Have you ever walked into a room and felt so nervous you thought surely you’d vomit in your mouth?

Does the thought of addressing conflict feel like a machete going straight into your heart?

Have you ever wanted to share how you were feeling but kept mum for fear of ruffling feathers and being disliked?

Are you ready to stop the 24-7 chatter in your head so that you can hear your authentic voice and take deliberate and successful action from it?

If so, make sure you join me on Monday, March 12th from 5:30PM PST-6:15PM PST for my *FREE* call, DON’T CHOKE WHEN YOU SPEAK: How to Increase Impact and Diffuse Nervousness Each Time You Open Your Mouth. (The call-in number is 218-862-1300 and you will use access code 215920).

During our 45-minutes together, I’ll be sharing:

• The 3 questions that will revolutionize your communication
• My foolproof system to say EXACTLY what you intend to say when you open your mouth
• My favorite technique for knowing when to ask questions, when to gab, and when to zip your lips and stay mum
• How to stop vocalizing your thinking (e.g., um, so, you know, like) once and for all
• My top 5 techniques to take your body from physiological distress to physiological success when you speak

But with all due respect to the now deceased Mayor Whitton, when it comes to listening to our voices, sculpting our messages, stepping into our power, and affecting change…sometimes it is.

As women, we are neither taught nor socialized to adopt the belief system, mindset, or skills to shift other people’s thinking. To mobilize people to action. To open our mouths and be undismissable. To be an influencer. 

Most of us are straddled uncomfortably somewhere between shouting to be heard and staying mum to be nice.

We erroneously believe that we must prove our worth with a laundry list of educational credentials, professional experiences, and credible endorsements.

We privilege logic and rules over our own intuitive knowing.

And when we do not harness our authentic, feminine power – when we instead seek to influence the way we think we should and deny our innate gifts – we are usually pretty darn ineffective.

Whether it’s at work, in our communities, or with our friends and loved ones; in our conversations, pitches, or speeches; the people in our lives don’t truly hear what we’re truly trying to say. They don’t fully consider our arguments (that is, if we’re even making one). As a result, minds and situations don’t change, our frustrations grow, and we increasingly doubt our abilities and move further and further away from our desire to make significant impact.

I know. For too long in my life I was as guilty as anyone of getting in my own way of making my maximum possible impact each time I spoke.

Which is why I’m so stoked to announce that REGISTRATION IS OPEN for my brand spankin’ new virtual Influencer Academy. If you are:

• Ready to create positive impact each time you walk into a room or open your mouth.
• Hungry to communicate in a way people can genuinely hear and that inspires right action.
• Passionate about making decisions that are for the greater good.
• Open to being uncomfortable in pursuit of developing new behaviors and skills.
• Eager to develop mutually beneficial professional and personal relationships.
• Determined to create and sustain an integrated life that honors your values, forwards your purpose, and is juicy and fun.
• Willing to let go of excuses for past shortcomings and put in the elbow grease to achieve results moving forward.
• Someone who actively participates in and thrives from engagement in communities with other motivated and likeminded women.
• Ready to hold yourself accountable to making a habit of becoming the influencer you were put on this earth to be…

…then you are PERFECT for the inaugural cohort of my new virtual program. Visit TheInfluencerAcademy.com for the full details about the 6-week program, pick the registration option that best serves you, and I’ll see you in your inbox with some pre-event info shortly.

I hope you will help me spread the word about the inaugural Influencer Academy so that we can create a revolution in how women make impact on the corner of the world. And if you’re eager to start taking action even sooner than Week 1 of Influencer Academy, make sure to join me for my *FREE* call, Don’t Choke When You Speak: How to Diffuse Nervousness and Increase Effectiveness Each Time You Open Your Mouth.

This post is a part of the Blog Crawl of Self-Love, hosted by Molly Mahar of Stratejoy. Molly believes in the transformational power of truly adoring ourselves (and so do I!). Find out more about The ABC’s of Self Love Blog Crawl + Treasure Hunt and Molly’s upcoming The Fierce Love course to create a personal revolution rooted in self-love.

I’m often asked the first moment I recall “Stepping Into My Moxie.” And that’s a tricky one. Sometimes I’ll share that it was when I decided to start my high school newspaper.

Or several years before, when I launched my first “start-up” teaching ballet classes to fellow girls in my neighborhood in exchange for Reese’s peanut butter cups! (Oh, biz was so much easier when operating with a barter system!)

And if I really want to go there, I’ll share that it was even earlier, at four-years old when I gave voice to the unspeakable – that I had been molested.

