“You can do contests with this material…and win.”
That’s what the senior Toastmaster/Public Speaker told me after I finished my speech.

I don’t remember the last time I was this hyped for a project I needed to finish.
For this performance, I decided to apply the feedback from the previous one, so instead of memorizing, I was going to improvise it.

There were bullet points of course, but the weight of the endless chain of words didn’t anchor me down anymore; it was just a creative expression in the heat of the moment, doing my best with what I have and what happens while I’m standing there.

This came with a little extra anxiousness. After practicing the speech multiple times (each time with different sentences, since it wasn’t written), I realized that it won’t fit into my limit of 7 minutes. It was continuously hitting 9, even if I sped things up a bit.
That’s when I started to cut out the bullshit. The parts that were the least effective. Everything that didn’t truly represent my message – until I polished it down to a solid 7 and a half minutes.
Close, but still doesn’t cut it. It needs to be less, so there is a margin of error in case I freeze.

At this point I asked myself whether I could say things slightly faster, or arrange my equipment in a way to fit the stages of the speech – so it saves me time when I get to the point of using it. This time I made it under ~5 minutes. The bare minimum for a speech – too fast! I need to slow down a bit.
But now I knew it was possible to make it.

Practice after practice, I kept narrowing it down to the sweetspot of somewhere between 6 and 6,5 minutes. I was more and more comfortable in my body, some of the good lines I came up with along the way earned a permanent spot in the speech, and the performance went fluently. Except the finale.
It was a high risk, high reward finishing touch to the speech – with a 35% success rate. Since my speech was due this evening, I couldn’t practice enough to rack those number up to 70 or 80; but I chose to keep that part in, and see how it goes under all that pressure and heat. Even if I mess it up, at least I’ve tried it. In that room, the word “failure” doesn’t exist; we use the words “learning” and “practice”. That makes it a perfectly safe environment for experimenting with ideas that are crazy like this.

After performing it for the last time in our cozy living room without anyone watching me, I was confident that each element now has its proper place, there were plenty of witty remarks in my memory and even more tricks in my sleeve, so the whole show would be fluent and astonishing.
But I was still stressed out, completely.
I was anxious about forgetting the order, or messing up a trick. I checked at least 8 times whether I surely have everything packed in, just so I wouldn’t miss an item that is crucial to perform the speech.
I was worried about not getting there in time, because Murphy’s law was all in on me.

Just to represent how unwilling Life can be at times, here is a brief summary of the amount of obstacles that arose this evening:

Almost all the time, I go together with a friend of mine who has a car. This time he was on vacation, so I asked someone else for a ride. He said: “Sure, alright!” Until 6 hours before the meeting, he tells me that he can’t attend due to some coughing, which means he might have corona, but he doesn’t want to risk it. Understandable, this means option number 3: Cycling.
Uh-oh, the equipment is too heavy, and the event is 1 hour away by bike. There is no basket on it, so there is no way I could carry it without killing my shoulders on the way. But how about cycling to the Central station, ~15 minutes, and not having to wait for a bus for 30 minutes on the way back here?
BOOM. The heaviest rainfall of the week was about to arrive in the exact timeframe when I was about to leave.
20 minutes of natural disaster, precisely from the moment I’m supposed to start pedaling. Congrats Murphy, you made it. I had to use option Z, which was public transport from A to B, all the way.

It took me 1,5 hours, but I made it.
On the bus, I tried to relax, breathe, and even meditate. My heart just wouldn’t chill.
If there is one thing I hate, it’s unnecessary sweating, and I constantly felt that mildly cold liquid in my armpits. Very, very irritating.

When I finally walked in the building, I quickly checked for the 9th time whether I still have everything, and placed all the toys in the corresponding pockets, so I wouldn’t have to bother with them in 20 minutes when I have to start my speech.

Before my time came, I quickly built up the stage, took off my socks, walked in front of everyone with bare feet and did this:

Practicing for TED Talks
The Wonders of The Body – 08.10.2020

If there was a way to bottle the amount of joy I felt during the speech, I could easily fill a thousand jars with it. It was the most phenomenal rush of adrenaline, mixed with happiness and inner peace. I was both calm and extremely hyped through the whole thing. Everyone from the audience was present, listening intently, waiting for the next move or the next trick. They didn’t miss a second of it, which makes it clear that the presentation was intriguing, exciting and entertaining for everyone watching it.
A solid sign that goal of the evening was very well achieved.

I know that the whole corona thing could make it very difficult to do it currently, but I strongly advise for anyone who is looking to improve their public speaking/communication skills to give Toastmasters a shot/visit, and discover the wonders of articulating your ideas and dreams in a way that captures the attention of everybody who is listening.

Take care and stay safe,
Erik

2020.10.08 – Day 626

Bucket List Progress:
– Give a TED talk (#111)