Free Self-Improvement Topics in Chicago

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: Browse for a topic, Click the orange request button, Fill out the contact form.
Now the speaker will contact you in the next few days to coordinate details.

SORT: MOST RECENT | A - Z

  • You Are a Visionary: How to Create True Mental Wellness in the Workplace

    Sarah Fay, Ph.D., MA, MFA, Award-winning Author and Mental Health Advocate, Northwestern University

    In this engaging talk, Sarah shares her own experience of mental illness and psychiatric diagnoses and the extensive research she completed for her journalistic memoir Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins). Everything we think—and Sarah thought—about mental health and psychiatric diagnoses is wrong. Believe it or not, when it comes to eradicating stigma and self-stigma, that’s a very good thing. MORE >

    We know that stress, suffering, and trauma take a toll on workers, employers, companies, and organizations. 85% of workers report the workplace negatively affects their mental health and wellbeing. Long-term stress increases the risk of mental health issues and mental illness. When a worker isn’t feeling mentally and emotionally well, their safety and the safety of others are at risk. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), depression alone costs employers $17 billion to $44 billion and causes an estimated 200 million lost workdays each year. Stigma and self-stigma against mental health conditions have been shown to increase stress and therefore exacerbate mental health conditions producing a negative and costly looping effect.

    How then do we eliminate stigma and self-stigma in the workplace?

    Topic covered:
    - Mental health in the workplace
    - Stress and how it affects mental health and psychiatric conditions
    - Mental illness and psychiatric diagnoses
    - Stigma and self-stigma
    - Being a visionary

    Request This Free Speech

  • Why Settle For Less?

    Robb Hill, Founder/President, R Hill Enterprises Inc

    Why Settle For Less, When You Can Be The Best? Many people settle for far less than they can have or achieve. Complacency becomes their biggest enemy, as disappointment becomes the norm. Knowledge is not power, APPLIED knowledge is power, and learning this application, can change the life out come. MORE >

    Financial advisor, author and inspirational speaker, Robb Hill has for over 18 years helped people not only put their financial house in order, and reorder their thinking processes for a better life outcome. His powerful lectures on basic financial planning, corporate communication and personal development are revolutionizing the way people look at their lives, their choices, and their futures.
    Request This Free Speech

  • Pathological: What 25 Years of Living with Mental Illness Taught Me About Self-Stigma and How to Eradicate it

    Sarah Fay, Ph.D., MA, MFA, Award-winning Author and Mental Health Advocate, Northwestern University

    In this gripping and inspiring talk, Sarah Fay shares her experience of mental illness and psychiatric diagnosis. She received her first diagnosis at age twelve: anorexia. While in the mental health system for the next twenty-five years, she was given five more diagnoses: anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, and bipolar disorder. Sarah has since healed. This talk explains how she overidentified with her first psychiatric diagnosis, mistakenly using it against rather than for herself, and continued that pattern into adulthood. MORE >

    Sarah helps us better understand what a psychiatric diagnosis is and what it isn’t and how to use it to heal and flourish, not stigmatize ourselves.

    Topics covered:

    - Mental illness, mental health, and psychiatric diagnoses
    - Stigma and self-stigma
    - Self-talk and self-empowerment
    - The power of self-joy

    Request This Free Speech

  • Knowing and Loving: The Keys to Real Happiness

    Robert Beezat, Owner and President, Robert A. Beezat. Inc.

    Be Joyful! Have Fun! Be the happy person you were born to be. As human beings, we are born to know and love. With a grasp of this basic concept, we can make choices and decisions which will enable us to live good, authentic, happy lives in the short term and long run. Understanding, developing, and nurturing the human capacities of knowing and loving are the keys to finding deep and long lasting human happiness. It is never to early or too late to be deeply happy!
    MORE >

    Request This Free Speech

  • Reducing Deadly School Violence

    Kasia Wereszczynska, Clinical Director / Executive Director, Counseling Speaks / In Her Shoes Foundation

    Learn from Kasia Wereszczynska about reducing deadly school violence in a thought provoking presentation that focuses on prevention through understanding behavioral health.

