Just F**king Say It E-Book

Susie Ashfield

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 357

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

* Public speaking is the no. 1 fear in the world. Leading speech coach Susie Ashfield is here to change that. 'This book is the straight-talking, practical confidence boost we've been waiting for.' Jennifer Cox, author of Women Are Angry Susie Ashfield is Britain's leading speech coach and Just F**king Say It is a personal development book like no other – a guide that will empower you to say what you've always wanted to say, in a way that makes people really listen. Ever get that 'deer in the headlights' feeling or sweaty palms when it's time to speak up? With the help of Susie's witty, straight-to-the-point tips, you'll always know just what to say, even in the trickiest of situations. From perfectly calibrated presentations to interviews, pitches and salary conversations that deliver you the win, Just F**king Say It shares extraordinary real-life case studies exploring where speakers have delivered brilliantly – or totally fluffed it. With Susie's step-by-step guides for every eventuality, you'll be ready to deliver a knockout pitch, to network like you enjoy it, request the pay rise you deserve and give a wedding speech that will bring the house down. No more sleepless nights, no more worrying about going red or forgetting your lines, Just F**king Say It is the ultimate guide to speaking with authenticity, clarity and impact when it really matters.

Leseprobe

‘Susie Ashfield doesn’t just tell you to f**king say it, she tells you how to f**king say it.’

William Sitwell

‘Written with wit and style, this very helpful guide will enable anyone to deliver their message with real impact.’

Katrina Scior, Professor of Clinical Psychology, University College London

For Bol

Contents

Introduction: How to Care Less

Part 1: I Can’t Can F**king Do This

1   The ‘Con’ of Confidence

2   Kill That Voice in Your Head

Part 2: How to Do . . .

3   A Presentation

4   An Inspirational Talk

5   An Interview

6   A Q&A Session

7   A Meeting

8   A Creative Conversation

9   Self-Promotion Without Feeling Nauseous

10   A Networking Event

11   A Wedding Speech

12   A Eulogy

Part 3: What about . . .

13   A F**k-Up

14   Communicating With Difficult Creatures

15   Asking for a Pay Rise

Part 4: I Just Need To Know . . .

16   How to Say ‘No’

17   How to Disagree

18   How to Give Feedback

Part 5: One More Thing . . .

19   I Still Can’t F**king Do This

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION: HOW TO CARE LESS

I reassure my client that his audience is piling in – there look to be about 7,000 people, the floor of the enormous stadium filling with shareholders and employees, day trippers and the odd journalist (poised to extract a sentence with surgical precision and repurpose it to tear the company apart in a witty, FT-reader way).

Though the client does not possess the charisma of Beyoncé or the comic timing of Peter Kay, he does have a message that he truly believes in. And while it might not be a message that everyone is longing to hear, he can deliver it without an autocue, which means everyone here will feel as if he’s speaking directly to them.

My client and I are sequestered in a private room, hoping we won’t be found by anyone wearing a headset or – worse – someone conveying last-minute bad news. And I’m watching the time. It won’t be long before he’s delivered onto the stage, which, with all the cameras and blinding lights, will feel as familiar to him as landing on planet Mars.

The client has gone quiet, which might be a sign of getting ‘in the zone’ (I have yet to work out what/where ‘the zone’ is) but more likely he’s spiralling down the endless ways everything could come crashing down in front of him. I am primed to pull him onto dry land, playing out the conversation in my head. He’ll tell me how the irrational side of his brain has kicked in. How he’s gone from serene to imagining the audience yelling, ‘Fraud!’ How, right there, the company’s share price will crash through stadium floor.

Without breaking eye contact, I say, ‘Just tell me what you’re thinking right now, James.’ Pulling out a single earbud – emanating from which I detect Taylor Swift – he shakes his head. ‘Oh, nothing yet. Don’t worry. I’m just, you know, getting in the zone.’

James is going to do it. He’s going to go out there and just f**king say it. But his zen-like aura in the face of what could have been unbridled terror hasn’t arrived like some blessing from St Taylor. We’ve spent months in conversation, considered every angle – every feeling, every prop – to arrive at this moment. He will speak, and it’ll sound as though something brilliant just popped into his head on the way to the stage.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who describes themselves as a ‘naturally brilliant speaker’ (and suspect they’d be bloody awful company). As with so many things in life, becoming proficient at public speaking requires grit, a willingness to dive repeatedly into the deep end. Sure, having a supportive environment helps, but embracing the challenge is half the battle. It continues to surprise me that the myth of ‘great speakers being born like that’ still abounds – the conceit that only a favoured few are bestowed with the gift of being able to speak in public, while the rest lose sleep over a five-minute client project update. In some it’s so ingrained that they allow the belief that they’re naturally poor communicators to dictate their career, actively seeking out roles that dodge the spotlight. What baffles me is that, albeit unknowingly, the very same individuals have effectively been engaging in public speaking from infancy. But the moment that a manager asks them to present a sales strategy to the team, they feel sick. If it was widely known that ‘presenting’ was just the same as ‘talking’, I’d be out of a job.

