Linda Ugelow 00:00:00  When we have been afraid of speaking, that impacts the way we breathe. It impacts the way we express ourselves, the sound of our voice, and also ways of thinking that need to shift. Because we have mistaken ideas about that. We have to be likable and everybody has to agree with us and all these things that have also been patterned in us, but maybe unnecessary and downright incorrect.

Maureen Werrbach 00:00:27  Welcome to the Group Practice Exchange podcast, where we talk about all things related to group practice ownership. I’m your host Maureen Werrbach. This episode is sponsored by Therapy Notes. Therapy notes is my favorite EHR, and it’s one that I’ve been using in my own group practice since 2014. They’ve got everything you need to be successful in your group practice, and they’re constantly making updates and have live support. If you want two free months of therapy notes, go to Therapy Notes. For the group practice exchange. Struggling with your practice’s finances. Let me tell you about Green Oak accounting. Green Oak is the industry leader in mental health accounting, and they know exactly what it takes to help your practice thrive, especially when you’re scaling up.

Maureen Werrbach 00:01:18  Green oak is set apart from the rest by their deep industry knowledge and top notch advisory and CFO services. Plus, they offer traditional accounting services like bookkeeping, tax prep, valuations, and so much more. Here’s what’s in it for you. Peace of mind. Financial clarity and the potential to significantly grow your practice and profits. In fact, Green oak has the most impact with practices looking for financial guidance when leveling up thanks to their CFO services. And they’re not just about crunching numbers. They also offer a mix of resources like the therapy for Your Money podcast, The Profit First for therapists book, and self-guided courses to keep you informed and empowered in growing your practice. Ready to transform your practices? Financial health? Visit accounting to explore all that they have to offer. Green accounting your partner in financial prosperity. Hey everyone! Welcome back to another episode of the Group Practice Exchange podcast. Today I have Linda Ugelow, who is a speaking confidence and vocal coach, and she’s an author of a book and podcast by the same name called delight in the limelight.

Maureen Werrbach 00:02:37  And I’m really excited to talk to her, because a lot of practice owners who get into a space that have their practice sort of running on its own, get into stepping into other areas of growth, and a lot of times it comes in public speaking and we see a lot anxiety around public speaking. So Linda, welcome and thanks for being on.

Linda Ugelow 00:02:59  Thanks for having me, Maureen.

Maureen Werrbach 00:03:00  So I wanted to chat a little bit about. Kind of what you do as we get started here. And then we’ll hop into some questions. About gaining confidence, reducing imposter syndrome around public speaking. But tell the audience a little bit about you and why this topic is one that you talk about.

Linda Ugelow 00:03:19  I help people overcome their anxiety and nerves when they speak, whether that’s on stage or on camera. And I also help them to discover uncover what it means to be naturally themselves, and also to lean into what their personality is. Because when we’ve been afraid to speak, it comes along with ways that we express ourselves.

Linda Ugelow 00:03:41  And so we have created kind of like a conditioned self and how we put ourselves out there. And we want not to be limited to how we have been, but to expand into what we can be. And I also work with people in the same way to come into the sound of their voice. Because the way we speak also is impacted by feelings of. It’s not okay to take up space or to be the center of attention and all of that. How I got into it, and why this is important to me, is that I was always stricken with the fear of speaking in public, even though I had been a performer on stage for four decades. I realized that I was afraid to introduce a song that I felt anxiety speaking to groups. Even though I have a background in expressive arts therapy and in movement studies, in particular Jungian movement therapy, I led a lot of classes, but I realized I was always very anxious at the beginning, and it wasn’t until I became an online coach and I put myself out there, was trying to put myself out there, that I realized, oh my God, I am really afraid of, you know, getting on camera.

Linda Ugelow 00:04:53  And I listened to what everybody was saying, which is pushed through the fear. Just get a lot of experience. You’ll get used to it. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work. And in my frustration, I decided I was going to figure out a way to get over it, and I did. In five days I was over it. But it’s amazing.

