I’m not ready to stop documenting my public speaking journey yet. I don’t know when I will be, because I still feel as though I’m right in the middle of it.
Public speaking has been fucking painful for me at times. I’ve watched other people get up and speak seemingly without giving it much thought, while I’ve had to work at almost every part of it. Confidence, nerves, stumbling over words, worrying about what people think, wondering where to look, wondering what to do with my hands and analysing everything afterwards.
Progress hasn’t arrived as one great moment when everything suddenly clicked. It has been more like putting together a massive jigsaw, monumentally slowly. Every so often I find another piece and suddenly understand something that I couldn’t understand before.
I think I’ve just found one of the biggest pieces so far.
For my last two pitches, I did something differently. Instead of standing there and speaking towards a room full of people, I actually looked at individual people as I spoke. I looked at one person, then somebody else, then another person across the room.
And I talked.
I really talked.
The words seemed to come much more freely than they normally do. I wasn’t desperately thinking about what I should say next or worrying about how I was coming across. I was communicating with the people in front of me.
Then I realised what had changed.
Before, when I stood in front of a room and looked at nobody in particular, I was completely focused inwards. Even though there were people sitting in front of me, a huge part of my attention was actually on myself.
How am I sounding? Am I stumbling? Am I speaking properly? What are they thinking about me?
By looking directly at individual people, I gave my attention somewhere else to go. Instead of concentrating on myself, I became interested in them. Were they listening? Were they understanding what I was saying? Was I actually communicating with them?
For those moments, I forgot about myself.
That feels monumental to me.
The strange thing is that people have probably told me about eye contact countless times. Every public speaking guide tells you to make eye contact. I knew that already. But knowing something and actually experiencing why it works are completely different things.
I had to discover it while standing there speaking.
That seems to be how I’m learning all of this. I can read about public speaking, listen to advice and watch other speakers, but some things only seem to make sense when I experience them for myself. I have to stand up, feel uncomfortable, try something, get something wrong, try again and occasionally discover another piece of the jigsaw.
Perhaps that’s why some of these discoveries feel so enormous to me. Somebody else might think, “Well, of course you should look at your audience.” For me, it isn’t simply about eye contact. I’ve discovered a way of moving my attention away from myself.
I’m not standing there watching myself speak anymore.
I’m looking at somebody and talking to them.
I don’t think I’ve cracked public speaking. Far from it. I’ll probably have another speech where I stumble, lose my place or become horribly self-conscious again. I’m also trying not to turn this discovery into another thing I have to get perfectly right.
There are still lots of pieces missing.
That’s why I’m going to carry on documenting this journey. I want to remember the difficult bits as much as the breakthroughs, because this isn’t a story about somebody who woke up one morning and suddenly became a confident public speaker.
It’s about somebody who keeps getting up there and, monumentally slowly, is finding the pieces for himself.
Ray
