How Public Speaking Will Change Your Life | Bridget Sampson | TEDxCSUN

remember the entrance of

your

house, imagine the front door you are about to enter and to

your

surprise you see that your house is full of gifts, from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, gifts everywhere you look, They are all wrapped in beautiful wrapping paper with shiny ribbons and bows, they are all different shapes and sizes, so you start examining all these gifts and notice that each one has a small gift tag and on the gift tag next to it the word you see your own name on each gift these gifts are not for you they are yours and then you look to see what names might be next to the word but they are all blank none of the gift tags say who these gifts are for so no You have no idea who these gifts are intended for and you have no idea what the hell you're going to do with them, that's the question I'm here to answer for you today.

You see that these gifts represent the gifts within you, right now, here are your brilliant ideas, your unique experiences, the wisdom that only you possess, but those gifts could remain trapped inside you forever, ungiven and unopened, to unless you choose to speak in

public

. Yes, you heard me if you want to reach for it. To realize your full potential in this

life

, you must embrace

public

speaking

and it doesn't matter how you feel about public

speaking

right now. My goal is to get you out of your comfort zone for public speaking, whatever that means for you if you fear the public. speaking I want you to muster up the courage to try it if you are mediocre at it I want you to bring more energy and enthusiasm to it and if you are already a great public speaker then why don't you apply to give your own TED talkx it could be you here on this stage now I didn't start out as a confident speaker, far from it.

I was a mess all week before my first speech in my college speech class. I could barely eat or sleep. or think about anything else I imagined every possible horrible scenario you can imagine vomiting projectiles all over the front row, passing out and falling to the floor with a fatal blow to the head or, worst of all, lying there and forgetting everything I I plan to say how the whole class laughed at me. Can you relate this type of catastrophism? By the way, it's one of the reasons why psychologists label the fear of public speaking as an irrational fear.

The things I feared so much don't really happen, so I didn't throw up. I didn't faint and I didn't forget all my points, but to be honest, those self-fulfilling prophecies I certainly blew. I couldn't make eye contact with a single person the entire time. I read directly from my outline with shaky hands. and I only spoke for three of the required five minutes after that speech. I knew I had two options: I could continue to torture myself and let my anxiety take over the show, or I could embark on a mission to conquer my fear and become a trusting audience. speaker I chose to accept that mission and it profoundly

change

d the course of my

life

.

If you had told me back then that just two and a half years after taking that class I would be teaching it, I would never have believed you but it's true or that I would happily continue doing it for 25 years. and counting and I certainly couldn't have imagined that that choice all those years ago would lead me to a career I loved as a consultant and traveling the world teaching people how to improve their communication skills. My mission. Back then it was to embrace public speaking in my own life in order to unlock my true human potential.

My mission now is to encourage you all to do the same. Now that you know a little about my journey and my goal, let's focus on two areas why it is so important for you to accept public speaking and how you can start doing it to answer the question of why let's look at some examples from the list of people who overcame a debilitating fear of public speaking to go on to become great leaders and artists is long and includes people like Gandhi Barbra Streisand Julia Roberts Abraham Lincoln Warren Buffett Tom Hanks Nicole Kidman I could go on and on, but you know their names well, you know all those names because those people worked hard to overcome that fear so they could give their gifts to the world, so you've heard of all those famous people, but I bet you've never heard of Mary Ellen Peterson.

She is not famous, but her story is the most inspiring to me as a mother, especially Mary Ellen. Peterson didn't set out to be an outspoken activist, but everything

change

d for her in the 1970s, when she gave birth to a baby with special needs. She joined a small group of other mothers to advocate for their children, other mothers of babies with special needs, and together they decided to form the now nationally acclaimed nonprofit organization, Parents Helping Parents, of which Mary Ellen Peterson was a member. executive director for four decades, certain that her gift to the world was helping families like hers with children with special needs.

Mary Ellen Peterson I knew she couldn't afford to avoid public speaking and neither can you, so you might be thinking, "I'm not fighting to save the world like Gandhi or advocating for children with special needs like Mary Ellen Peterson. That's it." okay, maybe for you it's a music health business." finances love parenting yoga anything no topic is too small if it's what you're passionate about and I understand it I'm a university professor and a trainer and coach who teaches communication skills I sometimes see people's reactions I know a lot of people don't I think it's so important like math, art or history, but I do it, it's what matters most to me and that's why I bring all my energy and passion to every talk I give on communication skills.

In fact, that's why I'm here today. They asked me to give. Three little one-hour workshops on communication skills for a group of students here on campus that I had never heard of, and of course I said yes, I loved doing that kind of thing, but I didn't know if any of those students I would have already done it. They took a class with me, so I spent hours coming up with new examples and stories, they even made up a new acronym and I showed up that first day at that first workshop very excited to be there to give it my all and interact with those. students, although I had no idea that the curator of this TEDx conference sat in that audience, it was an audition, although I had no idea it was and that's why I'm here.

