watch my FameLab disaster video and my response

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Vikki: Hello and welcome to the PhD life coach podcast. And this week we have a guest author with us. So welcome Linda Ugelow, the author of Delight in the Limelight, who is an expert in all things presentations and overcoming your fears of speaking in public. So welcome Linda. 

Linda: Thank you for having me, Vikki. 

Vikki: No, it's exciting to have you here. Tell people a little bit more about yourself and how you came to write a book about this.

Linda: I became an online coach back in 2014 or so, and when it came time after I built my website and I decided I was going to help people overcome stress in their lives, I had to put myself out there. And all the marketing gurus at the time said there was this amazing new technology called live streaming. And there was this app called Periscope. And what they said is, you got to get on every day. And I thought. Okay. I'm going to get on every day to build my following. What they didn't tell me was it was terrifying. And every day my heart was pounding like a caffeinated race horse, but I figured, you know, after a few weeks I'll feel better and I'll Google how to get over my nerves and I'll utilize deep breathing and power poses and meditation.

Linda: And I'll reframe my mind. To like pretend it's excitement and not to think about me, but to think about the audience. And sure enough, I got to day 75, 10 weeks later, daily broadcasting. And my heart is still racing like a caffeinated racehorse. And I'm thinking, what is going on? You know what, you know, why hasn't all this experience, this daily live streaming gotten me to a place of feeling confident.

Linda: And I realized that I'm managing it okay. With all those things I mentioned. But I didn't want to have to manage it. I didn't want to have any fear at all to have to manage. So I decided that day I'm going to get rid of the fear. And I had background in expressive arts therapy, a psychology background, movement, like dance movement therapy.

Linda: And I thought, I'm sure I've got the answer to this. The first thing I decided to do before I got rid of it was to investigate it. I thought, what is this fear anyway? So I closed my eyes and I asked if the fear could talk, what would it say? And what came back was you're going to be attacked. 

Vikki: Oh, wow. 

Linda: And all of a sudden I thought, wow, have I been attacked? And what thought, Oh my gosh, I have. In fact, my sisters used to attack me all the time. When? Whenever my mom put me in the center of attention saying, why can't you girls be more like Linda? Cause I was the good girl. I saw the punishment my sisters got, and I decided that was never going to happen to me.

Linda: So I became the goody, goody, I never got punished by mom, but I did get punished by my sisters. for having my mother's favor. Then it hit me, duh, so I'm not comfortable being the center of attention, being on camera, or I was a performer on stage for, I think, over 30 years at that point with my Women's World Music Group.

Linda: Hated, hated having to introduce a song. No wonder why, because there was a part of me that remembered it was dangerous to be the center of attention, and then a light bulb went off in my mind. Maybe this is what the fear of speaking is all about. It's not about that nice audience that's encouraging us, but it's about those times that we had in the past that eroded our confidence that made us feel it wasn't safe to speak.

Linda: Now, in my case, with that particular memory, I was being elevated but it invited the jealousy of my sisters. They hated me for it. But I also had times that I was bullied when I was ignored by all the other kids at school. Times that my mom would say, why an A minus and not an A plus? You know, giving me this feeling I have to be perfect.

Vikki: I'm only laughing with that one. I'm only laughing because I empathize. So we have a running joke with my mum, thankfully it doesn't seem to have caused too much trauma, a running joke with my mum that I'd come home with a 98 percent on my science test and she'd asked me what happened to the other 2%. And I've asked her about it and she's like, what did you expect me to do? To be like, oh my goodness, you're so amazing. She's like, yeah, we'll talk about the other 2%. 

Linda: Exactly. Yes. Give me some credit. That was a really, really good outcome. 

Vikki: She was like, you got enough credit from getting a 98%. You didn't need more from me.

Linda: Yeah. Well, these are the inadvertent slights. That we get and they may be minor and on the, on their own, they may not be sufficient to create this anxiety speaking, but when you have that, plus maybe an embarrassing experience in public, or you are hurt in some way, abused, you have, like, my father also told me he wasn't interested in what I, you know, what my thoughts and opinions were, he wasn't interested in the things I was interested in.

Linda: That led me to believe that what I had to say wasn't interesting and other people wouldn't feel that way either. So when you have these different items and stories and memories from your past, plus you know, those messages like silence is golden, children should be, you know, seen and not heard and don't stand out, keep your head down.