But what is most troubling to me about the question is how easily my mind turns to all of those moments when I was not so moxilicious. When I knew I had a brilliant idea and didn’t share it for fear of being seen as too geeky.

Those times when someone else in my class was being bullied and I stayed mum, relieved that for a change I wasn’t being picked on.

Or the many chapters in my early professional life where I wanted so much to be liked that I didn’t uphold boundaries and allowed myself to be overworked.

Or even in the last few years. I’m somewhat ashamed that there have still been times (although, fortunately, they are now few and far between) when I have had a big idea for a new program or project and simply jotted it down in a notebook, too scared that if I really took the time to tease it out I’d have to do something with it. And I consciously chose to forget my gem of potential genius rather than risk the possibility of failure.

But the truth is, whenever we step into our moxie the possibility of failure is right there. No matter how educated or experienced we are, we can get it wrong; be dismissed; or alienate the people we care about. But we do it anyway. We step into that unknown – prepared (in belief system, mindset, behaviors, and skills) and at peace with the outcome. We let the fear simply be, and as a result it more quickly moves through us. In many cases, we actually say, “thank you” to to fear. We look to it as an aha that we’re doing something that matters. Hence the stakes. And the sweaty palms and belly unrest.

The more we recognize and embrace our moxie, the more we shift into seeing fear as a reminder to listen to our inner voices, speak our ideas, propose new courses of action, challenge unjust belief systems and practices, and put our vision forward for how to build businesses, families, and communities we can be proud of. For despite all the voices of our ego striving to silence us day after day, when we choose to honor our moxie, we assert to ourselves and to the people in our corner of the world that what we know, believe, and seek is so important that we MUST open our mouths and speak it. The challenge, I know, is moving from embracing the philosophy of moxie to knowing how to develop the competencies to deliver on it. Which is why I’m super jazzed to be launching my inaugural 6-week virtual Influencer Academy this March.

If you are straddled uncomfortably somewhere between shouting to be heard and staying mum to be nice…

Believe that you must prove your worth with a laundry list of educational credentials, professional experiences, and credible endorsements…

Or privilege logic and rules over your own intuitive knowing…

Make sure to hop on the Obstacles Into Opportunities list to receive registration details for Influencer Academy. (Those on the list will also receive a sweet pre-registration discount.) In addition, you will have action-packed tips and inspirational stories on heart-centered, high-impact communication delivered weekly to your inbox.

Want to spread the moxie? Please CLICK HERE. 

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I also am sharing an exciting event in Los Angeles you will DEFINITELY want to join me at. On Wednesday, March 7th, financial author, speaker, coach, and media personality Jacquette Timmons will be bringing the Financial Intimacy Conference to Los Angeles. Featuring other financial experts such as Manisha Thakor, Bruce Sellery, and Ryan Mack, get ready to answer the question, “What impacts our relationship with money…and each other?” If you are ready to fall in love with your earning power and have more fun at the intersections of finance and romance, GET YOUR TICKET NOW.

http://lafascination.com/2011/04/10/zooey-deschanel-sings-for-the-new-winnie-the-pooh-movie/ from We Heart It

Last fall, when my husband Steve first started obsessively tuning into FOX’s New Girl, I was less than enthused. I was already struggling to catch all of my Thursday night NBC shows. The last thing I needed was another show on another night requiring me to carve out an extra 30-minutes per week. Plus, what relevance would I find in a show about a goofy 30-something woman playing cute with her male roommates?! That was so 2003 for me.

Fast forward a few months. And it’s confession time. I LOVE New Girl. I watched this passed Tuesday’s episode two times. In a row. I think Zooey Deschanel has impeccable comedic timing. The guys on the show, a nice balance between charming and douchey. But the controversy over whether Zooey’s character is one step forward or two steps back for women…totally perplexing.

If you don’t watch New Girl, all you need to know is that Zooey plays Jess, a gorgeous but geeky school teacher who is hapless at love – and adulthood. She moves like a kitten, breaks out unexpectedly into song, and punctuates everything she says with hearts and emoticons. Jess has the market cornered on heart-centered. There ain’t a mean bone in her body. But is her adorableness getting her in her own way of being high-impact? I say, NO!

Although women have been dichotomized as nice girls or naughty girls since the beginning of time, as a society we seem these days to be more comfortable with powerful naughty girls (even if we trash talk about them) than we are with powerful nice girls. We assume that the latter are pushovers. Weak. Lacking drive or focus. And what I love about Zooey’s Jess is that while she may not have the corner office, she most definitely uses her kindness and give people the benefit of the doubt attitude to affect change and get what she wants. Whether it’s a parking space, bear hug, or student success.

