Ep #34: What Are You Not Saying?

The other day I was sitting in my comfiest chair in the living room, preparing my to-do list for the week. I was listening to Susan Hyatt’s Facebook Live as I was working, and she asked a question that stopped me in my tracks: If you knew all your financial needs would be met, what truth would you speak?

This question lit up the curiosity in my own mind about my current speaking and what messages I might be holding myself back from sharing. Saying the things we've been actively (or maybe even unconsciously) NOT saying, can feel scary. Yet, when I realized there was something profound in this question for me, I thought there is some chance there is something in here for you, too.

In this episode, I share my answer to Susan’s question – and talk about how asking ourselves this question can deepen our message in just the way you may be seeking. This is a short and sweet episode that will hopefully leave you with plenty to explore inside your own mind until next week!

If you want to go even further with this question (and a whole lot more), I’m running a super-intimate Mastermind Group in 2019 – limited to ten spaces! – that would provide the perfect space to talk about the clarity of your message and what other powerful messages you might be holding yourself back from sharing.

If what you heard here today was useful, you’ll love the free guide I’ve created for you at speaksoitmatters.com/yes. Sign up now and get immediate access to our Power & Grace Speaker’s Toolkit (including The Only Presentation Outline You’ll Ever Need).

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

The question that helped me realize the deeper message I want to share with my audiences and clients.
Why finally saying the things you’ve been avoiding sharing can be so scary, yet impactful.
Why we have to let go of the idea that we can find the perfect strategy or perfect message for every situation.
How I’ve practiced sharing a deeper message with an audience and how they reacted.
Why you should consider testing out your deeper message with an audience and seeing how it resonates.
How sharing fresh, courageous messages serves the people they’re meant to serve – and helps us identify those people we’re meant to help.

Listen to the Full Episode:

Featured on the Show:

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to the Speak So It Matters podcast, episode number 34.

Welcome to Speak So It Matters , where we share a mix of stories of inspiration. and super practical, public speaking and communication guidance, to help you release all the barriers to becoming the speaker you know you're meant to be. Some of us are called to use our voice to serve others and our world, as well as to become the most fully expressed version of ourselves. If that's you, you've landed in the right place. Let's do this my friends.

Hello, my speaker friends. First of all, it's the holidays. In fact, we just finished celebrating Christmas. So if you were celebrating the holidays, sending you holiday cheer and good wishes. And I also know that this time of year isn't always lovely and fun for everyone, even when the holidays are surrounding you, and in fact, sometimes because the holidays are surrounding you. So whatever you might be experiencing at this time of year, know that I'm sending love to you in every way. So these past couple of weeks, we've had a string of fabulous interviews. And I just love sharing these rich conversations with brilliant people in service of your beautiful work in the world.

The topic we're covering today feels super exciting to me because I recently had my own deeper understanding around it. And this time, you're going to just hear from me. So I'll start with sharing that story with you about my own deeper understanding around this topic. And then, we'll dive in deeper around what you're not saying in your public speaking and in your business overall. So that's where we're going to go with today's episode. But first, do you know that you and I can work together really powerfully in 2019? So I've created the most beautiful mastermind program. It's designed to give you so much support and guidance in stepping fully into your rightful leadership position in 2019.

So this is not one of those programs where 100 or more people sign up for a course, and you ask your questions in a Facebook group, and that's where all your answers come. In fact, there's a maximum of 10 spots. And we're almost half full already. We're meeting for a beautiful retreat in person. There's a lot of regular connection, lots of coaching, both one-on-one and together in collaboration. I'll have my eyes, heart, expertise, all over your talks and your speaking plans, and just so much more. So you could read more about it at MichelleBarryFranco.com/2019. And I'd love to just chat with you about it if it calls to you. Check it out and see what you think.

Okay. Now, for today's deep dive, because that's what it is. We're going to shine a light on the shadowy place where your real message just may be hiding. So today we're going to explore what you may have been avoiding exploring, and it's going to be so good. What are you not saying in your public speaking and in your business overall? Recently, I was sitting in my sweet to slightly too worn out navy corduroy, grandma style chair in my living room. It's cuter than it sounds … and not in my living room. Sorry, in my office. And I was listening to the brilliant Susan Hyatt on a Facebook live, and she was actually citing someone else. And I'm sorry that I didn't write down who that person was, but I was just so struck by the question that she was asking, which she had heard a version of this other woman who's a leadership speaker.

I was just so struck by it that I just dropped my pen in the middle of planning my day. You know, I was listening to the Facebook live, jotting down things I wanted to do that day. So Susan offered this question to pose to ourselves, and she offered it like this. If I knew that my financial and emotional needs would always be met, what truth would I speak? I was like stunned when I first heard this for a minute. Here's the weird thing. I already feel like I speak my truth. I speak way more truth than I've ever spoken in my life, and it's really been this glorious evolution and a revealing for me over the last few years.

Yet, just as she posed this question in this way, I realized all in that moment that there was more truth for me in my speaking. Because when she asked that question, I knew that there was an answer, that I had an answer to the question, “What truth would I speak?” So I sat with this question just kind of like living its own life inside me for a few days. And my heart is just glowing at the insights that are arising. And I'll say they're still arising. I mean ,this was just about a week ago.

But what I heard my heart saying was things like “Share more about inner freedom and voice and the connection between the two. Talk about the power of full expression to live into our life's calling. Tell them more about letting go, about trusting, and about how we really work as human beings, and what that has to do with powerful high impact public speaking.” So I know this isn't super clear to you probably right now, and it's still sort of finding its clarity and place inside me, but I mean, whispers of the soul, they come in so many different forms. And sometimes that first words seem really elusive.