Linda: All of these things that are meant probably in some beneficial ways to help us get through life more successfully. You know, to create compliant children who are good and get good grades, those things don't necessarily translate and us feeling bold and being able to take risks and stand out and take up space because we're so busy going by the rules and trying to be good students and good kids that we don't realize it's working against us.

Vikki: For sure. And I loved your, the dedication of your book, the way you said it's to the speaker inside waiting to be set free. And I just, tell a bit more about why you chose that. 

Linda: Because I felt like I spent most of my life hiding. And I think that's the question I like to ask people. And I think we should ask ourselves is like " When did we decide it was safer to hide?"

Linda: And yet there's a part of us that wants to be seen and heard. That's our nature. That is our human design. Children love being the center of attention, especially when it's, you know, positive one, like the first steps we take, or when we laugh and people laugh with us. Or think of about children at the playground hanging upside down saying, look, and it could be the 50th time that day.

Linda: And they, they just love that positive regard at, but somewhere between then and later on, it all changes. We give that up for caution. So my dedication is to that person who, which I do think is most of us who really want to be seen, heard, valued, respected, feeling like we can participate fully in the lives that we are living and in the areas that we feel passionate about.

Vikki: So many of my listeners, almost all my listeners are either PhD students or academics. So they're working in that university world. And there they might have speaking that's teaching or it might be presenting to their research groups, or even externally at big conferences and all that sort of stuff. So there's loads of academia, as you know, that involves speaking to other people. So for the people who are listening, who really empathizing with the things you say. Where would you even start? Because most of the things you talked about at the beginning as not having worked for you, are the stuff that we're told most of the time, right? So, where would somebody who's struggling with this start?

Linda: I really believe that it is worthwhile to investigate the source of our speaking fear, because what happens is that unexamined, it continues to crop up. It's a trigger for, you know, past wounds and yes, we can manage it. And if you're only going to be speaking once in a while or if it doesn't bother you that much, it may not be as important, but if you do want to feel like this is not an obstacle for you, it's really worthwhile to say, where did I feel dismissed? What were my family relationships like with my parents, my caretakers, my siblings? My school relationships, were there any times in school that I felt rejected or dismissed or ridiculed in public?

Linda: Once we know what these issues are, we can then address them. What we want to be able to do is change our relationship to them. Because what happens is when we have these experiences, we think it means something about us. We ascribe meaning to it. And what we want to do is find a different meaning. Of how it sits inside our neurophysiology and in our memory so it's not activated. It's not sore. It's not a sore wound, but it's a healed wound. And we do that by forgiveness, by giving compassion and love and maybe understanding to our younger self who maybe didn't have the same resources that we have as an adult, it could just be a matter of journaling, it could be a matter of doing some forgiveness but to yourself and to other people who may have been involved, I love using a particular modality called emotional freedom technique, which people may know as tapping or EFT. I've just had wonderful results with it myself and with a lot of my clients. It's kind of a way of interrupting the pattern of how a memory or story lives inside us and opens us to a wider possibility, a bigger palette or canvas for that story to sit. And so it feels like, it has a right place in our life because truthfully, we're not going to get through life unscathed. Things are going to happen, but it's how we're able to look at them and address them and move on from them.

Linda: That allows us a sense of inner freedom. I feel like there's no shame in having stuff. We all have stuff. 

Vikki: Hmm. I find it fascinating. This is probably beyond the scope of how you deal with it now, but I find it fascinating the difference between whether these experiences kind of lodge themselves in you in that way or not. So, the listeners know that there's, there's a whole bunch of the stuff I talk about normally that I am still working through with. Procrastination, overwhelm, all that stuff, I am very much still working on myself with my clients, whereas public speaking is one, occasionally I get a bit nervous in a kind of like, oh, there's 4, 000 people out there kind of way.

Vikki: But beyond that is one that I've just I've never really had an issue with, yet I can think of a whole bunch of times. I mean, I was told to shut up and talk less pretty much my entire life. And I can think of a whole bunch of times that things have gone wrong on stage and stuff and it's interesting why these things lodge with some people and mean something, because I don't think it was anything clever or special that I did at the time that means it didn't.