I hope all these examples have shown you that none of you can afford to avoid or suffer when speaking in public, if you do you

will

absolutely miss the opportunity to share your gifts with the world, so now let's see how you can start do it. A couple of ideas on how you can do it. start doing it, it all comes down to having confidence, increase your confidence, if you google the definition of the word confidence you

will

see something like this, believe in someone or something firm. Trust, confidence is the key to becoming a confident speaker.

Trust yourself and your audience to trust yourself. You have to believe that you have something of value to share. I know you have it. I'm just wondering if you know you have it and don't just need to know that you have something of value to share. You must believe that you already have everything you need to do it, you have done more difficult things in your life. I guarantee you that one of the speech classes I teach here on campus is for the educational opportunities program that serves historically low-income people. first-generation college students and I will never forget when I started teaching that particular course many years ago, sitting in my office talking to a young woman in that class while she looked me right in the eye and said with complete certainty that I was never going to be able standing in front of the class and giving a speech there is no way she was terrified she also shared some of her life experiences with me things I couldn't imagine homelessness witnessing gang violence domestic abuse drug addiction family members incarcerated I used that information to convince her that giving a five-minute speech in front of 24 other students was going to be much easier than all the things she had already gone through and survived in her life, than the courage it took her to get out of that guy. environment and getting to college was a lot more courage than she would ever need to become a confident public speaker.

Fortunately, she believed me and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire career to see her blossom over the years. throughout the semester into a powerful and articulate speaker and, in fact, her final speech was one of the best I have ever seen. She moved us all to tears by sharing the ways we can contribute to a world where children don't have to. grow up like she did. I have had the privilege of watching hundreds of other students in the educational opportunity program with similar backgrounds go through the exact same transformation over the years.

If they can do it, can you now? You don't just have to trust yourself. You need to trust your audience you need to believe that the people in your audience are kind and compassionate the vast majority if not all of them are I guarantee they are on your side Aren't you on my side right now? If they want you to win over your audience, they are encouraging you, don't do that? when you're in the audience we don't sit there wishing the speaker was boring or fell apart in front of us we want the speaker to win Remember when you were the speaker not long ago you were about to start a training program, a training program all day for executives at a Fortune 500 company and just as I was about to start the day somehow my foot got caught in the computer cable. and I stumbled right in front of them and I stumbled and I staggered and I staggered back and forth and back and forth and I couldn't regain my balance for what seemed like an eternity and finally, in my last attempt to steady myself, I kicked my back. foot.

I pulled on the cord and watched as my laptops slid across the desk and hit the hard floor with a crash. He still hadn't said a word. Everyone is looking at me. This is not the impression you want to give a Fortune 500 Senior. Executives write who you will spend all day with before saying a word, all I could do was trust that they were human beings like me, so I looked at them and all I could see on their faces was concern and empathy. That empathetic feeling of who I could have been or, more likely, been me at some point.

We're all in this together, so all I could do was say the first thing that came to mind, which was looking at my laptop. and I say: I hope it still works because I really like the PowerPoint slides that I created for you today and you laughed and were happy when it worked well. The rest of the day was great. No one expects perfection from you and your audience is perfectly fine with a mistake here or there as long as you move forward don't make a big deal out of it the people in your audience are your allies, not your enemies.

Previously in this talk I shared how terrified I was of public speaking when I was in college and I also told you how I overcame that fear, but please don't let that lead you to believe that it is always easy for me, it is not. . I choose to constantly challenge myself in new public speaking situations. This, for example, I am not used to. having lights on me and cameras filming me with a microphone this is new to me this is scary to be completely honest with you most of this version of this talk was composed in a complete panic attack at 3am. a few weeks ago and most of it was also inspired by a desperate two-hour FaceTime conversation with Carina, the curator.

I had spent too many sleepless nights and stressed days trying to figure out what to say in this talk, so I asked him for help and we sat there. staring at each other across our computers via FaceTime in our pajamas on a Saturday morning for two hours reviewing a Google doc with my ninth first draft of this talk and I asked her to tell me what she was trying to say and luckily she did. did. The answer is that public speaking, being comfortable speaking in public, and being a confident public speaker is necessary if you want to reach your full human potential.

It is not optional. It's not your home that's full of gifts. It's you and there are people who The gifts were intended for people who need them, people who are waiting for their gifts, so the next time you are asked to speak, you will have the opportunity to speak, whether in a meeting at work, in a class, at a funeral or at a wedding or at a TEDx conference first I want you to say yes with enthusiasm and then I want you to look deep inside yourself and find that perfect gift that is there, wrap it in beautiful wrapping paper, put a big, pretty bow on top and give it as a gift thank you thank you