Maureen Werrbach 00:05:13  It’s amazing because your story is sounding like mine. So I do public speaking for years now, like ten years, and I ascribe by the just fake it til you make it sort of thing. And I’ve been doing it for ten years, and I still am anxious when I have to go up and speak and I even push myself. I taught a year in college, like literally being like, I, I’ll put myself purposefully in front of groups of people and eventually I’ll just not be nervous because I’ll have done it so much and it no, I it just never it never shifts. So I’m excited to hear about what.

Linda Ugelow 00:05:50  What makes the difference.

Maureen Werrbach 00:05:52  What makes the difference. Yeah.

Linda Ugelow 00:05:53  Yeah. So that’s amazing I love that. I mean, not that I love that for you because I’m sorry that you still feel that kind of anxiety, but it’s a perfect example of how misguided that information is. Now, it might work for some people, but here’s why it didn’t work for me, and why likely it may not be working for you and for other people who have this kind of experience of just white knuckling through it, thinking they’re going to get over it eventually. So I was on periscope at that time. I don’t know if you remember periscope, it was the first live streaming app out there, and everyone said you got to get on daily to build a following. And I thought.

Linda Ugelow 00:06:33  Yes, I’m going to do this. I’m going to build up my business.

Linda Ugelow 00:06:36  And so I was on every day and I was managing the fear because I was terrified, I was hyperventilating, my heart.

Linda Ugelow 00:06:43  Was.

Linda Ugelow 00:06:43  Racing and I would spend time with deep breathing and power poses and affirmations and kicks and punches.

Linda Ugelow 00:06:50  I do everything, you know that I could figure out all the reframes, pretend your fears, excitement, all that stuff. Every day the weeks went by, I got to day 75 and I thought, why is my heart still racing? So that was my turning point. And I thought, you know, I’ve got to get rid of this. I must have some modalities that I’ve picked up in my expressive arts therapy program, or this all the self-improvement I have done for decades. I made a list of all the tools that I knew about that I had been using for myself. I thought, this looks promising, but before I get rid of it, what is it? So I closed my eyes to connect with the fear and asked if the fear could talk. What would it say? And what came back was you’re going to be attacked. Suddenly, I’m remembering when my sisters used to attack me whenever mom put me in the center of attention because I was the good girl, and she’d say, Linda always does what I tell her to do.

Linda Ugelow 00:07:45  Why can’t you be more like Linda? Yeah, and they were pissed. They were pissed at her. They were pissed at me when she turned her back or walked out of the room. They would attack me. They kick me. Say, shut up. Call me stupid. All of these things. And it didn’t happen once. It happened a number of times. Suddenly I thought, well, duh. Of course I don’t feel comfortable speaking on camera because there’s a part of me remembers it was dangerous to be the center of attention. And then that opened up this whole curiosity of what other things might have happened to me that made me feel like it wasn’t safe to be seen or put myself out there, or feel good enough. I remembered when I was bullied in seventh grade. I remember my father telling me, I’m not interested in what you have to say.

Maureen Werrbach 00:08:33  Did you grow up with the frame? Children are to be seen, not heard.

Linda Ugelow 00:08:38  Yes, I heard that plenty. Yeah. So all these.

Linda Ugelow 00:08:41  These messages are. Don’t talk back to your elders if you don’t have anything nice to say. Don’t say anything at all. All these messages, experiences kind of like values. The family and the cultural values of the time. Don’t stand out. Keep your head low. Don’t brag. Oh, that person loves the sound of their voice. You don’t want to be like that. Yep. So all of these things kind of glommed together, and they create this obstacle wall of allowing ourselves to take up space and feel comfortable speaking to a group. And then I thought, this makes sense. How come nobody’s talking about this? Yeah. And so, you know, I mentioned I used some modalities. I had been taught something called EFT Emotional Freedom Technique back in 92, and I had used it to overcome an OCD, a hair pulling habit I had. And and I had used it for all kinds of things, but it never occurred to me to use it for public speaking because I didn’t realize I had stuff I had to clear out.

Linda Ugelow 00:09:41  Yeah. So that that was I used a bunch of modalities just, you know, EFT, some creative visualization, journaling, dancing, of course, because I was a dancer. And forgiveness, mostly like forgiving myself of, you know, I forgive myself for not knowing how to handle the situation when my sisters kicked me. I forgive myself for not knowing how to handle it when I was bullied. Or, you know, it’s kind of like we put so much pressure on ourselves to know how to deal with life. Yeah, and we don’t. And that becomes that, you know, that kind of disappointment, frustration and anger with ourselves for not being other than who we are.