Nice girls can finish first. I’m not sure when or how we forgot that when we are kind, we have an easier time getting people to want to listen to us. We earn more raving fans. Our message has an easier time being sticky with our target audience. When we forget that compassion can be a catalyst for making the impact we want to make or when we seek to step into some arbitrary model of how we think we are supposed to put our voice into a room and influence others, we wind up disappointed with our results. For even if we “get our way,” we lose a part of our authentic selves in the process. I see a lot of women caught in the dangerous cycle of wanting to turn up the dial on their impact using models for influencing that are most definitely not them. And I want to help.

I’m getting close to announcing the launch of my first virtual Influencer Academy, but before opening enrollment for cohort one, I want to gather a little bit of information. From you. I want to know exactly what influence muscles you’d like to develop. What it would mean to you to be able to walk into any room feeling equal parts confident and competent. What thoughts, feelings, experiences, and beliefs get in your way of making the impact you want to make. I’d be so grateful if you would give me 5-minutes of your time to take part in this anonymous survey that will help me put the finishing touches on Influencer Academy. Thanks in advance for your help.

Also, I’ve got a couple of spots left in my V-Day Moxie Solo Speaking Bootcamp special. If it’s a fit for you, grab your session through February 15th at 50% off with discount code VDAY12!

I’d give anything to travel back in time and tell my eight-year-old self that I’d eventually build a business from public speaking. In third grade, opening my mouth and speaking my mind to a group of people was a recipe for public humiliation: voice habitually quavering, thoughts lost between my brain and my headgear, and shaking so intense that my classmates sparked a rumor that I suffered from Tourette’s syndrome.

Fortunately, between being thrust onto the speaking circuit as Miss Junior America and dedicating years to sexual assault prevention and young women’s empowerment — along with a LOT of training and self-development work — I successfully let go of my nearly paralyzing fear of public speaking. However, too many women (and men!) have had similar negative experiences early on, letting their memories and fears get in the way of strategically building their businesses.

Here’s how to shift your mindset and realize that with a powerful message, public speaking is actually the easiest way to effectively reach an audience:

1. It’s not all about you. Remind yourself that public speaking is truly an opportunity to share an important message that your audience should hear. When viewing it as an act of service rather than of self-promotion, you keep your focus on those you’re speaking to and seeking to help.

2. Fear is 100-percent normal. It’s your body’s signal that you are alive, stretching outside your comfort zone and can make a great impact. Create a 30-second pre-speaking ritual that slows your breathing and strengthens positive mental messaging. I take deep breaths and mentally recite, “I am strong, I am brave. I show up at 100 percent, I perform at 100 percent.” After a dozen times through these phrases, you’ll quiet the panic and magnify the peace. And most importantly, you can be truly present to connect with your audience.

To read the remaining 3 tips, visit ForbesWoman.

Want more public speaking strategies and techniques you can instantly apply? I intuited as much! So here is my Valentine’s Day gift to you.  I’m offering the first 5 of you who respond by February 15th a one-on-one Step Into Your Moxie Bootcamp Session at 50 percent off of my standard rate. I want you to fall in love with yourself as a communicator so that you can, once and for all, enjoy more self-confidence and competence in all of your conversations and presentations. To claim 1 of the 5 Moxie Bootcamp spots, register at http://www.StepIntoYourMoxie.com with password VDAY12. If you grab one in time, you’ll see that the price is discounted automatically by 50 percent.

Here’s what one Moxie Bootcamp participant, life coach Sarah Yost, has to say about her session.

Alexia really knows her stuff. She held an incredibly safe and supportive space during our Moxie session. I felt confident in her ability to help me grow while being extremely kind with my fears and struggles. I left our session with specific tools I can use. We laid a strong foundation for me to rock my message. I have been looking for a way to do this and working with Alexia cut years off my learning curve.

I’ve learned how to recognize a lot about the people I’m getting to know from watching how they order their food. (After all, while context plays a role in our interpersonal communication, for the most part we carry our habits forth from one life sphere into the next.) Here are a number of ways I’ve noticed people order their food.

1. What are you getting? [The other person/party responds] That sounds good. I guess I’ll get the same.

2. Nothing is really jumping out to me. 

3. I just can’t make up my mind. Oh, I don’t know. What should I get?

4. Do you want to share something? I don’t have much of an appetite.

And finally, in precious few cases, someone will order like this.

5. I’ll take #3. Thank you.

6. Both #3 and #6 look divine. Would it be possible to take the spinach, tomato, and cucumber from #3 and thow in the feta, cranberries, and raspberry vinaigrette from #6? You would make my day!

