Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

Building up your confidence
However well we prepare, we may still lack the confidence to 
enter a room full of strangers. To counter the negativity, we often 
play little scenarios in our heads of all the things that could go 
wrong (or have gone wrong in the past), perhaps in the hope that 
this will prepare us better for the moments of danger. What we 
are actually doing is 
rehearsing failure
.
Rehearsing failure is counterproductive. For a start, the more 
pocket. A fancy cardholder can also be a talking point. 
Some people even carry two cardholders: one for their own 
cards, the other for cards they receive. People might be 
impressed to see their cards being stowed carefully in an 
elegant case.
How about a souvenir card?
This is a card, exactly the 
same size as a business card, containing useful information 
relating to your business or work. An IT consultant might 
provide a card with little-known, instant computer fixes; a 
trainer might offer top tips for a key area they train. 
Souvenir cards make you more memorable; they build your 
brand; and they act as instant free gifts. They might even 
trigger a subliminal reciprocal response.
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

---

179 Networking: The New Conversation
you rehearse failure, the better you will probably get at failing. 
Secondly, the more of these bad scenarios you run, the more 
stressed you will probably feel. When you are stressed, you can’t 
learn, so you’ll find it harder to change your behaviour.
If you 
must
run mental movies of things going wrong, at least 
use a detached viewpoint. Imagine looking at a video of yourself 
behaving in this way, on a television screen. Imagine slowing the 
video down; carefully examine your behaviour and assess what 
you could do differently. ‘Reframing’ in this way tends to remove 
the emotional charge from your mental scenario.
Of course, a much better option than rehearsing failure is to 
rehearse success. This is not ‘positive thinking’; it is running 
scenarios in our heads, in a carefully disciplined way, of 
ourselves behaving successfully.