Linda: Like I said, it depends on the meaning, the meaning we ascribe to them. So I actually invite myself to make mistakes now and to mess up so that I get practice in handling them not only for myself, but so that I can model for other people. If we're somewhat amused by ourselves, it's not going to be an issue. But if we feel like it's about our self worth and it's about our ego and we're not valued valuable because of it. Someone's going to be angry at us. 

Vikki: Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? I think for me, looking back, I knew I'd get told off but I think I generally entertained myself. I'm going to get told off, but I think I'm really funny.

Linda: So that's what I mean by you feel amused by the mistake, that you have a way of handling it that you feel like your sense of self is intact. And, and that's where we want to get to. We want to feel like our sense of self is intact in spite of our imperfections. In spite of our mess, you know. 

Vikki: The listeners will know. There's a bunch of other imperfections that I have that I am very much still working on the not beating myself up about. It's just interesting in the kind of how some of them work out and in fact they're finding it amusing. I can't remember whether I've ever mentioned this on the podcast before but I did a competition called FameLab which is a sort of public communication of science competition and you have three minutes to talk, it doesn't have to be your research, but you have three minutes to talk about research in a way that's fun and engaging to the general population but you're not allowed slides so you can bring props if you want but you're not allowed to have a presentation.

Vikki: And I took part in the local heats, and I won the local heats. And I went to the regional finals, and I won the regional finals. And then we had this training weekend and stuff, and the training weekend was amazing. People listening, if you haven't checked out FameLab, make sure you do, it's really good.

Vikki: And then the final was in the Bloomsbury Theatre in London, so like a full, proper, like, big ass theatre with, I don't know how many people, hundreds of people. We were streaming live on the internet, my dad was in the audience, my then boyfriend was in the audience, mum was watching from her, you know, it was, it was a whole thing.

Vikki: And I had been way too ambitious about what I was trying to fit in this three minutes. Because normally when I'm presenting I'll make it up as like, you know. I'll, I'll have notes, but it won't be scripted. But this, I was like, I'm going to have to script it. Cause you know, three minutes.

Linda: It's three minutes and you can't go over.

Vikki: I can't go over. Gotta be precise. And I had tried to jam too much in. That was my error really. And I got about halfway through, told a joke. Everybody laughed way more than I'd expected them to. I relaxed and enjoyed it. And then I had no idea what my next line was. And I was like. And I stood on stage, I was in a wetsuit for other reasons, and so I'm still on stage, it's like, this is like an actual stress dream.

Vikki: I'm live on stage wearing a wetsuit in front of my family and I can't remember my words. And I then remembered and carried on, but I ran out of time. And they were really lovely in the questions and let me catch bits up and stuff. But I remember, I was a little bit mortified, but I decided to make a video about it afterwards, about the experience, why it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and doing the talk I wanted to do.

Vikki: And that, it was just a really interesting experience, because It really wasn't that awful. Even though, like, the worst thing that could have happened, pretty much, happened. And everyone was really nice about it. And nothing awful came afterwards, and I wasn't attacked, and it was just a re it was actually a really good experience. And that's why I wanted to share it afterwards so that other people could be like, you know, if this is what you're scared will happen, it can be okay. 

Linda: Yes. Yes. I love that story because what it shows to me is that by your willingness to not hide it because of mortification, but to share it, it gave you the opportunity to really reflect on it. To make it into something that was positive as well as a good story. Cause I always make great stories and if we could only see it in that way, we would be much more content and happy and satisfied with the speaking that we do. So I think that, I think you have a wonderful handle on how to frame your own speaking experiences.

Linda: You know, it sort of reminds me right now I'm working on a speaker log and journal for this very thing. So like going into it, you can think through your mindset and how you want your attitude and why you're excited about it and what you're concerned about and, you know, lift, build yourself up.

Linda: And then at the end, you can go back and do exactly what you did. What did I like about it? What do I wish was different? What do I want to remind myself for next time? And the idea behind it is that every speaking experience we have is an opportunity to grow in some way. And if we look at it through that lens of this is an opportunity for me to try something out, or this is an opportunity for me to just explore, what does it mean to be more myself?

Linda: What does it mean? If I let myself be a little more dynamic or whatever, or be more grounded. And this time I'm going to just feel my feet on the floor. I'm going to notice my, my breathing more so that I feel more relaxed or I speak more on my breath or, you know, any, any thing that you pick out and you say, this is my point of exploration and experimentation, then you see speaking more as a journey rather than a destination.

