“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” – Jerry Seinfeld

Credit: Jeff Kubina

Public speaking is one of the most rewarding things you can take up at any phase in life. Learning to speak well in front of an audience gives you confidence and the ability to handle challenging situations in other aspects of your life.

In this post, I will walk you through a step by step method to prepare the material to deliver a speech. Take what works for you and modify the rest to suit your style of preparation.

1. Choosing the theme

Given the choice, go for a subject you are intimately familiar with. Don’t look at topics related to just your job or area of professional expertise – your life can give you so many themes and angles for your speech. In order to make a powerful impact on the audience, you need to know at least several times as much about the subject as you reveal in the speech. The amount of knowledge you bring to the table, even if you don’t include it in the talk, will have a powerful impact on the audience. It adds indirect impact and makes the speech powerful and authentic.

Also, comfort with the topic doesn’t mean you don’t need to do research. In order to make the speech accurate, you need to fact-check all your material. Its also essential to use supporting tools such as quotations that add impact to your speech. At the end of the day, your comfort level with the theme married to your preparation is what makes a powerful, well delivered speech.

2. Gathering material and working on the theme

It is best to start thinking about and looking out for material for your speech at least 15 days before D-day. Take a notebook around with you to jot down points and observations as and when they occur. In fact, its always a good idea to carry round a notebook with you for capturing ideas. I recently delivered a speech on a topic I thought about 3 months ago. It was very different from what I had in my mind at the time, but was effective nonetheless. This marinating process will bring up enough ideas and associations around your topic to carry you well into the actual speech delivery.

Use the rule of three, people are comfortable if you subdivide your speech and any points you make into groups of 3. Any more than 3 points or “parts” in your structure means the audience will start counting and get distracted from your content and delivery. This is where the famous rule that your speech has to have a beginning, middle and end comes from.

3. Preparing the speech

Just like writing blog posts, stories and novels, you will throw away more than 60% of the material you gather, but don’t worry, the presence of the additional details you are forced to throw away will be felt in the material you retain. Be prepared to write, rewrite and rewrite some more. Setting this mental expectation means that you will be prepared for the process of making your speech polished and also ensure you start early – at least a week early to prepare your close-to-final draft.

The process of writing down your speech gives you comfort and mastery of your material. This will show through on the day you deliver your talk. Once you start giving speeches, you will realize how long you will take to deliver your material but as a thumb rule, an A4 sheet full of single space text (in word or any other word processor) at a readable font level of 10-11 pt will take about 7-9 minutes to deliver depending on your speed.

When gathering material to support a certain position you want to bring out in your speech, try to make sure the points are MECE. MECE is a management consulting rule to make sure your arguments are logically sound. It stands for Mutually Exclusive and Combinatorially Exhaustive, it’s a fancy way of saying you have to cover all the points that make your argument (no holes) and they should not overlap with each other. This is especially important if the intent of your speech is to convince the audience of your viewpoint.

Once you have created an elaborate outline and final draft of your speech, de-construct it once again into the main outline. This will give you the main “signposts” in your speech so that you remember how your speech flows on the day. Once you prepare this “cue-card” outline of your speech, you will find yourself practicing the speech at different times of the day and becoming comfortable with the material.

It helps me if I have a visual reminder of each of the major signposts in my speech. By visual reminders, I mean internal “images” that go with the points I am trying to make. For example, in a speech I gave about three places I remembered from my life, the images of each city helped me flow through the speech. Later on I found out that the images in my mind helped the audience visualize the situations and the places I was describing. This will give your speech a very high impact.

Don’t memorize the entire speech, or the delivery will be stilted. Instead remember the key signposts in your speech so that you are guided through the talk.

If possible, walk through the venue where you are going to give the speech a day in advance, and become comfortable with the stage and props. Make sure you have all your materials handy and the images from your speech clear in your mind. The key to an effective speech is to spread the preparation over a longer period of time rather than one or two bursts of energy and focus. The longer the ideas and points marinate in your mind, the more effective the speech and the overall flow is.

All the best!

Special thanks to Mark Pope, President of Tea House Toastmasters, Melbourne for sharing his technique with me, I have woven the parts of his method that inspired me into this post.

“To achieve great things you have first to believe it.” – Arsene Wenger (Manager, Arsenal football team)

Credit: whatmegsaid

When I was young, most of what I did was on faith. I went to school, took up hobbies and committed a large number of facts to memory because that’s what everyone did and if everyone did it, it had to be right.

As I grow older, logic – not belief – is starting to drive my decisions. If I needed to get from point A to point B, I spent a lot of time planning until I clearly understand every step on the way from A to B. There is a problem with this.

Most worthwhile achievements in life require belief when starting out.

