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In the Sunday Blog post “A Fate Worse Than Death: Public Speaking”, we went over some tips to conquer your fear of public speaking. Ideally, following those steps can help you knock your speech out of the park, but what if you do everything right and still mess up? That can be a nerve-wracking experience. Bouncing back from it can be even worse.
It’s one that I myself have gone through on occasion. I mentioned in the last post my 7th-grade speech where I cried in front of a class. I’ve also completely blanked and stood silent for a solid minute while everyone stared. I’ve made a number of jokes that didn’t get a single chuckle. My voice has cracked in the worst of ways.
And yet I’ve been selected to speak at my graduation twice. I’ve given numerous presentations in class and at work that went well. I’ve emceed both of my siblings’ weddings. Those moments mean the world to me, and I wouldn’t have experienced them without overcoming the slew of bad public speaking experiences.
You may be someone who doesn’t go out of their way for public speaking engagements, but the reality is those engagements will eventually show up at your front door. It behooves us then to not only know how to deliver, but know how to move forward when we flop. Like so many things in life, we're never going to get it perfect the first or even the hundredth time. But those mistakes are opportunities to learn and fuel us toward something better.
Getting up there when you feel like you got it, and then messing up anyways, is the worst. I’ve been there. But if you keep pushing yourself back onto the proverbial (or literal) stage, you’ll find that overcoming those experiences takes you to a promised land. Whether that be nailing a sales pitch, wowing a crowd, or making an amazing memory, even a single stellar speech is worth the struggle to get there. And if nothing else, the feeling you get from making a mistake then coming back stronger is a prize in its own right.
Tuesday Deep Dive is a series where we discuss in more detail a specific point made in the previous Sunday Blog.