If you [can] speak to a group of people feeling completely calm about who you are…miracles [will happen] in every area of your life.
Do you get anxious before presenting to a group?
My guest this week suffered severe anxiety as a child and as a young adult. But she learned how to overcome it and she is now a successful singer-songwriter, speaker, coach and voiceover artist!
In this episode you’ll discover how she did it, and what you can do to also be ‘performance ready’ in any stressful situation.
Originally from a small town in Australia, Karen Jacobsen moved to America in 2000 to pursue her dreams. We met in New York City, and I was totally inspired by what she’s accomplished.
Check this out: she is the GPS girl, as in the actual voice in tens of millions of GPS units around the world, helping people reach their destinations.
What I love about Karen is now she helps people recalculate their own journeys through life, and figure our their goals, or life destinations, over at The GPS Girl. Even if you don’t use a GPS, if you’re an iPhone user, you’ve probably already heard Karen’s sweet voice, because she is also Australian Siri. Pretty cool, huh?
This conversation was originally published on the first podcast ‘Presentation Skills for Design Students’ at Design Draw Speak. I’m sharing it again for 2 reasons:
- This topic hasn’t yet been covered on this podcast – and it’s important!
- Karen is performing at Carols By Candlelight at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne on Christmas Eve – so if you’re in town, go watch her sing!
CORRECTION: I got a bit keen and, in the show, referred to this as Episode 40, and I wasn’t able to re-record it when I discovered the error. Oh well.
Connect with Karen
What happened to my last podcast?
Well, I got to 39 episodes and realised it was time for a pivot. It was specific to people in the architecture and design industry (as I used to be an architect), and I wanted to reach an audience outside of that, and expand the scope of the podcast outside presentation skills and job hunting.
If you’re wondering: why didn’t you just start this podcast with this audience from the start?, keep reading.
At the time, that’s what I knew. I knew about how to present as an architect, and how to present yourself in job interviews, and so on. If you’d told me – ‘Christina you can podcast about comfort challenges and confidence and pitching for business owners!’, I wouldn’t have been able to do it, because I hadn’t actually done that stuff at the time!
So I did what I knew, and as I learned, progressed, and gained experience, not only did my skillset grew, but I also discovered more about what I could help people with. And so I pivoted with my show.
The lesson from this?
What you do; what you create, it doesn’t have to be the be all and end all, or the one perfect thing, from the start. The important thing is to just do something. You can always change it later. But you’ll never discover what you truly want to do, or what you’re really good at, if you don’t start doing stuff.
It was the same with my personal blog, at christinacanters.com. I started that to blog about Crossfit and to share healthy recipes. Now, it’s more about my life lessons and travel. The blog has evolved. And that’s ok! I’m always changing, my interests are changing, and so my work should change and evolve with me.
So if you’re being held back because you don’t know what to do, I say just do something. You can always change it later. As Theodore Roosevelt said:
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
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