When Your Talk Tanks, Do This…

Yes get off that horse you know you’re falling off anyway and by horse I mean your beautiful pitch, your easy flow of inspirational words, the perfect thing to say when asked ‘What do you do?’ re your business, your career or your very purpose in life. When that perfectly practised presentation doesn’t flow beautifully and all you can hear coming from your mouth is hesitation and confusion and all you can see out the side of your eyes is a look of pity and panic in your audience… gather your reins and swing off gracefully.

So now you’re off the horse and feeling like a big fat failure. Although nightmareishly uncomfortable there’s something to discover here. Here’s just 3 places to look behind those withers:

1. First of all be kind to yourself and know that you are not alone. That place of doubt and failing is a natural part of any deep learning process. Yes it’s really uncomfortable when face to face with your incompetence, that place of having no doubt about what you can’t yet do masterfully and it’s all part of the necessary learning process. You’re here now so you might as well stay curious and ask:
2. What are you attached to? What is the really significant meaning you are giving to failure in this activity and in your life?
3. Where are you trying to look good? Looking good is really hard and it takes a lot of work. What would it be to just surrender, to let go of looking good? To keep a sense of humour and just laugh at yourself?

It takes a lot of courage and vulnerability to speak about something that matters immensely to you – plenty different from the usual verbal dialogue we engage in. Great speakers make it look easy and to quote Chris Anderson the head of TED “Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s world view. Done right, a talk is more powerful than anything in written form” And yet, anyone who knows anything about greatness knows that it comes from practice, from heart and from a willingness after you do fall to dust yourself down and get back on that horse…