The difference between those who appear to be ‘natural’ performers and those who believe there’s a chance they’ll throw up before speaking comes down to a single factor: practice. But when I tell my clients that they’ll perform better and feel calmer if they simply have a few run-throughs first, I’m met with disbelief. Surely, they think, there must be more to it than just that? Dolly Parton once observed, ‘You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap!’ My equivalent statement is ‘It’s amazing how much rehearsal it takes to make a speaker look so off-the-cuff.’ Speaking well, in any style, format or environment, can be learned, regardless of how unpleasant it might feel. And that is my job. My work ensures that my clients look good, sound good and feel good when they next have to speak in front of an audience. I am a speech coach. I will help you identify exactly what it is you want to say, then help you work out how to say it. I am the reason that when James’s speech is over and the audience is leaving, I will overhear them say, ‘But that’s just James, isn’t it? He’s just a natural speaker.’

*

The following day I find myself in something that describes itself as ‘The International Soho Business Centre’. In reality, it seems as though some wily entrepreneur has transformed the stockroom of a Chinese restaurant into a rentable office space, but it was the best I could find at short notice. With its cheap chipboard desks, peeling dry paint and faded posters, it’s fair to say the place has seen better days. This run-down environment is in direct contrast to my extremely glamorous client who, despite her waist-long blow-dried hair, manicured nails and Chanel handbag, has tears streaming down her face. I dig around in my own handbag (not Chanel) and pull out a packet of Kleenex. She looks at me with mascara-stained eyes and tells me, ‘I couldn’t do it. After all the work we’ve been doing, I just couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say a single f**king thing!’

We’ve been steadily setting small tasks designed to gently expose her to the thing she fears more than anything: speaking up in boardroom meetings. In the past five weeks she’s had two board meetings, and after both she’s walked away kicking herself for all the things she didn’t say. It’s not that she didn’t know what to say – or how to say it – it’s just at the exact moment she wants to get her point across, her head is suddenly filled with a million worst-case scenarios that will never happen. ‘What if I say the wrong thing?’ ‘What if I go bright red?’ ‘What if I go bright red and they all see me go bright red and they realise that I’m terrified and that makes them think I don’t deserve to be in the room, and they all talk about it behind my back?’

We’ve spent hours discussing what ‘the wrong thing’ actually is, whether being publicly embarrassed results in a loss of professional credibility, or whether anyone even notices it. In all our conversations I’m trying to make my client think rationally about the root of her fear. Not in a way where we examine childhood trauma (some coaches do this; I’m not one) but in a way that makes her understand that the worst possible outcome of another person observing a flushed face is that they say, ‘Hmm. That person has gone red. Probably because they’re speaking in public. I wonder what time lunch is?’ We’ve done the breathing exercises; she’s tried hypnosis; we’ve explored the cognitive approach. There’s just one option left. And if she takes that option, she’ll win.

It’s the advice that underpins this entire book. Seventy thousand words reduced to two words that I’m foolishly revealing in the introduction. Here they are:

Care. Less.

Care much, much less.

In caring less, you’ll unlock the ability to just f**king say it. That is the essential premise of this book.

I’m convinced that caring less is the secret to the most successful people I’ve ever met. LinkedIn influencers will tell you it’s resilience, empathy or a 6 a.m. ice bath, but it’s this. Care. F**king. Less.

However, to care less you need to have three foundations in place:

1. Know you know your shit

Most people know their shit, but it’s even more valuable to know you know it. You should feel as if you are good at what you do – whatever that is – to the extent that you don’t ever feel as though you have to prove you know your shit to anyone.

