Lisa McInnes-Smith is one of Australia’s most highly regarded speakers; she’s also the first person outside the United States to receive the highest accolade in the speaking world – induction into the Speaker Hall of Fame. She believes that when you change things about yourself, you can change the outcome of your life and will be speaking at this year’s ARPM conference.
Elite Agent’s Samantha McLean caught up with the ‘master of audience participation’ to learn more about how she motivates people to change their thoughts and what is in store at ARPM 2016.
In your career, you have spoken at many events around the world and shared the stage with some interesting people. What have been your favourites?
Events where people control their own destiny. Small business owners are very exciting [to work with], because they take an idea and run with it. They can apply it. They don’t have to get back and sell it into the corporation. They can actually see fruit. I love audiences where people can use ideas quickly.
At ARPM, you’re going to talk about raising performance thinking and results: what are some of the key messages you want to leave the audience with?
I’m going to talk about two things. First, the fact that there are simple changes we can all make in our lives that can make a big difference. I’m going to try and expand the way the audience sees their own capacity and give lots of little practical things they can do immediately, so the audience leave with tools to say ‘I can do that’.
I’ll also talk about the labels other people put on you and the expectations that go with it, and then the labels we put on ourselves. We’re trained to be critics from a young age. As a child, my parents told me I was smart and trained me to look at life differently; they trained me to look to the opportunity and to always solve the problem.
Why do you think we humans are more inclined to put negative before positive?
Partly because when we look at other people, we look at what they do well and we compare ourselves to that. What we don’t see is what they do poorly, so we actually minimise our own successes because we’re comparing our whole world to their strengths.
This is one of the reasons Facebook is so challenging. It shows that we put our best highlights out there and other people see that. If they’re in a bit of a low state they think to themselves, ‘my life stinks’ [in comparison with others]. But most of life is actually mundane moments and we all have a few high highs and a few low lows. The real secret to living life well is to really relish the mundane and to do it with vigour, because then you make it not mundane at all. It doesn’t really matter how mundane the activities are that we do in our lives. If we put meaning to it and make it count, you can make it matter.
You are also a motivational speaker for schoolchildren, talking to them about being elite performers. What kind of positive messages do you try to give young people?
I teach them how to talk to themselves about their own lives and opportunities. The view we have of ourselves comes from someone’s influence. It’s very mixed.
But the thing about kids is they are actually better at making the moments better. They are living in the moment and realising you can’t always fix everything. For example, they’re dealing with ‘Did someone throw my school bag out of my locker and break my …?’ But instead of being angry at them and retaliating, it’s realising that it’s only people who are hurting on the inside that go out of their way to hurt others. That little bit of wisdom helps them not to retaliate, but maybe to just stop and have a little empathy: taking control of their own little world.
To control your emotions is really powerful. If you can control your anger, your motivation and the amount of love you express, you can have a life that is far more enjoyable.
So, if you do change your thinking, you really can change your results?
Yes, absolutely. You change your thinking, change your conversation, change your connection and you change the way people relate to you.
The one thing I’m definitely teaching is how to think better about yourself – and it’s not just positive thinking. It’s actually scientifically proven methods we give to people who want to do life well.
The word psychology scientists are using is ‘flourish’. I’m not just trying to help people fix their problems, because life will always have problems; I’m trying to help people flourish in spite of those challenges.
Lisa McInnes-Smith will be a guest speaker at ARPM 2016 in Sydney, 7–8 August. Here’s a short video from Lisa about her upcoming ARPM keynote.
