Picking What You Will Talk About

I’d like to be able to tell you that every time that you get asked to give a speech, you’ll be told what the people running the show want you to talk about. However, as is the case with all such things in real life, it never seems to work out this way. Instead, somebody who is hosting a show realizes that they need another speaker to fill their slots and they come and find you because you understand the importance of public speaking. Great, so you’ve been asked to give a speech, but you have no idea what you’ll be talking about. What’s a speaker to do?

Talk About You

So here’s something that far too many speakers do not realize. You have a topic that you can talk about that your audience will find to be fascinating. What makes this topic even better is that there is no other speaker in the world who can talk about the same topic – no problems with duplication here! What I’m talking about is those speeches in which you talk about yourself.

Any time that we give a speech about ourselves, we always end up shrinking decades of experiences down into just a few sentences in order to fit into a given presentation. When you are called on to give a speech, think about this kind of speech and pick one of your personal experiences and flesh it out. Use what you have been through in order to either inspire or motivate your audience.

Go For A Walk

In order to create any speech, you are going to have to be able to draw upon your creative talents. The challenge that a lot of us run into is that it can be difficult to get those creative talents to show up when we need them. That’s why it’s good to know that studies have shown that your creative output can be boosted by up to 60% simply by going for a walk. For some reason, either walking or even just pacing can help to clear our minds.

When you are walking, what you will find is that you are now more open to new ideas. Going for a walk will allow you to take a look at the surroundings that you find yourself in in a different way. While you are walking there is a very good chance that you will come across a number of different things including people, animals, and even businesses. Any one of these can provide you with that spark that you need to go ahead and create a great speech.

Use That Internet Thing

We all seem to spend a great deal of time each day on the internet. Why not use it when it comes time for you to come up with your next speech? The most powerful tools that you have available to you online are the multitude of search engines. What you can do is bring one of these engines up and then proceed to type in some words that only seem to be related to you. Then watch what happens next.

When we do a search, we will be presented with the websites that best match the words that we typed in. More often than not these may provide us with the starting point to create a great speech. If the search that you do does not yield any results that you think that you can use, then just start clicking on the links that have come up as results. Your reason for doing this is that you may stumble across a topic that catches your attention. TED talks are famous for making this happen.

Fall Back On A Quote

When all else fails, you can always take a look at what other people have said. The great thing about using quotes in one of your speeches is that your audience will more than likely recognize the quote. When this happens they’ll be placed in a good mood and will be more open to hearing what you have to tell them. What you’ll want to do is to pick one of your favorite quotes and use it to inspire your audience. You can build a speech out of a quote if you can come up with a story that reflects the message being passed on by the quote.

What All Of This Means For You

All too often when we get tapped to give a speech, we really have no idea what we are going to want to speak about. The person who has asked us to give a speech is simply trying to fill a spot in their program and so they may not be of any help in trying to determine what our speech topic should be. When something like this happens, it’s going to be up to us to find a topic that we can use to create an interesting speech to share the benefits of public speaking.

When you are searching for a topic to speak about, you don’t want to forget about the one topic that you are the best person in the world to speak about: you. You can take an event in your life and create an entire speech about it. Sometimes in order to create a good speech we just need to get the creative juices flowing. One way to make this happen is for you to take a walk. The internet is a powerful tool and it is available to help us find a topic that we can use to create a speech. Use your favorite search engine and type in some words and see what pops up. If nothing else works for you, then consider using a famous quote to build your next speech around.

If we are gong to give a great speech, then we are going to have to first create it. There will be times when we are asked to give a speech and no topic is suggested for us. When this happens, picking a topic is going to fall on our shoulders. If we know where we can go to find topics that we can speak about then our task will be easier. Use the suggestions that we’ve covered the next time that you find yourself searching for something to talk about.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: When you pick a topic to talk about, do you think that you should run it by the event organizer before you write a speech?

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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!