Vikki: I love that. And I love the thing of preparing beforehand, because I think people often they're preparing the content beforehand, right? And then they're thinking about managing their nerves when they're there doing it. But the idea of planning in advance what you want to be thinking and feeling and stuff as you go through why you're doing it and stuff.

Vikki: That's yeah, that's such an interesting idea. And I also think that is something that's useful even for people who are confident, because one of the things I've noticed is I'm now so comfortable speaking that I'm sometimes a little slapdash with it that I'll be like I'll talk about this and I'll talk about that and I'll talk about that and it's like that'll be fine, happy days.

Vikki: And someone gave me some advice a while ago that sometimes actually if you've got things that you're really strong at, rather than worrying about your weaknesses, getting amazing at the things you're strong at rather than alright, you know, I think I'm pretty good. I definitely don't think I'm like world leading. And so something like that, I think is, is actually really interesting, even for people who don't suffer from nerves, but who want to maximize their skills as a speaker. 

Linda: Yes, that's it. 

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Vikki: Amazing. So when people have sort of had some journaling they've done, you know, sort of delve back into their memories and things like that. Um, they've sort of maybe identified some things and you, you obviously talked through some techniques and we'll link to where you can get a copy of the book in the show notes for people who want to know more detail about that. What are things that people can do there and then in the moment to look after themselves if they're feeling scared.

Linda: Well, I think that in the moment is really not the place to start. I think it's beforehand. And there are many things that you can do beforehand. One of the most powerful things is mental rehearsal. And what I mean by mental rehearsal, I'm not talking about rehearsing what you want to say, but rehearsing how you want to feel and rehearsing how you want to express yourself.

Linda: And when you imagine yourself feeling good and seeing yourself, let's say in front of classroom or in front of the jury, you know, for your thesis and your, you see how passionate you are and how happy you are and excited to share this body of of material with people. Then you are pre paving that experience to happen.

Linda: If you do that 2 or 3 times before you speak. You're going to have so much more fun and you're going to feel more grounded in your speaking because when you get up there, you will be ready to be on. So, and that is part of the mental rehearsal is like, imagine yourself starting out, like, the walking to the front of the room, you know, what does that feel like? How do you want to feel and how do you want to see yourself, you know, grounded and confident and relaxed and excited or whatever it is, it'll be different for each person. So mental rehearsal is really, really important. 

Linda: Another thing that's very important is to warm up your body. Because you think that speaking is a mental thing. No, it's a physical thing. And if you are tight in your body, if you are, you know, anxious or jittery, you're going to want to move your body, stretch out, just feel a little looser and more open. Likewise with your voice, because your voice is your instrument of speech and a lot of people say, I'm not sure what's going to come out of my mouth. Well, that's why we warm up. No singer would get on stage without warming up their voice. No instrumentalist would start to play for a concert without warming up. It's like you want to. 

Linda: Again, with the neurophysiology, you want to get in that groove that you want to be in. So if you want a strong voice, if you want a resonant voice, open your mouth and if you may know some singing, you know, exercises, you can do those or just go, ah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so that you feel like when you open your mouth, you know what's going to come out. 

Linda: Well, one thing that I do is I love to take a line from whatever it is I'm going to say or likely to say, or maybe it can be anything else and I slow it down. So I'll speak a bit like this. And as I do it, I feel the back of my throat opening and I feel all the vowels sing because I want my voice to ring when my voice rings. First of all, it feels really good, but second of all, it's more articulate. People can hear and understand the words I'm saying rather than if I'm speaking a bit like this and I don't have much ring or my, my, it's just constricted in my throat. And it doesn't feel as good first of all, but it's also harder for people to hear and it limits my ability to be more dynamic.

Linda: So if you have resonance in your voice, you can speak more loudly. If you're like this and you try to get louder, it's going to be scratchier. Yeah. And it also limits our ability to use the melody of our voice. What we want to be able to do when we speak. And I think this adds a hundred percent to the fun that you can have when you speak is we want to feel like we have all of the notes available to us.

