How Do You Stop Performing and Start Speaking Authentically? | 005

If you're tired of hiding your brilliance behind

stage fright scripts or playing it safe, then you are in the

perfect place. This is the inspired speaker podcast, and I

am your host, Danielle Benson, professional rebel voice coach,

and your guide to speaking with confidence, charisma and zero BS

around here, we don't chase perfection. We choose

connection. So grab a hot beverage, warm up those vocal

cords and get ready to fall wildly in love with the sound of

your voice. Let's get inspired.

Welcome back to the inspired speaker Podcast. I'm glad that

you've stayed with me thus far. I'm really excited about this

podcast and where it's going to go and what we're going to do

together, because I think you've noticed that this isn't just

about public speaking. For me, this isn't just about marketing

or representing your brand, even though that is so important,

this is also about authenticity, living your life out loud, being

true to who you are all the time, not just when you're on

stage that's important or on camera, but also when we're in

our lives, when we're talking to Our loved ones when we're by

ourselves and alone, dancing and singing in our bedroom. It's

really important that we know how to connect to ourselves.

This is important for communication. It's important

for decision making. I can hear now in my voice, because I've

built this relationship with my instrument I can now hear when I

feel good about something and when I don't. It's an extra kind

of check in to navigate the world, to make sure that I feel

good about what I'm doing, that I'm following my heart, that the

world is not that the world feels right, that kind of

strange thing to say, but that my world, the world that I'm

creating, is what I want. Because it's so easy to listen

to the voices in your head, to listen to other people what they

think that we should do, and having this, this voice to come

home to to be able to come home to yourself and check in and be

like, okay, checking in with my breath, checking in with my

emotions. What's going on? Because most of us walk around,

what 20% alive? Most of us walk around in autopilot. You go to

work, you make dinner, you go to bed, you watch TV. How many of

us are really fully living. And that's what I want for you.

That's what I want for the whole world. Big part of that is

learning how to connect into the body again, how to inhabit the

body, not just work on it, but live in it with our emotions.

And yeah, some of those are unpleasant, but how to honor

those, how to move through them, how to learn from them, how to

embrace every single part of the human experience. I don't know

about you, but I want to be 100% alive every moment of my life. I

don't think it's possible to be 100% alive every moment, because

we have to do things like planning and waiting for things

we don't wait for. But even then, there are things that we

can do to bring more joy, more aliveness, more texture and

magic to the world. I think that one of the main things that is

wrong with the world today is that we are so disconnected from

our emotions, so disconnected from other people's emotions. So

empathy is not something that's happening a lot of the time, and

that's why we have, I mean, not to get to, like, save the world,

but kinda, that's why we have wars. That's why people have

fights with each other. And you know, all of this violence that

happens, I think so much of it stems from a lack of empathy, a

lack of really good communication skills, and that's

what we're learning here. And I'm not expecting to like change

the world and have world peace, but kind of if we could all get

more emotionally mature, emotionally responsible. If

we're not being led by our knee jerk responses anymore, if we

are able to kind of go, Okay, this is what I'm feeling. Let me

honor it. Let me voice it. Let me put it into words, and let me

be accountable for it, while also being able to express it,

and also being able to hear what other people are expressing and

try on where they are deeper. Listening is a huge part of

communication. It's a huge part of speaking as a speaker. When

you're up on stage or, goodness forbid, on Zoom and people are

falling asleep, you're gonna notice, you know. It's not just,

this isn't a broadcast system. This is a communication system.

It's a conversation system. And I just really believe that if we

can all just on a personal level, if we can all learn to

connect to our emotions better, understand them, better honor

them, express them, understand other people's emotions. See

them, see them more clearly, because we have a better

understanding of ourselves, it's easier to understand others.

Have more empathy. Listen better, really try on, breathe

in what other people are saying. I think we could change the

world. I really do I really, truly believe that if every

human just took responsibility for themselves, for their truth

and for their empathy and their respect and their understanding,

I think we could create a ripple effect that could change the

world. I know that sounds very lofty, and I am just one small

person. But I do believe, I believe that's true, and I want

to do my bit to help people connect to themselves, to help

people understand themselves, to be able to express themselves

clearly, so that other people can understand them, and we can

begin this real exchange, real connection between human beings,

and then between organizations, and then between countries,

religions, all sorts of things. I know I'm getting very big, but

I wanted to share my dream with you today, because this is

what's behind everything that I do. It's not just a job for me.

This is a calling. This is what I truly believe in. I want you

to join my community. There's a link below with all the

information about how you can join a community. It's very low

cost. It's a monthly subscription. There's no, you

know, no lock in. You can do it month by month. You can cancel

whatever you want. But what's cool about it is that it's a

community of other people who are also inspired, also

inspiring, also wanting to go out and change the world and be

more free and fiery and courageous and truthful and

authentic in the world, and we can all support each other. And

there's time with me every month, there's time with me.

There is an online library of resources for you to work on

your own and build your own practice. It's really exciting.

