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Oh the thrill of being asked to give a speech! You come home all a twitter, thinking about the great things that you are planning on sharing with this audience. You can almost see them now, you’ve just finished your speech and because of the importance of public speaking they are standing up and clapping. After your speech, everyone wants to talk to you in order to find out more about what shared with them. However, when you sit done to write this fantastic speech nothing comes to mind. What’s happened here is that you didn’t take the time to train your brain how to write great speeches!
Multitasking
When you sit down to work on your next speech, are you really going to be focused on the task at hand? If you are like most of us, you’ll set your mobile phone on the table in front of you, perhaps the television will be on in the background, and there may be other people running around in the house at this time. This is just sorta the way that life is. However, it can all contribute to making the process of creating a speech almost impossible.
A lot of us like to say that we are good multitaskers. We feel confident in our ability to do multiple things all at the same time. However, it turns out that we’re wrong. Scientific study after study has shown that when we try to work on more than one task at a time, we don’t do a good job. We simply can’t spend enough time focusing on the task that we are currently working on. What this means is that when it comes time to create your next speech, you’ll need to clear everything else away so that you can focus on your most important task: writing that speech!
Exercise
Considering the fact creating a speech is such a cerebral task, you might not think that exercise would play any role in the quality of a speech that you can create. However, you would be wrong. You’ve got to understand what’s going to be going on in your brain when you are working on a speech. The front part of your brain, the part that acts as your working memory, is tied very closely to how good of a job that you do paying attention.
It turns out that what all of us need to be doing to help out this front part of our brains are aerobic exercises. These exercises have to do with how we breath and can include cardio machines, spinning, running, swimming, walking, hiking, aerobics classes, dancing, cross country skiing, and kickboxing.
Change
I’m pretty sure that we all have mixed feelings when it comes to dealing with change. Although change is a natural part of each of our lives, it can be terribly disruptive. However, if we’re in a rut and we’re just doing the same things over and over again, then our brains are going to shift into neutral and we’re not going to be able to produce the speech that we want.
What we are going to have to make sure is happening is we are always experiencing some sort of incremental change. In our lives there has to be both newness and change so that our brains can keep learning how to both adapt and adjust to new situations. It’s exactly this type of activity that will allow us to stay sharp and be able to create great speeches when called upon to do so.
What All Of This Means For You
For some of us there is no greater thrill than being asked to give a speech. When we are asked to do so, we instantly start to think about all of the great things that we’ll want to share with our next audience and the benefits of public speaking. However, when we finally get around to sitting down to map out our speech, all too often we can run into a brick wall – the ideas just won’t come.
There can be many reasons for this. Chief among them may be our belief that we can multitask. Although many of us may think that we can do multiple things at the same time, scientists have shown that it just can’t be done well. Just sitting down to do some writing may be setting us back. It turns out that the brain needs us to do breathing exercises so that it will be in top form when we decide to call upon it. Finally, if we’ve allowed ourselves to get into a rut and we are not dealing with any change in our lives, then there’s a good chance that our brain won’t be ready to create the novel insights that we need in order to create a great speech.
What all of this means is that our ability to create a great speech depends very much on how our brain is working. The good news here is that we are in control of our brain. The bad news that it takes a constant effort on our part to make sure that our brains are in top-notch order and ready for demanding tasks like creating great speeches. Take some time today to work with your brain and get it ready to create a great speech tomorrow!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™
Question For You: How often do you think that you have to exercise in order to keep your brain in good working order?
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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!
What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
The next time that I create a speech, because I know about the importance of public speaking, I want it to be the best speech that I’ve ever made. In order for this to happen, I’m going to have to be creative. This is where a bit of a challenge comes in – I’m not all that confident that I can be creative when I need to be. What I need to do is to find a way to exercise my creativity so that when I need to call on it, it’s there for me. What’s the secret to becoming more creative so that we can create better speeches?