    Request This Free Speech

  • Where Are You Growing? Cultivating a Growth Mindset

    Susan Neustrom, Ed.D., Leadership Coach, Author, Speaker, Educator, Leading to Action

    Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Your mindset determines your behavior and thoughts leading to your success, your performance and your impact on staff, co-workers, family, and friends. There are two mindsets, fixed and growth. If you have a fixed mindset you believe abilities and intelligence are determined early in life. Therefore, challenges and failure only serve to support your belief. In contrast, if you have a growth mindset you view challenges and obstacles as opportunities to develop skills and continue growing and learning. Most individuals exhibit a combination of a fixed and growth mindset but intentionally cultivating a growth mindset results in enhanced resilience, increased accomplishments and expanded potential. In an organization, a growth mindset leader creates a culture of innovation, risk-taking, teamwork, and trust enabling others to adopt a growth mindset. MORE >

    In this interactive session, Dr. Susan Neustrom explores how mindsets are formed and the dynamics and strategies involved in shifting mindset to optimize positive impact both personally and professionally. Using the theoretical framework of mindset, grit, and mental contrasting this session will engage participants in a new approach to decision-making, problem solving, teaching, and learning.
    Request This Free Speech

  • Chapters – Caring for Caregivers

    Roger Renik, Support Group Facilitator for "Chapters"

    Whether for an aging parent, neighbor or friend, most people will be a caregiver at some point in life if they're not already. This can sometimes be a challenging role when combined with everyday living and one's own daily responsibilities. MORE >

    Sharing experiences, especially in the care giving capacity, creates an informative and overall helpful environment in which you can realize that you are not alone in your role. Roger, a caregiver for over 15 years provides a supportive and interactive seminar with a distinct awareness of Senior Care. Even after the caregiving role may have ended, the emotional and mental part may live on for years to come. We can talk about this and know being the role of caregiver has a direct effect on all persons involved.
    Request This Free Speech

  • Tapping into your Superpowers Mindfulness and Meditation.

    jacqueline McCarty, Owner Certified Meditation and Mindfulness Teacher, Om At Work

    Mindfulness can be practiced in any aspect and any task in your life! By remembering this tool of focus and awareness you can transform it into pure presence. Your awareness is currency, where your attention goes energy flows. Meditation is a training for your awareness and can have lasting effects on your brain and nervous system when practiced regularly. Learn these practices and transform your work and life. MORE >

    Request This Free Speech

  • The Comfort Zone Illusion-Solving the Mystery

    Susan Neustrom, Ed.D., Leadership Coach, Author, Speaker, Educator, Leading to Action

    Are you ready for change? Are you a leader embarking on change within your organization? Whether change is planned or unplanned, more than likely you and your team need to step outside your comfort zone and do something different. However, leaving your comfort zone is frightening and fear can stifle growth, halt progress, and negatively impact behavior making you feel as if you lost control, stuck, and not moving forward. When implementing transformational change in an organization leaders are challenged with getting everyone excited and motivated about new ways of working. Often times, leaders are met with resistance, complaints, and frustration because people are being asked to step outside their comfort zone. Change upsets routine and structure and opens the door allowing fear to enter and demonstrated in thoughts and action. Of course, it doesn’t need to be this way because the comfort zone is really an illusion. MORE >

    This presentation unravels the mystery of the comfort zone to expose the stark reality of the discomfort of change. Therefore, enabling leaders to discover why leaving your comfort zone is so difficult, what creates fear during times of change, and how to develop strategies for engagement and empowerment that eliminate the fear of leaving your comfort zone and to view change through a new lens.
    Request This Free Speech

  • Becoming An Innovator

    Stephen A. Di Biase, Ph.D., President, Premier Insights, LLC.

    "10 Keys To Unlock Your Innovative Self" offers the reader a short, simple, easy and fun treatment teaching anyone how to use the basics of innovative behaviors for becoming a more effective problem solver leading to a higher quality of life. Specifically, this treatise touches on why every human being is an innovator at birth, how we can maximizes, this natural trait, the importance of curiosity, imagination, inquiry, methods of learning, the importance of play and passion and how to use the scientific method while being careful of formal education. MORE >

    Request This Free Speech