It's pretty much everything I have to offer. I've just built a

huge library. There you go. It is very much, you know, do it

yourself, but there's always opportunities to connect with

me, to talk with me, to ask me questions. Because this isn't

just like you said. I've said this before. This isn't just a

job for me. This is my whole world. This is my life. This is

my life's purpose. And I really want you to join me in whatever

capacity you can, even if it's just continuing to listen to

this podcast, because I am going to create more and more and I'm

going to have more and more series come out. I'm going to do

some interviews. We're going to do some like deep dives into

vocal tips and training. We're going to do some industry

exploration. We're going to do all sorts of things when it

comes to the the mastering, the art of speaking, but this is

also a human medium, and we need to connect human to human. So if

you've enjoyed this, if you're having fun here with me, then

please do take a look at the community. Check it out. See if

it's for you. I would love to support you, because for me,

every person that I interact with, if I can help you connect

to yourself, to your voice, to your breath, to that truth and

that safety and that courage and that fire within you and help

you to express that every time I do that, even if it's in a

teeny, tiny, little way, I feel like I've done something good,

and that's what keeps me going. So please do check it out. I am

going to be back next week for more information on the inspired

speaker Academy and what I do, and how I do, and my system and

all that fun stuff, but I just wanted to share today the kind

of deeper meaning, because here's something to leave you

with. There are many layers of truth going on all the time, and

you can choose which truth you're living in. And I learned

this as an actor, because a lot of people, when I told them I

was an actor, they're like, Oh, you're an actor. So you you're

really good at lying. Actors aren't good at lying. Actors are

really good at finding the truth. That's my job as an

actor. My job was to take these imaginary circumstances, this

life that wasn't mine, that's been made up or or adapted from

a real life, and figure out how I can find my truth in these

words, in this character. It was about, for me, acting is about

finding the deeper truth the human. Humanity in everything.

And so I've kind of been experimenting with this idea of

multiple truths a lot, and it's true. I mean, you ask the

bystanders at an accident, they'll all have different

stories. They're all true. So there are multiple truths going

on the world. And obviously there are facts. I'm not saying

there aren't facts. There are definitely facts, but we all

have perspectives, and there are multiple things that are true at

once. Truth is complex, and so as a human, the reason this is

important as a human, as someone who is expressing who it's

trying to communicate with you, I have multiple truths going on

inside of me. On the surface level, I have things like, I'm

nervous, it's kind of hot, these lights aren't exactly what I

wanted to do for this. You know, whole lot of things that I'm

kind of judging myself for. I want you to like me. There's

always that's always there that I don't think wanting people to

like you ever truly goes away. There's all that stuff, all that

nervous stuff, and that's true. It's not untrue. It's true for

me. But if I focus on that the way that I speak to you, it's

not going to be very effective, because all you're going to see

is my nerves. You're going to see my needing, my need for

validation. You're going to see my need for perfection. I'm

going to I might not even get this out, because I'm going to

try and do it 17 times because I want to get it perfect, so I

could focus there, but it's not going to serve me. But

underneath that surface layer, there's so much more and around

about, kind of in the middle, if I'm if I'm kind of thinking of

the truth on a depth scale, for some reason, kind of somewhere

in the middle there is my confidence, my competence. I

know what I'm talking about. I've been doing this for more

than a decade now. I know my stuff. I know what's important

to me. I know what my clients have experienced. I've seen

them. I've seen them come back to me in tears so happy about

how something went and just the gratitude that flows between us.

I've had all these wonderful, affirming, confidence, building

experiences, and so I'm pretty solid in what I'm talking about.

I feel very comfortable messing up on camera and keeping going.

I feel very real and authentic. And that is kind of my I feel

like, I call that my competence kind of confidence layer, and I

can rely on that. And if I focus there, I'll probably come across

as quite effective, real, authentic, maybe a little bit

fun, I hope. But there's more, and this is what we were talking

about today. What's really deep down there, deep in the depths

of me, the thing that drives me, the thing that always brings up

emotion, is the world I want to live in, the things I want to

change, deep down in the depths inside of me is the world that I

want to live in, the things that I want to change. I want it to

be okay for me to cry in public. I want that to be all right. I

don't want people to judge me for expressing an emotion or for

just feeling an emotion when other people are around I feel

like that's wrong. I don't want to have to pretend I'm okay when

I'm not. When someone says, Hey, how are you doing? And you've

had a bad day, I prefer to say, you know, not so great. I've had

a bad day, instead of I'm fine. You know that masking social

contract that we have about everyone has to be okay all the

time. I'm tired of people telling me what to do with my

face. I mean, I'm a smiler, but when I'm not smiling in public,

which is maybe only once a year, if I'm walking down the street

and I'm not smiling and someone tells me, Oh, you look so much

prettier when you smile. I want to live in a world where that

doesn't happen. I want to live in a world where people have

empathy, where people take accountability for their actions

and their emotions, and you can't take accountability for

your actions without taking accountability for your emotions

first, because if you don't know what you're feeling, you don't

know why you're acting. So we have to connect before we can be

powerful people out there in the universe. We need to understand

this. We need to master our relationship with our limbic

system, with our nervous system, not dominate it, not control it,

but have a working relationship with it so that we understand

ourselves and why we make the choices that we make, and why we

take the actions that we take. And that's the world that I want

to live in. So please join my community. I will see you in the

next episode. Thank you so much, and keep breathing.