The 100 Second Rule and what that has to do with speaking nerves

I was recently discussing with a Ju Jitsu Instructor the 100 second rule.  What is that you might ask? As it relates to physical confrontations, apparently it only takes 100 seconds of subduing or restraining someone unskilled in self defence, before they will inevitably give in and essentially check out. What also happens, once we acquire the moves and know-how to show someone that we can either escape or outlast their 100 seconds, is that the mental pendulum of self belief, swings back in our favour. As we start to get the download that we CAN actually do this and, with this and repetition, we start to write new internal pathways of mental, physical and spiritual resilience. I have also recently been watching teenage girls and one of my mid 20's female instructors at my gym, with frequent smiles of confidence and playfulness on their faces. Any fear has been replaced with concentration, as, at this point in their training, they’re basically now legitimate competition and or CAN out-manoeuvre or take down a lot of guys in the room, DESPITE being smaller, shorter and lighter. 


As we contemplate the 100 second rule further and mentally compare it to other stressful situations or activities in life, especially ones that relate to goals, activities, opportunities that are really important to us, you might too, as I did, start to realise it has relevance to a whole heap of other scenarios in life.


Once we have the moves, or have taken some form of action that shows us we CAN outlast that first, awkward 100 seconds, whatever scary activity it is that we're doing 100 seconds of, whether Ju Jitsu, getting assertive with a friend, answering the phone to creditors, public speaking, or having awkward conversations at work, or in life, there's a tremendous sense of "I CAN DO THIS!" that kicks into our mindset through action and experience, when we just do it and stay IN. Along with a tremendous sense of resilience that carries over into so many other aspects of life.


As it comes to our fear of speaking or fear of saying how we feel or what we really mean, there is also is a sense of “I CAN DO THIS!” that results from us having got up and given it a go, as we realise that the 100 + seconds of doing so, didn’t actually kill us after all. Which is why so many Speaker Trainers you will encounter are so keen to have us just get up and give it a go, regardless of how it goes, to get us over that hurdle, and effectively shrink the size of the Monster in our heads, back down to it’s actual size. (If it ever even really existed at all.)

“Fear knocks on the door. Faith opens the door and no one’s there.” - Irish Proverb

And then there’s the techniques we train ourselves to do to performance manage ourselves through and beyond the 100 seconds. We talk about those state management practices a lot in professional speaking training courses.  Over the last decade, I’ve talked to A LOT of people, who have concerns with mental health, anxiety or PTSD, who have concerns that those techniques aren’t enough though to help them with THEIR level of anxiety and triggers. I can completely empathise with that, having been through a comparable journey.  In my experience, for the overly anxious and prone to hyper-arousal, these techniques ARE actually STILL, at the base level, what we need to master to get our nervous systems back under control.


BUT, after over a decade of both trauma informed Counselling and Coaching Practice, plus having trained and worked with multiple world class Organisations that provide various aspects of Professional Speaking Training, plus having had to find A way to function as a Speaker myself having had triggers associated with PTSD to work through ( at a past time in history where, I'm sorry, but not even most Psychologists seemed to have had a clue yet what PTSD was, and if they did, how to recognise how it actually looked in a client, let alone how to help people overcome it so they can speak in public) I would say that there is another step to add.

​A complimentary puzzle piece, so to speak, for managing hyper-arousal, that fits in neatly around the state management techniques that most leading speaking trainers and training organisations teach to help you get on top of nerves, and fits in nicely around the breathing, CBT and visualisation exercises that many Psychologists might give us to do, that needs to also be integrated. 

As it takes a while to explain, properly, and likely you’ll possibly have a lot of questions, I’ve created a 45 min webinar, in which i'll give you an outline of what that step is.


Find out more about and register for "How to Manage Speaking Nerves for the Overly Anxious"

VIEW AND REGISTER FOR WEBINAR

Beyond learning this, the next step is practice practice practice it. At first with the guidance of a suitably knowledgeable and experienced professional. And beyond that, in a dedicated, committed, consistent fashion, on our own time, for long enough to take a new experience, and some new behaviours and turn them into a habit. And a permanent new set of mental, physical and spiritual pathways.
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Love to see you on there. Do let me know if you have any questions.

Until next time, have fun, take care.

Nat xx