Linda: In order to describe what we want to say with the feeling that we have behind it, with how we want to emphasize certain words so that people really can understand, not just like if I was going to be very monotone in my dynamics, it might be like this and you can hear me, but after a while, your brain's going to get a little tired and you're not going to feel the same thing as if I'm really like being a tour guide with what I want to say by how I say it. And so this, this is, I think something that one can really have fun with and play with before either you're teaching or you're doing a presentation to practice with a sense of big expression, maybe even over the top expression, not to say that's how you have to present that, but it allows you to incorporate and see what is the extent of your personality here, because when you have a personality and you let it come through, people are going to really enjoy it and take in what you are talking about.

Vikki: I love this because I come from a science background, and this is just not stuff that we talk about. And I think this is the joy of having somebody who's got the sort of performance background that you have, and obviously all your sort of expressive therapy work and things. I think this more kind of artistic performance side to this is so useful for everybody.

Vikki: My sisters were the ones that did the performance stuff. I was very much on the sports pitch and definitely nowhere near a stage and definitely don't want me singing. So I have like no performance background to put to this at all. So are there any other examples of a quick exercise that somebody could do that would get their voice warmed up and enable them to kind of play with these melodies that you talk about? 

Linda: So, I'm thinking into my speaker green room, it's a program I have that I make videos where people can do these things alongside me, but I would, let's say, start with my body and I would shake things out, like shake my hands, shake my shoulders, shake my hips.

Linda: I would, rotate my joints around my neck to loosen up my neck, my shoulders. I might put on some music and dance a little bit just to kind of like raise my energy. I would then open my mouth and say things like blah, blah, blah. I've already given you a bunch of things that you can do, either saying words or just making sounds.

Linda: I would also allow myself to, after kind of like doing some big stuff like that, I would bring my mind into focus because I think it's important for us not to feel just like we're splattering ourselves out there, but that we need to have our brains focused. So I might do something where I just stand still. I might bring my fingers together and draw a line down from my head in front of my body and just like physically in envision, like bringing, bringing myself into alignment, you know, whatever that means. But I physicalized that.

Linda: I might, there's something called pacing where it's from something called brain gym that I like to do where.

Linda: You do something called cross crawl, which you lift up one knee and you touch it with your opposite hand. You lift up your other knee, you touch it. And the idea is that you are crossing your body across the midline and supposedly what they say they're doing is they're bringing both sides of your brain together.

Linda: I don't know if that's true or not, but I do know that when I do this, I feel more focused. There's something else where you can rub right underneath your collarbones and you put your other hand on your belly and this does a similar thing that just brings you into your body. Brings you into focus.

Linda: I do feel like when I'm speaking. I like to remind myself to feel my feet on the floor, to feel my body relax. You can practice this by any time of the day, just doing a quick body scan and say, Oh, what's my body up to right now? What's my posture feeling like, where are my hands, where are my legs?

Linda: And when you do this repeatedly, it becomes part of your somatic awareness, and the more somatic awareness you have in your everyday life, the more you can bring it into your speaking. So like right now, while we're speaking, I feel my feet on the floor. I feel how my arms are moving through space. I feel the breath that I'm taking.

Linda: I'm feeling the sound coming out of my breath. Now you don't, you don't occupy all these spaces all at once. You kind of layer. And that's what the fun is of the growth of becoming a more grounded speaker is that you can start in one place, start with your feet, start, then add your breath, then add your arms, then add the visuals.

Linda: Like, where am I looking? Am I looking into the camera? Am I looking into people's eyes? What does it feel like to look at people's faces for years? Oh, my God. I was afraid to look into people's faces. I, I, I, it was like I had this resistance, but I added it on by experimenting. So this is what I recommend for people to do is to experiment like, what is my experience like? What do I like about my experience? What would be nice to add? 

Vikki: I love that. And it's so interesting hearing how intentional it all is, you're increasingly making me feel like I'm, I am getting by with some slightly misplaced confidence and charisma and not a lot of else. It's like, I have so much pleasure having people listening, even if they're, you know, they feel comfortable with talking, there's, there's so much here I think for everybody. 

Linda: Me too, Vikki, you know, I feel like I, it's not like I feel like I have arrived. By any means, but I feel like I'm part of my journey, which is so different than 10 years ago when I was avoiding doing anything in public in that way.

Linda: I was on stage as a dancer, singing with a group that was okay, but to get on stage like I do now and speak or to get on a podcast and talk like this. No way. I mean, it was like beyond my comprehension that I could do that because I had had some very negative experiences. Embarrassing experiences speaking and I did not come out of it the way you did.

