Speaking Confidently

00:00 You hear this all the time.

00:01 People want confidence. Speakers Oh, she was so confident.

00:05 But what happens if you're about to stand up to speak and instead of feeling confident, you're feeling scared, nervous, uncomfortable, tentative? Well, let me tell you the number one way of gaining confidence when you speak, and that is to practice in advance.

00:23 On video and then watch the video.

00:27 And then to keep doing it until you like the speech, until you can point to a video of your own speech and say, wow, that person looks really confident.

00:38 I'd love to speak half as well as that person.

00:40 And you're speaking to a video.

00:42 Speaking about a video of yourself.

00:43 That's how you know you're confident.

00:47 And that will give you everything you need in order to get through your presentation.

00:52 Let's step back a minute. What makes people not have confidence? It's because you just don't know how you're coming across.

01:00 You have doubts, you're not certain.

01:02 You're thinking, Hmm, maybe I'll be really boring.

01:05 Well, guess what? You might be really boring.

01:08 What if nobody understands me? Well, maybe people can't understand you because you're speaking so softly or so quickly.

01:16 All of those things are very easy to test.

01:20 All you have to do, get your phone out and record yourself or a webcam or any other video recording device.

01:28 So if you're lacking confidence, chances are there's a good reason.

01:32 It's because you haven't done your due diligence.

01:34 If I said to you, dictate a memo, send it to every important client, your boss, your board of directors.

01:40 Oh, and by the way, you're not allowed to spell check the memo.

01:45 You're not allowed to test for grammar.

01:48 You can't make it look pretty.

01:49 You've got to just dictate it and send it out.

01:51 Wouldn't that make you nervous? Of course, it would, because you wouldn't have been able to refine it to eliminate the major defects.

02:01 It's exactly the same thing with speaking and with speaking.

02:05 It's not about the text and rewriting and running it through grammar.

02:08 Check and spell check. It's about you actually seeing that person.

02:12 In this case, you speak and doing it in a way where you know you're coming across your best.

02:19 Now, nothing's foolproof.

02:21 Some of you may be looking at me saying, Well, I don't like this guy's style.

02:25 I don't like the way he uses his hands, and I don't like his beady eyes.

02:30 You know what? It just doesn't bother me because I've seen myself talk on this very subject numerous times in other videos, and I'm confident that this is how I want to come across, that I really can't do any better than the way I'm doing right now.

02:46 So I couldn't be nervous even if I tried.

02:50 You can be completely confident, too.

02:51 You just have to practice on video till you like what you see.