• Meditation has no goal posts and no logical way to get from life on mental steroids to one pointed concentration and peace. The first steps necessarily have to be on faith. As you move forward, you receive benefits and your faith is rewarded but in the beginning, all you have is faith.
• Entrepreneurship is another example where I have spent a long time trying to figure out the logical steps to succeed. My logic, I have found out, cannot bridge the gap between start-up to success. There is a huge chasm, where I am expecting a bridge. It requires a bit of faith and craziness to venture down this path.
• As the pace of change around us accelerates, I will have to go through several careers before retiring. Each career change, I know, is a long process of feeling my way through, being guided by belief and visioning rather than a solid bridge of facts and figures on which to cross.
• Falling in love requires faith and trust as we start out. There is no logical path to happiness in love. And despite 500 days of summer, its still worth it.

As we grow older, we lose the ability to trust and the each worthwhile goal we pursue is preceded by longer and longer periods of indecision. This is just filler and holds you back from having a strong, passionate start. Belief helps.

1. Belief gives you the intensity in the starting phases of working towards a goal
2. It sees you through the “flat” phases in your journey to achieve something big
3. It allows you to connect and share your journey with other people – the most tightly knit groups form around a core set of beliefs

Flaunt your beliefs, no matter how crazy they seem. They are yours and as long as your beliefs lead to a better place for yourself and others, feel free to act on them.

However, the trick to be effective as you progress, is to always be looking out for feedback that proves or disproves the belief. Being aware of how our actions are validating the belief (or not) will help keep us on the right track and generally weed out beliefs like the earth being a flat plate supported on a tower of turtles. Acknowledging and examining your beliefs also allows you to deal with them objectively.

The best way to achieve great things then, is to start with belief and burning desire but tread on the path with awareness. All the best with your journey!

There is a saying in eastern spiritual literature, that if you take a single step forward on the spiritual path, existence will take 10,000 steps towards you. Thats true in anything you do – not only divine grace.

When you are stuck and your mind is making up a hundred excuses – is this the right time, do you have anything else to do, lets watch a movie – just take the first step. Start reading that book, or put pen on to paper, or just start typing that mail. If you continue with the task long enough, you will find that your mind has settled into the groove. The first few minutes of hesitation and discomfort will drop away and you will take the task to completion.

The trick is to catch your mind in the first few seconds, stop and force yourself to take the first few steps. If after 10 minutes you do find that you are too tired or the words you are putting down on paper don’t make sense, or your hip is “acting up” while running – you can always stop. You always have that option.

The only option you should cut yourself off from is the option to not start at all. At the end of that road lies apathy, sloth and the strange sinking feeling when you realize the deadline to file your taxes was mid April.

Just remember, if its on your mind and needs to get done. Just start and see where it takes you – most cases, you end up in a better place.

Thankfully, out here in Australia, tax filing deadline is the end of October, so off I go now – to file my taxes.

“The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and I,
until only the mountain remains.”

- from Endless River: Li Po and Tu Fu: A Friendship in Poetry

Credit: jhoc

In this post, I will try to explain what meditation is, why its important (i.e. what problem it solves) and list the resources to take you further, if you are interested. To understand meditation and the need for it, we need to understand the difference between our physical body and mind.

We typically have control over most parts of our bodies, our arms, legs and so forth, and we use that control to our benefit. Rest, exercise, avoiding physical harm, earning a living, sports – its a rather long list. We take it for granted that if we reach out for the bowl of nuts nearby, our hands are going to make it and if we decide to walk over to the front door, we will get there. On the other hand, we have little or no control over our brains.

The thought experiment

A little experiment – when you have 10 minutes try this. Just take a sheet of paper and write down everything that crosses your mind, every little thought and emotion, don’t stop or slow down, just let your mind wander and write down the thoughts. I assure you it will be an interesting 10 minutes. At the end of this exercise, read through the writeup you have just created and you will be surprised…

90% of your thoughts are not goal directed, in fact not even relevant to your well being. Rather its usually the case that the mind thinks a jumble of thoughts and jumps from topic to topic. Your work, the lawn that needs mowing, have to buy milk, oh my God the report is due tomorrow, did I remember to close that window – a lot of random thoughts going on in the background and lots of mental “loops”.

Meditation is the art of slowly and deliberately gaining control, once again, over your mind.

When psychologists talk about 90% of the mind that is unused and when we read about and marvel at the genius of great achievers, we need to understand that there is no “hidden compartment” in the brain. There is no mass of gray matter hidden somewhere in our head that is untouched. Its all being used, just not effectively and just not with our permission and control! We don’t leave our car running every night in the garage, yet we run our minds ragged on a daily basis, with unproductive thoughts and emotions.

Rage, discontent, fear, greed, I am not putting down these emotions from a spiritual sense but from the scientific perspective of how our body and mind react to such intense emotions. When we approach a task with fear in the background, our heart races and the body tightens, any creative capacity we can bring to the task is crushed – thus we inevitably fail to complete the task as well as we could. When rage floods our body, we make unwise decisions and our body is literally broken down by the chemicals flooding through our body – observe the effect of rage on your body the next time you get the chance. Unfortunately, it is not just when we are faced with the situation that we react with these emotions, but our mind helpfully plays back movies later during the day to bring these emotions flooding back, Multiple times during the day – many many times.