Vikki: Oh, I mean, you were talking about the dancing and singing that seriously, the idea, you know, we always take, take people on like team building things, whereas outdoor pursuits and stuff. And I'm fine. I'm there. I'm loving all of it. It's great. And other people like a fish out of water. I always say, if they did a team building exercise at work that involved me having to sing or dance on stage, I might actually die.

Vikki: I once did a performance, which again, I'll link in the show notes, cause I'm super proud of it. An aerial silks performance in a community circus. And that is literally the only thing I've done since I was about 10. And the idea of doing that stuff. There will be a whole load of trauma in my past as to why that's so terrifying. So I, I very much empathize when I think about it and you know, I don't have it for speaking, but I have it for those, those other forms of performance. 

Linda: Yes. And you know, if those other places of performances are interesting to look at, if they're relevant in our life, because they also show us, well, where do I have, again, that inhibition? Where did it feel unsafe for me? Like, did I, did someone make a comment about my dancing ever? 

Vikki: Oh, it's the sisters. Same as you, it's all about the sisters and one of them will will listen and laugh a lot. So Nicola, I'm talking to you right now. Anyway, I have one last question for you, which is thinking about that time after the talk. So same as we said, the bit before doing a talk often gets neglected, other than the actual rehearsal of the content, then you've got the doing of it. I think there's a really key period afterwards, and it sounds as though you do too. So what can people do after they've done a presentation that will make it? It's more likely that the next one will feel less scary. 

Linda: I think whenever it's possible, if we can have more speaking opportunities set up together rather than singularly, it's going to help us feel like it's more of a growth experience. So let's say you do have to present to a jury. If you can set up other experiences like that, several, before you have to do that one. That's going to help you. And each time, if you're looking at how can I grow with each one, that's going to set you up for better success for the highest stakes one. And even after that higher stakes one, if you can do something public afterwards with what you presented, do that, like set it up, go to the library or invite peers or other people from different departments to come and listen to you that or do a panel or something that extends the experience.

Linda: And then, as I mentioned, you know, in my, in the speaker log and journal, the kinds of things that we have is taking time to reflect and say, what did I like about that? What was great? What do I feel proud about? What do I wish was different? There're still going to be things. And if I want it to be different for next time, what can I do to make that happen?

Vikki: Yeah, definitely. And I think there's something around generating compassion as well at that time, isn't there? One of the things I always talk about with my clients, you know, sometimes we're preparing for a viva or a job interview, all those sorts of things, is you don't have to believe it will go well, because we don't necessarily know whether it will or not. We can try and make it go well, but we don't know that it will, but we can decide in advance and afterwards that we're going to be kind to ourselves about how it goes, no matter how it goes. 

Linda: Yes. Absolutely. I'm really glad you brought that up. One of the prompts in the journal is I forgive myself for, yeah, yes. And the other thing to remember is that oftentimes imperfection is more relatable. And I can't tell you how many times when I've made, I mentioned making mistakes on purpose or not on purpose necessarily, but allowing for them every time that's happened. People have always come up to me and thanked me for showing what to do when I forget what to say or when I put up a slide and I didn't know what it was, you know, was there for, and I admitted it to the audience and then it turned out, you know, everybody laughed.

Linda: And I even got a client from that one time because they said that was my favorite part. So we shouldn't try to avoid our imperfection. Just know that it makes us relatable. So allow yourself space to be relatable and not always be so perfect. We don't want perfect people all the time.

Vikki: Thank you so much. We will link to where people can get copies of the book in the show notes and everything. Is there anywhere else? Are you on social media or anything like that? If people want to know more, where can people find out about you?

Linda: Well, I'm Linda Ugelow everywhere, U G E L O W, but I would love to be able to share like a checklist of these preparation rituals because I think it's good to have it in mind. And you can get that at LindaUgelow.com/rituals. 

Vikki: Perfect. Perfect. I will link that all in the show notes and I'm sure lots of people will check it out. Thank you so much for coming today, Linda. I really appreciate it. I think that is super useful information that I'm going to be trying to take on board. And I know for people who find presentations deeply stressful, that's going to be super useful. So thank you. everyone for listening and I will see you next week.

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