Usually I give quite a prelude, but I will keep it pretty short.

And I just want to name that you wrote in about your struggles with communication, and here we are communicating.

Yeah.

Welcome to how to.

I'm Courtney Martin.

And as you just heard, today we're in for conversation about, well, conversations. Pretty meta. I know.

I'm Shannon. I live in San Leandro, California. I wrote into the show because I guess I kind of freeze and just need to know how to speak in front of groups, that kind of thing.

To be clear, this isn't your average case of stage fright. Shannon actually doesn't mind speaking in front of a large group of people when she has time to prepare.

Instead, this particular hangup comes from talking to smaller groups of people.

I think this has been a struggle for me for a long time,

but it didn't really like show itself until I was in grad school.

It's a lot of just like open conversation and I noticed, well, i'm not particularly great at that i like to like

observe take it in and i'm not the person you know who like trying to be the center of attention

or who just comes up with like these amazing well-oken, articulate sentences right off the dome.

And yeah, so it stresses me out when I get into conversations kind of like this.

And I kind of either like freeze and my mind just goes blank or I just like do what I'm kind of doing now.

It's just like blabber and I don't feel like it's like in a nice

string or a nice train of thought. So here's the thing. Shannon is feeling some pressure to improve

how she communicates and engages with people in small groups because she's on her way to becoming an ordained minister.

It won't be enough to deliver a prepared sermon and then just kind of disappear.

She'll need to engage in a meaningful way with her future congregation.

Spirituality is a big thing and people want to know that they can trust you, that you can lead

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