When was the last time you stood in front of a group of people and gave a speech? How did you determine what your topic would be, how you should construct the speech, how long it should be, or what props you should use? Where did you find the courage to stand up and face the audience? Facing the prospect of giving a speech sometimes makes even the strongest quake. This is odd to me, because most of us can talk perfectly well when talking to our relatives and friends, but the first time we say give a speech mouths go dry, heart beats quicken, perspiration starts to flow, and bells, whistles, and drums start pounding in our heads.
Giving a speech is, or at least should be just like talking to your friends and family. If you have something to say, you should be able to communicate your thoughts to yourself and to others. That is, if you have something to say. Therefore, the first step is to know what you want to talk about. What are your thoughts? What do you want your audience to learn and what action do you want them to take as a result of your speech? The disappointing truth is half your audience will forget your main points by the time they pass through the doorway to the room. Half of them will forget what you talked about by the time they exit the building. Half of them will forget you even gave a presentation by the time they get to their cars to go home. By the time they get home they’ll forget they were at your presentation. What you want is to have them say to someone later, “Someone gave a talk on…” That’s when you’ll know you were successful, but you won’t know, because you won’t be there to hear the conversation.
That being the case, why bother speaking at all? The most important is you must truly have something to say. This something should be important to you… preferably something you feel passionate about. Your topic could be on dieting, sports, politics, war, playing games, or literally anything. You and your opinions are just as valid as anyone else’s. What you say may spark a thought in someone else’s mind that could lead to an advancement in medicine, transportation, or literature. What you say may have been said before, but with some thought and creativity, you can present ideas in a different way, from your personal point of view, to help more people grasp the concepts.
The purpose of your speech is to place an abstract idea into your audiences’ cube. Their cube is their mind. Taking the idea into their mind and viewing it from the unique perspective. Each individual provides us with a plethora of possibilities. That’s why it’s a good idea to communicate our ideas, because someone else can take that idea to the next level, or show us something we hadn’t thought of to help us grow. We are not responsible to take any idea to its end. In fact, if done right, there will be no end to the learning process. We think our own thoughts and draw our own conclusions, then pass them on to society to let someone else take our ideas to the next level. The important thing to remember here is, we can always build on an idea, and we must always be aware of and reinforce that possibility.
We are not on this little blue marble all alone, and the reason for that may be the synergy formed through the collaboration between our individual self and others. Is it possible that our purpose is to plant seeds of ideas in as many heads as possible, and then to let others grow the seeds into strong trees, beautiful flowers, or food? That must be our purpose; to grow ideas, to grow ourselves, and to contribute to humanity.
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