I was starting to really doubt my abilities of WOW-ing a crowd in a foreign country and pursuing my passion of public speaking. It wasn’t me being afraid to go speak, I just felt so inferior to the accomplished speakers I knew and researched and believed there was no way people would want me up on that stage and listen to what I had to say. I wasn’t an award-winning speaker; I wasn’t affiliated with any speaker’s bureau. All I had to offer was my story and my passion in conveying it effectively. Those two things would spark excitement in people for their lives. But I must say, it helps a great deal to have a book on the way, because people begin to take you seriously and want you to come speak. Thank Pursuit of Excellence!
Moving along, I began listening to a podcast by a successful speaker, trainer and author who was willing to give me the time of day to work with me, Angela Lussier. In this particular episode she interviewed Katy Tynan, one of the best motivational speakers in Boston. Katy talked about how she became this great speaker and shared that it’s not about aiming to impact a million people and trying to get a million reviews. The focus should be impacting one or two people with your message then moving on from there.
She made it seem so doable and incredibly easy to apply. We tend to overwhelm ourselves and think that even though we are starting out, we should compare ourselves to experts who have been in the trade much longer than we have. That is the quickest way to frustration station. Someone is going to seem like they are always ahead of you and you can’t catch up. Rather focus on finding one person to impact with your message or your product or service and move on to the next person and so on and so forth. With the work you put into that, it will soon become a habit and know that you’re heading on the right track. Will Smith said,
You don’t set out to build a wall. You don’t set out to build the biggest, greatest, and baddest wall that has ever been built. You don’t start there. You say, ‘I’m gonna lay this brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. There will not be one brick on the face of the earth that will be laid perfectly as I’m going to lay in the next ten minutes.’ You do that every single day and soon you have a wall.
Let’s not make this hard on ourselves. Learn to keep it simple.