The Goddess Of Public Speaking’s Director is authentic speaking coach and presenter, Geraldine Barkworth. Goddess Of Public Speaking offers personal and professional growth programs through coaching and training in public speaking and interpersonal communication. We are based near Byron Bay, northern New South Wales, Australia, but thanks to technology, are available to the world. Clients throughout Australia and New Zealand have hired Geraldine to run programs in coaching, teleclasses, workshops and corporate training since 2002.
Geraldine Barkworth, a professionally trained life coach, is a current member of a speaking organisation and the International Coach Federation, abiding by their standards and ethics. She often acts as MC for women’s business breakfasts and speaks at conferences and networking events.
Clients refer to Geraldine’s working and speaking style as "quirky, authentic, inspiring, theatrical, perceptive and fun". She is also available for presentations.
Geraldine lives with her husband in the seaside town of Brunswick Heads.
From childhood, I was often told: "You should be a public speaker, Geraldine!" My "gift of the gab" frequently inspired this well-meaning advice. Instead, I shrank away, feeling like a fraud putting on a performance. I created a barrier of anxiety and avoidance and often “pushed” myself to be something I was not. I had serious doubts about my value as a human being. I might have looked quite good on the surface, but if you scratched it, there wasn’t a lot underneath.
Scroll forward a few decades of inner work and I finally understood why traditional public speaking felt "so wrong" to me. I realised that every time I had a conversation with anyone other than myself, I was already "public speaking". Wow. You didn’t need to be up on stage. You didn’t need to have big hair. You could do it at the dinner table.
Great "public speaking" is really just communication based on authentic connection and being mindfully present with one person at a time. There is no separation; it’s just our beliefs and perceptions getting in the way. For me, this took an enormous amount of pressure off to perform and instead, just allowed me to be myself. With self-consciousness gone, connection flowed effortlessly and without struggle, 1 to 1 and 1 to many. I was finally home.
So yes, all those well-meaning people were right; it just took me 35 years to find my own voice and accept my vocation. All my barriers were self imposed and based on fear and I guess that’s a common story we all share.