It reminds me of listening to Abraham through Esther Hicks. I don't know if you're familiar, but if you don't know who they are, we'll put a link in the show notes to one of my favorite books from them. When Esther tries to … In essence, what I'll say … and I'm of course feeling a little nervous here, as you can hear, that those of you who aren't very woo woo, and don't read about and steep yourselves in the spiritual realm might be going, “Wait, where's she going with this?” But just go with me for a minute. Esther channels Abraham, which is a collection of … I'm sure I'm going to say this wrong, but it's a collection of kind of expressions of consciousness from the spiritual realm. And she shares these messages that she gets.

Well, the messages come through, as I understand it, in kind of a sense or feeling. They don't come in, in actual words. And because Esther is just a human being like you and me, she just has words to use to try to express what's coming through her. And I think this happens for many of us. I think this happens for all of us in various forms that we may not recognize it that way, especially when whispers come in from our own sort of deeper parts of ourselves. We don't always know how to put words around them. So, that's why I thought of of Esther Hicks. And you can read more about her online.

There's all kinds of stuff online about Abraham and Esther Hicks. It's scary saying the things we've been not saying. We've usually got some stories about why we shouldn't say those things. Like what if you think I'm way too woo and spiritual to help you with something so practical as public speaking? What if my credibility is tarnished by sharing my deep spiritual leanings? And yet, here's what I know for sure. Everything we want is on the other side of letting go of thinking we know anything completely, really. How's that for offering up a strategy? There really isn't a strategy that works every time for anything, not in public speaking, not in clarity of message, not in pretty much anything.

This seems disappointing at first, I can imagine. I know that it was for me and sometimes still is when I come upon a new problem and I'm really wishing for a formula or something that I know will work no matter what. But actually, I'm finding that there's so much freedom in this. When we know that we really can't know anything absolutely all the time and that there's no magic strategy to employ that works every time, we get to experiment. This reminds me of my fun conversation with Chris McGuiken on the podcast. This experimental mindset opens us up to so much freedom. If you haven't listened to that podcast, do. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. Chris talks about just the power of having this experimental mindset.

We don't know what's going to work, so try the next thing and try the next thing. And Chris does really practical work. You know, she helps people get great jobs and brand themselves in their professional career. So, what if you tried, just experimented, with saying the thing you've been not saying? What if you opened up the possibilities, tested out that deeper message, and learned how it felt to you and how it resonated for your audience? If you really just took it on as an experiment, let's just see what happens. I'll never forget the first time I shared about the connection between thoughts and feelings and public speaking with a super traditional, huge financial industry audience.

And I was sure they'd all roll their eyes at me. Instead, I noticed a few people leaning forward a bit more. I just felt this like freshness. I'm not saying there weren't people in the room who were probably rolling their eyes. They were kind souls and they weren't rolling them where I could see them. But there probably people who were like, “What? Where is this going?” But I absolutely remember seeing a few people lean forward. I saw people nod their heads in recognition. And I had had all these preconceived ideas about how this audience wouldn't accept this idea that we live in the feeling of our thinking and that our thoughts really lead to our feelings, or the two are so intertwined, and that there's something to know about that when it comes to great speaking, great presentations, even about finances and data with charts.

So there's people in the room, they're there even laughing a little, and I saw them writing notes more actively during that window of time. And then the feedback forms came in at the end of that training I was facilitating. And more than a few of them said that this part of the training was the most intriguing and insightful to them. It was something they wanted to look into and explore further. Fresh ideas, courageous ones, they light up the people they're meant to serve. In fact, it's part of how we know who we're meant to serve, by seeing that vibrancy show up in them. So this is the part where I often give you three things you can do or try to engage the content I'm sharing in this podcast. But I'm not going to do that today.

Because honestly, there's nothing you really have to do. There's no formula or no three main points right now that are coming to me, except to just sort of look toward this idea that I'm sharing, look in that direction with me and maybe ask yourself some version of the question, if it strikes you to do so, “What am I not saying in my public speaking and in my business or my mission overall? And is there something that I want to try saying now just to see what happens?”

Message clarity is one of the most common reasons people reach out to me to work together. I love doing message clarity work with clients. I just love it. And what I've come to learn more and more, especially in the last week or so with my own deepening connection with what I have not been saying, with what I've been afraid to say, is that we have so much clarity living within us already. It's just there. It's hanging out underneath all of the stories about why we can't say that thing or why we have to say the other thing instead or first, or whatever we've made up. And you know I always want to do whatever I can to help you tap into your own wisdom and clarity.

Just because it lives in us all the time, doesn't mean we don't need or want support in revealing it and making our biggest impact through that message. Remember, I'm working with a small mastermind group, early in 2019, to help make the biggest difference with your message, in public speaking, writing your book, being interviewed on podcasts, all forms of thought leadership. I'm not saying you have to have a mastermind. I'm not saying you don't have access to this within you right now, even without that coaching and support.

I just want you to know that it's available to you also in case it sounds great to you. So you can learn more about that at MichelleBarryFranco.com/2019. Twenty nineteen.

Okay my friends, it's a sweet and simple one this week. That's what we've got. I love being here with you and I hope you know that I am always, always cheering you on. So let's meet back here next week for more good stuff. Okay? And please do remember, you were made for this. I know because you know.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Speak So It Matters podcast. If what you heard here today was useful, you'll love the free guide I've created for you at SpeakSoItMatters.com/yes. Not only will you get immediate access to our power and grace speakers tool kit, including the only presentation outline you'll ever need, but you'll also receive weekly updates with our best resources as they're created. I can't wait to see you out there shining your beautiful light and changing lives with your message.