SMILE Part 4: Change your Speaking Identity, Change your Life

Improving your speech is a multi-dimensional affair. It’'s not just one thing. Let’s dive into how your identity plays a roll in your speech difficulties. What do we mean when we say identity? What we're talking about is the way that you perform differently, it could be the same exact content the in the same meeting, except for someone is there and you have an identity for how you speak to a small group of people versus how you speak to a larger group of people. Your speaking identity is who you believe yourself to be when you speak.

Your internal monologue would be I tend to do this or I always do this or I'm never able to do that and it's reflective of your what your identity is for that speaking situation. Whether you introduce yourself a certain way, you speak to your family a certain way, or you speak to those with authority a certain way, this is important because your identity is who you believe yourself to be and it can your performance. This is why we focus on techniques and tactics on how you can structure your thoughts and prepare for presentations, to speak more smoothly. Pro90d enables you to speak more smoothly and not lose airflow, use body language, but also to focus not just on the techniques because one of the most important dimensions of improving your speech is your mindset and speaking identity.

When we define and determine how to distinguish between mindset and identity from the mechanics of your particular speaking challenges, we can improve your speaking on a moment-to-moment basis.  This is a close look at how you are interpreting your thoughts and what you are doing so in any given speaking situation.  If you're telling yourself, hey you're doing great you're an excellent speaker, next time try to do more your self-talk your mindset is changing your experiences and improving your performance.

How does this change your speaking long term? It makes your speaking bad day or a bad week proof. If your identity hasn't changed, if you don't believe that you're an excellent speaker, when you have a bad day or a bad speaking experience you automatically start to feel deflated and your performance suffers.  Your core beliefs so your beliefs need to change to lift you up and be able to implement these new tools we give you to improve mechanics.

This is one of the secrets to stopping stuttering and transforming your speech as an adult speaker with disfluencies. How Pro90d addresses each of these dimensions to speaking, including mindset and identity are through the following activities that you will be participating in when you get inside the program.  777 breathing helps you to relax to get into the right mindset, then when you're doing your affirmations and visualizations, it helps you with your breathing and so when you are taking in more oxygen on a regular basis, you can think more clearly, and step away from hyperventilating where your air gets short.

Modeling is one of the first ways I developed Pr90d. Find someone who you think is an amazing speaker and watch videos of them and listen to audios of them. You can do this passively or actively throughout your day and start to assume this person's speaking identity. Simply borrow the identity and the characteristics of your model and so you leap frog over to the other side very very quickly.  Some people have a problem with modeling sometimes it's difficult for people to try to mimic other people but in the program we teach you how to do it you simply have to trust that you already know how to do it because you did it growing up.

Believe it or not, naturally just looking observing and imitating, we do this automatically. You don't just model the way they speak but you also say well let me model the calmness and the confidence that this person has. How does this person feel when they're in this kind of a speaking situation? In practice,  self-talk of what you say to yourself on a moment-to-moment basis changes gradually and your pattern of thinking and your attitude changes and how you identify yourself.

The pace that works best is to focus on these two things for one to three weeks, then we move to the next one or two things. When you choose to do coaching, the process is accelerated, and in self study, I highly recommend that you lean into the Pro90d community, which is available on Facebook, Youtube, and I am able to connect you personally. When we think about this as an investment, it is an investment in your future. Your personal and professional life change in ways that are difficult to measure. If you are ready to invest in your future, we are here as a community to support those looking to level up communication skills and stop stuttering for good.