2. Don’t aim for mass likability

Be comfortable with the fact that not everyone is going to like you. Subjectivity is one of the core rights humans have, and if someone dares to take potshots behind your back, they’re the problem, not you. Do your own thing and be comfortable that not everyone is going to love it immediately. Just look at the way high jumpers get themselves over the pole – it’s inelegant and silly. This technique is known as the ‘Fosbury flop’, so named after Dick Fosbury, who realised that this style of jumping (alongside the recently invented modern safety mat) would give him the edge over his competitors, regardless of how much it caused them to snigger at how graceless he looked. They stopped laughing when he took the gold medal in 1968, and the once mocked ‘Fosbury flop’ became the widely adopted style you see today. If you stop yourself from speaking out because you’re worried that a handful of people won’t get it, you’ll never change the status quo.

3. Try

Because if you accept points 1 and 2 without putting in any effort, then you’re going to end up like the car-crash best man at a wedding, staggering from ex-girlfriend anecdote to ex-girlfriend anecdote. Knowing you tried gives you the same power as the child who learns early on that rosettes on sports day ultimately don’t define you. You came last. So f**king what? You participated. You didn’t feign a headache despite really, really wanting to. That is true power. You tried.

If you master these three foundations of caring less, then f**king saying it will suddenly become second nature. Add to this the understanding that public speaking isn’t something that the majority of people enjoy and you’ll free yourself of the weight.

You should feel fear. It’s a fact of life that sometimes you’ll have to experience uncomfortable sensations. But think what you could achieve if public speaking didn’t make you feel physically sick. What if you could speak up in any meeting regardless of who is sitting around the table? What if you could build a concise, compelling presentation in a couple of hours (as opposed to putting it off for months, then staying up until 3 a.m. the night before to compile eighty slides that prove you’ve covered every little thing)?

If you’ve picked up Just F**king Say It, then you’re not just someone who enjoys rude words. You understand that real communication should be the North Star of your career, your life, your ambition. You understand that if you run towards something – rather than away from it – then you’ve put yourself in the driving seat, in control of your future. You have overcome anxiety. Most importantly, you’ll be able to use this book like an instruction manual for communication, without having to do any kind of acting, exploration of your relationship with your parents, or even taking your shoes off.

Get ready to just f**king say it.

PART 1

I CAN’T CAN F**KING DO THIS

2

KILL THAT VOICE IN YOUR HEAD

For just £220, easyJet can cure you of your deep-rooted fear of flying. They’re not the only airline to offer a service like this, and whichever brand you opt for, there’s a variety of techniques and therapies available, everything from hypnosis to neurolinguistic-programming, to something suspicious called ‘The Jell-O Exercise’. easyJet’s version is extremely popular and has a long waiting list, which is unsurprising given their claims of a 95 per cent success rate. The one thing that all these courses seem to share is that the final exercise is always a short flight. The optimum cure for anyone with aerophobia seems to have been unanimously agreed: sufferers must face their fear to push past it.

Contrary to popular belief, anxieties don’t always come from some sort of childhood trauma. It might simply be the result of your brain trying to protect you from a worst-case scenario, which then becomes an unchallenged pattern of thinking or comfort blanket. Very, very rarely has anyone with a fear of flying actually had a near-death experience in an aeroplane. Instead, a grain of a thought has developed, unchallenged, over a long period of time. From a tiny seed of ‘what if?’ a flourishing, impenetrable dread has bloomed. It might have started out with those last-minute worries that we all experience: What if the taxi/train is late? What if I forget my passport? What if the flight is delayed? What if they lose my luggage?

These thoughts are, to an extent, helpful. Worrying about forgetting a passport has the likely outcome of you remembering to pack it. Brilliant. Your cautious mind has stepped in and prevented a problem. Great work, brain.

But for many, what starts out as a damage-limitation process can morph into something monstrous: What if there’s a delay? A delay from a storm? What if we fly in the storm? What if the pilot loses control? What if there’s engine failure? What if we crash?

And the more you spiral downwards, the harder it is to pull yourself out, until you’ve convinced yourself that the only conceivable result of you getting on a plane is certain death. Psychologists refer to this fixation on the worst possible outcome as ‘catastrophising’, and the sensation of purposefully doing things that cause you to feel distressed is often described as ‘emotional self-harm’. The habit of catastrophising can become addictive because it can serve a variety of psychological needs, from offering the illusion of control to the avoidance of deeper issues, so your anxiety can feel strangely helpful or comforting.

As you read this, you might be able to laugh at the above thought pattern. You know full well that you have a lower chance of survival when you cross a road than you do on a flight. But this is almost identical to how someone with a fear of speaking in public might think. The moment you’re told you’re expected to give an update during a meeting, your brain identifies something that carries RISK. And so, in the same way, it kicks off a pattern of thinking that is designed to protect you. And it may start out totally rationally: What if there’s a tech issue? What if my information isn’t something they want to hear? What if someone asks a question? What if I forget what I’m about to say?

