“Make sure you have finished speaking before your
audience has finished listening.”
– Dorothy Sarnoff
Public Speaking Myths
Myth #1: “I’ve got to be the best.” I used to live by this myth. My mind would tell me to forget about speaking. If I couldn’t be the best, there was no use stepping on stage. But that changed. I decided to take a slightly different approach. Instead of being the best, I wanted to focus on improvement. I knew that every event, every speaking engagement, offered me the opportunity to improve over my last attempt. When I stopped competing against an ideal and worked instead toward a goal of honing my strengths and overcoming my weaknesses, I wasn’t so daunted by speaking. I began to enjoy the process.
The truth is that you only have to be the best you that you can be. Don’t fall into the speaker trap of thinking more about yourself than about your audience.
Myth #1 comes into play when your thoughts are “I hope they like me,” “I hope I don’t mess up,” or “I hope I don’t freeze.
Are any of those phrases about the audience?
Myth #2: “I’ve got no business speaking to this group? I’m not an expert on anything.” Wrong. You’re an expert on your experiences and interpretations of life. Go to the bookstore and browse. There are thousands of people making millions of dollars based on their opinions. They simply know how to communicate their personal know-how.
The ONLY thing you HAVE to do is have a definite purpose for your message and allow everything you say to support it.