Maureen Werrbach 00:10:19  Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense that that can be a driving force then for how we present or how we feel when we’re about to present. I know for me it is more around judgment and like fear of judgment, which my is, my whole upbringing is feeling judged and sort of othered. And so it makes a lot of sense that in my public speaking, that would be sort of like behind the scenes as well as, you know, is what I’m going to say be judged, which of course, you know, it might.

Linda Ugelow 00:10:48  Be, it was, it was.

Maureen Werrbach 00:10:51  Yeah. So I know with my listeners there’s so many that have jumped into hosting retreats and doing public speaking. What I’m hearing is that one of the first steps is to like, get curious, of course, with what might be kind of behind the scenes playing a role in whatever emotions come up when thinking about public speaking.

Linda Ugelow 00:11:11  Yes, absolutely. That we want to not just uncover, but we also want to address it in a meaningful way so it’s not active anymore. We want to create a new relationship to it. So it just feels like a story. Yeah. And it’s not something that’s knocking around.

Maureen Werrbach 00:11:29  How did you work through that? What would you suggest for those that have like that inner critic that’s kind of getting in the way? How would you walk someone through that process of getting to a space of healing with that?

Linda Ugelow 00:11:42  Yeah. Well, the first thing I always turn to, well, you know, it’s not like any one modality has to be the one.

Linda Ugelow 00:11:49  But I do feel like a multi-modality approach is helpful because I feel like we are multidimensional beings. You know, we have emotions, we’ve got our intellect, we have our physical body. So I find it’s really helpful to not just do one thing but do several things. So as I mentioned, I love EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique or tapping. If you you can find out about that on YouTube. There are just hundreds of videos about it. But what I think is important when you want to get over your fear of speaking, is to use it for specifically those experiences in the past that you had, whether it was the messages that you mentioned or it was the judgment that you felt like if it was from your mother or from your father, or from teachers or whatever, from peers, that you get specifically into those memories with the EFT and clear it away. I have a free resource that goes along with my book, delight in the limelight, where I guide people both in the book. But in this video on how to do EFT for these kinds of things, I also think that it’s using things like creative visualization to inter parent yourself or connect with your younger you.

Linda Ugelow 00:13:04  I like to say, you know, some people say inner child, but I feel like it’s important to recreate your relationship with your younger self at these times and give them the kind of parental nurturing, mentoring wise support that they may not have had and likely didn’t have at the time, but that you can be the parent or the teacher or the mentor for them that they wished they had had. And that also solidifies, you know, your connection with the timeline of who you’ve been.

Maureen Werrbach 00:13:36  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense for those that start to do that work. But let’s say I have a speaking engagement coming up. What are some practical things that someone can do that can help them just get prepared when maybe they’re like still in the middle of like working through or healing those parts. What are some of the things that you might suggest that someone can practically do in the moment as they’re, you know, just about to get on stage or, you know, the day before getting on stage?

Linda Ugelow 00:14:06  Let’s start with the day before, because I think you have the most leverage there.

Linda Ugelow 00:14:11  Yeah. So I would number one, visualize. How do you ideally want to feel when you’re there and picture yourself getting up on stage, being relaxed, free, loosen your body, whatever it is that you want to picture yourself. Or maybe it’s grounded and strong, maybe it’s laid back, or you picture yourself like how you are with your best friends, and kind of your personality comes out that way. So whatever you feel like you want to envision, put that into your imagination. Because we’re always mentally rehearsing, we want to make sure that we’re mentally rehearsing what we do want rather than what we don’t want. So a lot of people say, oh my God, I’m going to be so nervous. And they’re actually preparing themselves to be nervous. So make sure you’re preparing yourself to be how you ideally want to feel and see yourself even hours before, just before you get on stage, or sitting in the audience or backstage or wherever you’re going to be. Picture yourself and how you want to feel during those times as well as afterwards.

