Tag Archives: communication

The Dance of Fear by Harriet Lerner

Posted on October 17, 2010

The Dance of Fear: Rising Above Anxiety, Fear, and Shame to Be Your Best and Bravest Self (Paperback)

By (author) Harriet Lerner

The main thing I got from this book is that fear and anxiety aren't just individual problems; they totally affect the way we relate with each other. Anxiety is contagious and gets passed around between us whenever we interact with anxious people. Families, companies, organisations, churches, countries and social groups of all kinds can become infected with anxiety that affects everyone in the group. When a social system becomes fear-based or shame-based, everyone in it suffers. Since anxiety causes suffering, we naturally want to escape. One way of escaping is to dump our anxiety on someone else. Being a sensitive person, I've always been susceptible to having other people's anxiety dumped on me, but it's only now that I'm learning to recognise when this

Posted in Emotions | Tagged Anxiety, communication, confidence, Daniel Goleman, Eckhart Tolle, fear, public speaking, self-confidence, Shame, speechcraft, toastmasters | 2 Comments

Communication, Public Speaking, and Leadership Skills Development at Toastmasters

Posted on July 4, 2010

I've concluded that our ability to communicate authentically with other people is the most important life skill that we can possess. We often spend a great deal of our education learning how to analyse, think, solve problems, and understand how things work; but tend to downplay the importance of subjects that teach us how to communicate. The ability to communicate, inspire and influence other people is also a key leadership skill. Whether in business, relationships, or just in our personal lives, our ability to communicate our thoughts, feelings and ideas to other people is absolutely crucial to our success... and ultimately our happiness.

For the past couple of years, I've been improving my communication and leadership skills as a member of Chatswood Communicators Toastmasters club. I have to admit that I wasn't really thinking of becoming a world-class communicator when I first came across Toastmasters. In fact, I was … Continue reading…