• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Paddy Spruce | Confident Public Speaking

Confident Public Speaking

  • Home
  • About Paddy
  • Blog
  • Contact

False optimism

November 29, 2011 by Paddy

Tweet

Confidence is important for presenters and speakers. Or is it?

Do you really have to be thinking ‘ I can do this’ or ‘this glass is half full’? What if you just got on with speaking or presenting without this internalising.

It’s going to be hard to do both so why not drop the idea of getting yourself feeling confident or positive and just focus on what is happening in the present moment.

Chesley Sullenberg, the pilot who landed his commercial jet in the Hudson River is quoted as saying that he believes in short term realism and long term optimism. It seems that he mostly works in the present. What do I do now? Rather than ‘we might all drown’?

As an alternative to optimism or confidence, do the preparation and remain in the present. If thoughts about a negative future intrude, let them leave the same way they go in. Calling them thoughts will steal all their power. Thoughts can’t hurt anyone.

Filed Under: Blog

Footer

Latest Blog Posts

Allostatic load

Allostatic load is the wear and tear on our body caused by stress and worry. We can get stressed by dealing with actual events. We can also get stressed by imaginary events. Our body reacts the same to real or imagined events. Mark Twain wrote that we all have tragedies in our lives…some of which […]

A new normal

There is still time to establish your new normal. We are likely to get past coronavirus this year and settle back into what we call normal. There is still time to decide what we want this normal to look like. Do we go back to what we did before or do we deliberately decide what […]

Subscribe to my blog and newsletter

Subscribe to my mailing list

* indicates required

How to contact Paddy

Ph: +61 (0)418 996 970

Paddy is located in Melbourne, Australia and welcomes requests from beyond.

  • LinkedIn

Copyright © 2021 Paddy Spruce