This morning I was sitting in a Board meeting. Here’s the scenario: I’m a brand new member, it’s my first meeting, and I don’t have as much experience in the field as other people on the Board. You can imagine what I was tempted to think: “Should I speak up?” or “Will they think what I say is stupid?”

This topic was on my mind because several of the participants in my ‘just-ended’ Confidence at the Core* program were afraid of speaking up and taking a stand when they started the program 6 weeks ago. But now they say “I am confident. I speak what’s on my mind. The anxiety is gone.”

So I thought I’d put the question to you. Where in your life do you want to voice your opinion more?

Are you afraid of saying the wrong thing in a meeting with high level management?

Are you too anxious to say what you really feel in your personal relationships?

Do you get nervous talking about yourself in networking meetings?

Here are some strategies I used to prevent myself from being afraid of speaking up. YOU can use these to speak up in your life. (These strategies pertain to meetings but they also can be applied to discussions in your personal relationships):

1. Enjoy yourself – You are nervous about speaking up because you are worried how others will evaluate what you say. You are viewing the meeting as a performance in which your ‘respect meter’ will rise or fall (no wonder you are nervous!). You judge yourself so you think everyone else is too. Most people are judging, they are trying to keep up with the conversation and move their personal and collective agenda forward.

   Try switching from ‘performance anxiety’ to ‘enjoying yourself’. View meetings as an opportunity to showcase your value and to achieve the purpose of the meeting. If that feels like a stretch, then just be engaged and dig into what is really interesting about the meeting. Be present rather than distracted with a parallel conversation about what feedback you will get. Ask yourself constructive questions such as, “What will move the conversation forward,” “What would I need to hear to fulfill the purpose of the meeting?” Try enjoying the privilege of being in that meeting with a seat at the table. When you truly care about the meeting outcome (rather than just try to get through it without any negative feedback) its will shift your energy and make your contributions come naturally.

2. Prepare for the Moment- It’s always good to prepare. Jot down points you speculate you will be called on to provide so you won’t be fully caught off-guard, or regularly take a step back and prepare points that others might want to know about your current work. Similarly, pre-rehearse what you will say in a networking meeting.

   In addition, in an increasing complex world, we can’t expect to know and keep up to speed on everything. That’s why it makes good sense to develop your critical thinking skills. This way you can show your chops by asking good questions and showing people how to think through an issue rather than feel pressure to sound smart on every question asked (a good source to develop these skills is www.vervago.com).

3. Intravenous Confidence – Wish you could have an IV of confidence shot into your arm when you get nervous in meetings? Well, here’s the next best thing. Harness the power of your meridians to reduce your mental commotion. Just put one or both hands in this hand position (mudra). You can use this “Confidence mudra” either in the meeting, or on a regular basis to build up the effect on your energy. (If you look closely, you’ll see that President Clinton often naturally uses this hand position when he talks. We can all agree he’s pretty confident!)

If you want to get over your fears of speaking up, just reply to this email. I’ll tell you about a special opportunity how you can get confidence at your core now.

Go out and use these strategies!

Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays probably mean get togethers with your family of origin (or potentially even more loaded:  with those of your spouse!)  While there are many comforts and joy in spending time with your extended family, for some it can mean you have to interact with people who control, frustrate,  criticize, or burden you.

There are so many other stresses you are likely facing this year so use the following tips to make your family interactions go smoothly so you can take ‘family conflict’  off your list.

1)      Be impeccable for your 50%
You will be very tempted to focus on how other people are doing things wrong and how frustrated you are at how they are doing things.  As long as you focus on what they are doing, you will continue to feel stressed by your lack of control.

Here’s your new mantra:  Be impeccable for your 50%.  This means, focus on your part of the interaction.  Articulate the qualities and attributes of who you want to be as a person and family member and put your time, energy, and attention into making sure you are acting like that person (no matter what others are doing).   I’m not advising this to give others with bad behavior a free pass – rather I say it because it empowers you to control the most that you can control in the situation and gives you a leg up on influencing others to get what you want.

Here are some tips:

• Review your communication to make sure it is clear and respectful, this will give you a better chance of influencing others.
• Think through to know exactly what you want from the situation so you can ask for it.
• Take the time to see it from their point of view so you can empathize with what they are feeling,  make them feel understood, and phrase your requests to them in terms that motivate them.
• Clean up your own backyard and make sure that you can’t be accused of the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ (nor of repeating your patterns).  This way you have more credibility and power when requesting others to act differently.
• Focus effectively on nurturing yourself and initiating meaningful connections that will bring fulfillment in your current life.

As you are impeccable for your 50%, you will break the interaction pattern.  It will give you the best leverage to prompt the other person to change favorably. If they are not capable of responding to the new opportunity between you, then at least you will have the prize of being who YOU want to be (and all the dignity that goes along with it!)

2)      Don’t live in hope
We all wish our difficult family member could just “get it” and behave differently in their own life and towards you.   You are angry with them because you are hoping and expecting that they will be more evolved than they are at this point.   You are hoping that one of these times they will give you the validation you richly deserve but they are likely not capable of.   You are ‘living in hope’.   As long as you are hoping and expecting they will be different, you will continue to act in your same patterns.

As soon as you accept that they are “where they are on their journey” (and so are you), you can focus on your 50% and not try to change them.   Remember, even though its painful for you to standby and watch someone you care about not be happy,  you must appreciate part of you wants them to act differently in order for you to feel at ease or comfortable with yourself and your situation.
If your spouse reverts to someone you don’t recognize when they’re with their family, it’s not an opportunity for criticism.  Rather,  appreciate that there is still a part of them that is stuck believing it’s the only way they will be loved by the people they’re hoping will give them ‘emotional oxygen’.  What you can do is ‘kill them with kindness’ to let them know that they now have new ways of being loved by you.

Good hope is when you take action to further the ideals of your life;  bad hope is when you passively hope that someone else will change so you can continue the path of least resistance in your same patterns.  Instead of focusing on the unrealized harmony within your family, be grateful for the family members who are alive and in a state of reasonable health;  be grateful for all the ways that you and your family members have been resilient to the current challenging times.   Be a heat-seeking missile for creating connections in your current life that will help you feel fulfilled.   If you are going to ‘live in hope’, Live in good hope and not in bad hope!

3) Take charge of your own chill

You may notice yourself starting to get “hot under the collar” in a difficult family interaction.   You will be tempted to react by blaming the other person, replying with irritation, or telling them to ‘calm down’.   Instead of overreacting, try this breathing technique –  called Reverse Breathing:
Breathe in through your mouth and out through your nose.  Open your mouth slightly, so that when you breathe in you feel a cooling sensation over the top of your tongue (that means you are doing it right, you are detoxifying your liver where frustration and anger accumulate).  This technique creates such an energy shift that it will not only calm you down, but it will calm down the people around you who are causing your tension (I have used this technique to stop squabbles in my family’s kitchen as well as to stop fights on the NYC subway!  Go check it out for yourself…)

For a free excerpt of the Friction Free Relationship program on how not to react in situations, go to www.sharonmelnick.com