Then, once the food arrives, many of us will say:

7. This _____ isn’t exactly what I wanted. Could you _____?

If you want to be a more heart-centered, high-impact communicator, one of the easiest place to develop the behavior is in ordering your food. While it would be easy to write off ordering as an individual act, throwaway conversation, it’s not. If you repeatedly change your mind after you hear what others are eating, I guarantee you are waffling in your everyday conversation. If nothing on a menu ever makes you happy, chances are you’re projecting the glass is half-empty worldview each time you open your mouth. If you can’t make up your mind or don’t have enough of an appetite…. well, you get the drill.

And if you’re that person who repeatedly sends food back, while you could easily trick yourself into believing you simply are assertive or uphold high expectations, chances are you also have a hard time being happy in the here and now. You most likely are always on the hunt for a new job or a new business venture. You believe that if your boss were a little different, your work more engaging, or your product or service more compelling, then you would feel differently.

The way you communicate shapes your reality. Big time! It’s hard for a lot of us to look at a situation, identify exactly what we want, and communicate it succinctly. And that’s okay. But we can do a lot more of #6. We can practice seeing the possibilities in each of the situations before us, seek to combine them in a way that feels good, and communicate our desires kindly.

The next time you order, how do you want to communicate with yourself, with your fellow diners, and with your server?

How can this be the foundation for how you want to communicate in all areas of your life?

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Now, I am very excited to announce that the Priority Registration site for Moxie Camp 2012 is now live. If you are a woman looking to build a movement around your ideas and create positive social change through your career or business, you definitely want to get on this list. It will ensure that you are first in line when the full, beautiful site is launched and tickets are released. (And if you’ve got questions about Moxie Camp 2012, email my team at Info@AlexiaVernon.com.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

As I share in the video, my mentor and dear friend, Dennis Reina (along with his life and business partner, Michelle Reina), are experts on the subject of creating organizations where trust is a core value. If you want to dig deeper into how to increase your capacity to trust and be trustworthy, grab yourself a copy of their books – Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace and Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace. You won’t be sorry.

Want more tips on developing heart-centered, high-impact communication and ethical leadership skills and behaviors? Make sure you hop onto the Obstacles Into Opportunities list to have them delivered straight to your inbox each week! I’ve got some BIG, JUICY LAUNCHES coming in the next few weeks, and you won’t want to miss them!

Now, Marie is a Coach U grad like me. And Coach U, and the coaching profession in general, is all about mindset first. If you think it, you actualize it. So initially I was uncomfortable by the suggestion that I needed to redirect my energy away from my mantra of recycling obstacles into opportunities.

But in truth, making opportunities out of obstacles is a behavior. The practice requires us to search within ourselves, recognize our inner knowing, seek out the support of others, forgive… It’s a whole lot more than mere positive thinking. So in the year ahead, while creating and sustaining a possibility-centered mindset might be one of the behaviors you work on, I’m going to encourage you to make the other behaviors that are integral to you living and playing big in the world your utmost priority. Here are my top 5:

1. Go to zero limits. The Hawaiian practice of ho’oponopono, which I am a new student to, is the behavior of accepting full responsibility for our experiences. We ask the Divine, whatever that means to us, to clear out the memory or “program” that has manifested as negativity, pain, or suffering. And as a result of this “cleaning,” we get out of our heads and emotions and return to the  zero limits state where clarity and inspiration live. The core practice of ho’oponopono is repeating these four lines, like a meditation. “I love you. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.” (If you want a great book on ho’oponopono, check out Dr. Joe Vitale and Dr. Ihaleakela Hew Len’s Zero Limits.)

2. Get it done. Don’t let another year go by with the same wish list. Just launch your new business or info product already. Write that book. Apologize to anyone you have wronged. Forgive anyone against whom you are holding a grudge (because most likely, that grudge is also holding you). If something is important to you, you will make it happen. You will find the answers to your questions. Connect with the people you need to connect with. Make the time you need to make. Harness the courage to play in the unknown. Go channel the energy and time you are putting into excuses into getting your results.

3. Add value. Give people the information they yearn to know – be it in an interview where the person across from you wants to know how you can provide the results and solutions they seek or, if you are like me and provide products or services, in your articles, videos, and offers. Provide value to your co-workers and clients. To your friends, family, and most of all to your honey. Make people excited to hear from you each time you open your mouth because they know they will grow as a result of their experience with you.