And then, it grows into an uncontrollable mess . . .

What if I forget what I’m about to say? What if I can’t speak? What if I freeze up completely? What if my boss walks in and I freeze and I can’t start speaking again and someone has to jump in on my behalf and my boss thinks I’m incompetent and they all start talking about me behind my back and when the inevitable restructure happens, they fire me?

Just as the fearful flyer has concluded that the only possible outcome of a flight is death, the anxious speaker has decided that the only possible outcome of delivering that monthly sales update to the team is total credibility loss.

The only way to prevent yourself from spiralling is to learn how to draw clear lines between where the logical thought is and where the irrational thinking creeps in. Do this by examining each thought and seeing how much evidence is behind it. Separate fact from fiction.

For example, someone with a fear of flying might think: That funny noise means something is broken and the plane will crash – but they have no evidence to support this thought. The only thing they really know (but are ignoring) is that every single flight they’ve taken in their lives so far has taken off and landed successfully.

Here’s a diagram showing how distorted thoughts can take over a usually pragmatic mind:

In this big circle labelled A is every presentation you’ve ever given. And every single one of those presentations has been ‘fine’. They didn’t set the world on fire – but they didn’t need to. They’re mostly just updates. They could have been better, but they could have been much worse. They were fine.

In circle B are all the presentations where it was better than ‘fine’. It represents those occasional times where you really knocked it out of the park. You won the business from your pitch, you received great feedback, or you could see a tangible impact as the result of your message.

All of this is evidence. Actual, real-life evidence that supports the idea that, so far, all your presentations have been ‘fine’ or ‘better than fine’.

But your brain has a convenient way of ignoring evidence when it’s in panic mode. Instead, it focuses on this teeny tiny dot, C, here:

That dot represents all those distorted thoughts that keep you awake at night. And the more effort and energy you pump into that red dot, the bigger it grows, until it’s completely overshadowed all of that lovely evidence for it being fine. You have convinced yourself that the only possible outcome of you speaking is the worst-case scenario.

How do you get yourself out of panic mode and back into the land of logic? You hold a mirror up to your anxiety and you start to pull it apart, piece by piece. If you can learn to identify that red dot quickly, the faster you’ll be able to see it for what it is: a made-up but intrusive voice that causes unnecessary disruption. Psychologists call this process of identifying and challenging negative-thinking patterns ‘cognitive restructuring’. It takes practice and patience, but by honing your ability to identify the thoughts that are causing the problem, the easier it becomes to challenge them. If you leave them wrapped up in a jumbled mess with all the other thoughts that you’re experiencing, you might mistake them for another rational concern.

Think of the negative thought as a loud red parrot on your shoulder. It’s a misconception that parrots can talk. They can make noises that mimic a human’s sound, but they’re not conversing with you – much like the voice in your head that tells you you’ll say something outrageously stupid at your next meeting when you have zero evidence for that thought. It’s not real, just an irrational concern squawking in your ear. There’s no need to indulge it by thinking it has something significant to announce. Some clients have even found it helpful to give this parrot a name so that they know who they are addressing when they tell it to f**k off. The better you become at understanding real risk versus when it’s just that bloody bird, the more in control you’ll feel.

One client who was a partner at a law firm often heard her parrot just ahead of board meetings. Over time, she’d grown so confident about what she needed to say and how she needed to say it, her parrot had only one line left it could screech at her:

What if I shit myself?

Naturally, this had never ever happened before, but the more she thought about it, the more she felt that it actually might. This was easily fixed. From the moment she stated her concern out loud to me, she realised how ridiculous it was. After her confession, we sat in silence, both somewhat non-plussed. ‘I have to say, that’s not one I’ve heard before,’ I said. After we’d stopped laughing, she shook her head. ‘It’s just not going to happen, is it?’ she said. ‘If it ever does, I’ll give you a full refund,’ I replied.

Everyone has these sorts of thoughts one way or another, but if you let the intrusive thoughts run the show, you’ll find yourself unable to speak up when it matters, having to feign last-minute headaches ahead of presentations or read from a script in your next online meeting. Every time you give in to the intrusive thought, you give it more power.

Nerves are normal. Last-minute concerns can be a good thing. But convincing yourself that the moment you open your mouth you’ll somehow cause your company to collapse is a sign that it’s time to take control of your parrot.