Linda Ugelow 00:15:06  Why not? So mental rehearsal I think is really powerful. Another thing I recommend to do is write down what am I concerned about? Let it all come out and then look at it and be your coach. Your be your own therapist and say, okay, I want to remind you of these things. You’re there because somebody’s invited you. They believe that you have what it takes. They want what you have to say. People are there to because they they have their own needs and concerns, and they’re hoping that you’re going to give them some answers. So you’re there as service. So I think that it’s helpful to like, get it all out on paper and journaling. And then you can think of like, how do I want to prepare myself in a physical way? I always believe that our voices, our instrument. You got to warm up your voice. I would never get on stage as a performer without warming up my voice. And as a speaker. Our voices, our instruments. So make some sounds so that when you open your voice, you know what it’s going to sound like, and you can lean into it because it’s not just what you say, but it’s how you say it.

Linda Ugelow 00:16:13  So you want to feel like your voice is flexible, it’s expressive, it’s solid, you have energy behind it. And ideally you, you know, really enjoy the sound of your voice because that’s how we are going to communicate what we feel is important. And we put in emphasis to help people understand what we feel is significant for them to hear. Yeah. So warm up your voice, open up your body, stretch out because you are speaking with your whole body. You don’t speak from your head through a, you know. Yeah. The ether. You are using your entire body to speak. So engage your whole body so you feel grounded in your body. So I would say mental rehearsal. Warm up your voice, warm up your body. And also think about what is it that you want. I always love to pick something that I personally want to work on. So it could be I want to feel grounded, so I want to feel my feet on the ground. That’s it. If I do that success.

Maureen Werrbach 00:17:16  I love.

Linda Ugelow 00:17:17  That I want to feel like my face is free of tension because I usually tense up my face in some way. So it might be that. Or it could be. I want to notice how I look at people in the audience. So take something very small, something small that you can have as your private or your secret intention. And also lastly I would say, what do you want ultimately to Have as your mantra. Like it could be. May I be of service?

Maureen Werrbach 00:17:49  Yeah, I like that a lot. I know you wrote a book, and I want to make sure that people have a little bit of time to hear about that, and then for you to also share where they can learn more about you in case they want to read your book or get some support with you. Can you talk a little bit about what I know the book is about speaking, but maybe going into a little bit more detail on the book and where people can find you?

Linda Ugelow 00:18:16  Yes. So the book is my guide to go from the dread of speaking to delight, because I feel like speaking is our human design.

Linda Ugelow 00:18:25  It’s meant to feel good. As children, we delighted in the sounds we made. We delighted in learning how to speak and how to use language. And I want people to be able to recover that experience. So of course, we go through revealing and healing these past experiences. We also dive into how to restore a sense of safety inside your mind. I know you asked me a little bit about this, and I didn’t directly answer about how to deal with the inner critic, but it’s about healing the inner critic, healing our self-image. And then we get into repatriating ourselves. Because, as I mentioned at the beginning, when we have been afraid of speaking, that impacts the way we breathe. It impacts the way we express ourselves, the sound of our voice, and also ways of thinking that need to shift because we have mistaken ideas about that. We have to be likable and everybody has to agree with us and all these things that have also been patterned in us, but maybe unnecessary and downright incorrect and definitely get in our way.

Linda Ugelow 00:19:30  So the last part of the book is about how to memorize a talk, how to be comfortable speaking extemporaneously, how to prepare yourself to have a peak experience.

Maureen Werrbach 00:19:43  Nice. Okay. So where can they find this and other information about you?

Linda Ugelow 00:19:48  Well, of course, any of the online bookstores, you can get it, but you can also order from your library if you want to bring it into your community or order from your closest independent bookseller. And get to me. Linda Ugelow is an unusual name, and it’s my handle everywhere. It’s my website, TikTok, LinkedIn. You can find me all those places. Yeah.

Maureen Werrbach 00:20:12  Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing that insight. It’s very timely in the new year, as a lot of practice owners are setting new goals for themselves. And public speaking has been one that I’m hearing a lot about. So I appreciate you coming on and and sharing that information with us.

Linda Ugelow 00:20:29  Thanks so much for having me, Maureen.

Maureen Werrbach 00:20:32  Thanks for listening. Give us five stars on whatever podcast streaming service you use, and I’ll see you next week.