4. Light up your inner improvisor with a “yes, and…” mentality. While I wasn’t the greatest improviser when I used to train with the Second City, the one improv practice I mastered was backing up the people on stage with me. “You’re a whore,” I’ll never forget one guy said to me as he initiated a scene. “Yes, yes I am” I said, making him right despite my desire to wring his neck. “Now, would you like me to wear the bear costume or the tooth fairy outfit.” While hopefully you don’t have to say “yes” to somebody degrading you publicly, one of the chief qualities of being an influencer is making the people you are seeking to influence right. For many of us, it’s easier to say “no” and “but” than “yes” and “and.” Make phrases such as “I hear where you are coming from” second nature. Then, once you make people feel safe and validated, you can always challenge limiting perspectives with a question such as, “Tell me about how you came to that opinion” or “To play devil’s advocate, what might be a totally different way of seeing the situation?”

5. Tell better stories. I don’t care what you want to do with your life. The better you are at storytelling, the better you will be at your thing. Stories connect us to people. They show an audience how we are different. Where our expertise lies. They make us human. And credible. You can use stories to show how you have solved problems for former employers or clients. Any time I speak to an audience, I always begin with a story that illustrates how I’ve been in my audience’s shoes. Whether it’s revealing my journey to make meaning of my sexual abuse, what I learned from stumbling to give a speech with headgear, or how my husband’s proposal was the catalyst for me becoming an entrepreneur, I use stories to show that I am vulnerable and resilient.

And since I’m a sucker for a bonus, here’s one more valuable behavior to make habit in the year ahead. Whenever you find yourself sad, stuck, or sore, ask yourself: If I were the future-oriented, self-evolved, self-assured version of myself, how would I behave? And then, behave that way. When you behave like your better future self, you take her from being a distant vision into a current reality.

If you’re anything like me you’ve received dozens of emails, social media messages, and other reminders about how to set and achieve your goals in 2012. I don’t want to add to the noise. So my first shout-out to you in the new year is going to roll a little differently.

So keep reading.

While I of course hope you watch all of my videos, I doubt any will ever be as important to me as the one below. Which is why it’s a little longer than usual. As you will discover, I introduce you to a very special man that I have been gifted to work with, “Peter”. Peter is homeless. And for too many of the last years, quite hopeless. 2012 has all the makings to be Peter’s best year yet. But I need your help to ensure it.

Please watch the video in its entirety, get to know Peter, and learn how your donation can help Peter – once and for all – reclaim his dignity and bulldoze forward.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Feel free to donate to the Give a Man His Dignity Campaign via the Chipin button to the right on the sidebar. You can also CLICK HERE and go to the Chipin page (http://dignitycampaign.chipin.com/alexia-vernons-give-a-man-his-dignity-dental-campaign) to make your contribution. 100% will go toward Peter’s dental costs.

If you prefer to support Peter by writing a check, please make it out to my extraordinarily generous and effective dentist Dr. Isom, and send it to me at my work address – 4012 S. Rainbow Boulevard, Suite K-464, Las Vegas, NV 89166.

It will take a lot of faith and generosity to get to $3872. But I hope you will agree that if you’re going to put your money toward anything out of the ordinary in the new year, there’s no better place than in helping a homeless man get back on his feet!

I hope you will share the “Give a Man His Dignity Campaign” info on Facebook, Twitter (Click Here to Tweet Now w/ hashtag #GiveDignity), and directly with your co-workers, friends, and family.

Cheers to a year of kindness, abundance, and service to self and others!

I learned a lot of life lessons – lessons I hope I never need to learn again so that I can trek to new places. Ponder new questions. Resolve new quandaries. They include:

1) Forgiveness is a muscle that requires constant flexing to buff up. The payoff for being a knockout forgiver is more energy, more happiness, more gratitude, more abundance, more clarity… (and a complete purging of the yucky stuff).

2) Everything is figureoutable. (Thank you Mama Marie).

3) Keep your revenue streams diverse. (This one should be tattooed on my tushie!)

4) It’s more important to me to be in my integrity than to be liked. (Most changemakers aren’t winning any popularity contests.)

5) An idea goes further when you have a tribe behind it. (I’m over being a lone ranger!)

6) There is a fine line between looking to others for inspiration and to compare ourselves against them. The first is motivated by love. The second by ego. (When you recognize you’re doing the latter, get off social media.)

7) “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” – Arthur C. Clarke

Whether the year has been some kind of wonderful for you or some kind of nightmare you cannot wait to awake from in 2012, take some time during the final days of the year to learn what there is to learn from it, make peace with that which you are still at war, share the lessons you want to impart to others… and get ready to make 2012 amazeballs!