The foundation step is to identify when the parrot on your shoulder starts making noise. Start to build awareness of what it sounds like and the sort of lines it comes out with. This takes time to master, but once you have it, you’ll be able to begin the process of neatly separating your rational thoughts from the irrational ones.

Now you’re ready to kill it using a technique of questioning that has existed since around 399 BCE, called the Socratic method, which the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates came up with in order to stimulate ideas and illuminate contradictions in an individual’s thinking. Here we are, more than a few years down the road, using it as a core part of the cognitive restructuring process that will expose your irrational, negative thoughts.

Step 1: The moment you start to feel a familiar tightening in your throat, ask yourself this: What am I worried about?

The answer might start small: I’m worried that I’ll forget what I want to say.

Fine, but dig deeper. How far does that thought go?

I’m worried I’ll forget what I’m going to say, and people will see me freeze, and someone else will have to step in, and that will make the audience think I’m incompetent, and they’ll all talk about me behind my back.

Now we have it. Sit with that thought for a moment.

Step 2: Look for any evidence or previous experience you have to support that thought.

It’s important to clarify what evidence is and what it isn’t. Evidence could come in the form of feedback, like a manager telling you that because you forgot how you wanted to end a sentence, they no longer believe you have any professional capability.

But evidence is not an assumption or a ‘gut feeling’ that comes from nowhere other than your own head.

Go through or write out each anxious thought. Put a line through the ones you cannot support with evidence. For example: I will freeze, and I will be unable to carry on with my presentation.

Unless you have actually had to stop a presentation midway through previously because you couldn’t complete a sentence, then you don’t have any actual evidence for this happening.

Step 3: With the anxious thoughts you have been able to provide evidence for, explore the consequence of each. For example: I know I can forget what I’m about to say. This has happened before.

Now ask yourself, what is the actual impact of this happening (again, evidence based)?

If I do forget what I’m about to say, there is normally a pause before I either have to start my point again or move on completely. Nothing else happens.

Write out the consequence of each anxiety.

Step 4: Be objective. Imagine a friend has presented this exact problem to you. What would you say to reassure them, based on the analysis you’ve just done?

If you do freeze, nothing actually happens. You just start speaking again after a pause, and you have no evidence to suggest that anyone will think any less of you if it does happen.

You have evidence to support the idea that every single time you have experienced a ‘freeze’, you have simply carried on with your presentation.

Repeat these steps as often as is necessary.

It might be helpful to keep a diary to address these anxieties over time, or you can quickly run through these questions the moment you hear that parrot kicking off:

1   What am I really worried about?

2   What evidence do I have to suggest this actually going to happen?

3   What evidence do I have to suggest this is not actually going to happen?

4   With my worries that I do have evidence for, what is the consequence of each?

5   Using the above analysis, what would I say to a friend who was in the same boat?

In doing so, you’ll come to realise that nerves and their physical manifestations are completely to be expected. Your hands might shake, your mouth might go dry, but you’ll be able to experience these sensations in the knowledge that there’s actually nothing to be frightened of.

An aeronautical engineer I worked with to overcome his reliance on beta blockers to calm his extreme nerves ahead of presenting came up with a great analogy for this. He asked me if I’d ever watched the 1970s cartoon series Scooby-Doo. Fortunately, I had.

‘It’s the same show every week. Every week they’re on the run from some crazy supernatural force, and every f**king week they take the mask off and it’s just the janitor. That’s exactly what this is.’

What the rocket scientist meant was that for years he’d been on the run from his fears, but now he’d stopped running to face them head on, he’d realised they weren’t real. Now he understood that feeling fearful didn’t automatically mean there was anything out there to be frightened of.

The feeling of fear is what causes your body to release adrenaline. The reason it decides to flush this hormone through your body is because your brain has sensed danger, and so this chemical helps you prepare to fight this perceived threat or run away from it very, very quickly (the ‘fight-or-flight’ response). If ever you feel that your mind sharpens up after a run or your heart rate increases during a scary film, adrenaline is what’s behind it. Unfortunately, it often brings along a host of other symptoms that might not be useful for the actual situation you’re facing – everything from knocking knees, feeling nauseous, a flushed face to shallow breathing.

Adrenaline is not only something you should accept but something you should embrace – it’s likely to sharpen your focus, increase your energy and vastly improve your performance, in some cases even becoming addictive. This goes a long way in explaining why some groups of people actively choose to jump out of aeroplanes, while the rest of us are happy to remain seated. It explains why some people get on a roller coaster and think,