The common sense reason to try meditation

Just imagine how far we can get from exerting more control and channeling your mental energies a bit more productively. Imagine the effect that a calm mind that is deliberate in its thought process and conserves as much energy as possible can have on our goals and relationships.

This, in a nutshell, is the common sense reason to try meditation. Don’t try meditation to attain alternate states of consciousness, don’t try it to tap into an inner fountain of joy, you don’t need to be a seeker of enlightenment. If all you get from meditation is a better awareness of how your mind works and some degree of control over its working, you will be ahead of 99% of the populace, who are still searching for the users manual. Add to this the natural stress relief and calm that comes into your life once you take up meditation, its a slam dunk.

Why aren’t we already in control?

Which brings us to the next question. Why aren’t we born with the means to control our mind and our thought process? The answer is, we are. Everyone is born with the capability to direct attention (concentration) and awareness (mindfulness) of the way the mind is working. We are probably the only specie who can think about thought, and thats all you need to direct the workings of your mind. So why aren’t we driving our minds like experts and instead fumbling around for the on/off switch?

The problem is like most things in the natural world, it takes time and effort to master the mind. Just like losing weight, growing wheat or the changing seasons. Nature operates with its own rhythm and cycles and we are very much a part of nature. Most significant things in life take time and effort. In fact it took time and effort as an infant for you to exert control over your body. In fact several years of full time effort, you just don’t remember it now! Also, you had good role models to lead you towards getting control over your physical body, unfortunately we are not surrounded by experts when it comes to the realm of the mind. Most of us make do with letting the brain do its thing and come round to processing our requests once in a while!

How meditation helps

Meditation helps by once again slowly and deliberately working to take control of your mind. When taking up any school or technique of meditation, the emphasis is usually on developing awareness of how the mind works, followed by gaining greater and greater control. Mindfulness meditation is a case in point, by something as simple as observing the breath and concentrating on its flow in and out, we gain concentration and eventually are able to clearly see the workings on the mind. This of course, is the first step in a long and eventful journey.

Meditation and spirituality

One reason why people shy away from meditation is its tight coupling, in our mind, with spirituality and religion. Meditation is linked to spirituality because, especially in the initial stages, it can be quite frustrating. We are talking about challenging the habits formed over years. So the initial stages of reclaiming control over your mind requires any number of tricks to keep us moving. Some of the more effective ones include oodles of belief in the method you are following, examples of people who have been-there-done-that (read gurus/masters), belief in a higher power on which we place our trust (read God) and several other crutches that come packaged, in many cases, as spirituality/religion.

If you are not a religious person, there are many secular forms of meditation available too. Explore mindfulness meditation for a start and see how you go. All I can add to this topic is to encourage you overcome any initial hesitation you have around trying this out and giving meditation a shot.

Some of the resources I have been inspired by and learned to trust are:

1. Mindfulness meditation – this is rooted in Buddhism but is intensely analytic and clinical. The material and approach are very secular
2. Sri Eknath Easwaran’s eight point program – this is a very spiritual approach but is rooted in wisdom literature from many religions, so it is religion-agnostic
3. Paramahamsa Swami Nithyananda’s Life Bliss Foundation – the advaita school is the crown jewel of eastern philosophy, Swami Nithyananda is a master from this ancient tradition. A young enlightened master, his foundation’s entry level programs with an emphasis on active meditation techniques are very suitable for beginners

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao-tzu (604 BC – 531 BC), The Way of Lao-tzu

Credit: Tambako the Jaguar

Congratulations, you have a goal. What next?

For many of us, the next step is to analyse and weigh options, looking for the best path to move forward. We read up on the best ways to reach our goal be it weight loss, taking up chess or meditation and that keeps us happily occupied, till the goal no longer holds the same attraction for us. Soon a month has passed and we are no closer to the finish line.

Some of us even become experts on various paths to the goal. We can endlessly pontificate about the various ways to reach the goal and the pro’s and con’s, unfortunately, we haven’t made it yet. Its a sorry state, and you know what, this happens to a lot of us, including yours truly.

But wait! There is a reason why we need to understand every path, you say.

Planning increases my chance of success

This is true in a lot of cases, but there is a caveat. For planning, you need information and some level of experience. In areas where you have prior experience, its easy to start with a list of activities and fashion it into a plan, with intermediate goals and milestones and what not. But in cases where you have no prior experience, the initial list may be incomplete and that leads to endless analysis. This is the syndrome of the would be entrepreneur polishing up his business plan instead of down and dirty with starting a business. How to avoid this trap?

Identify what is the level of knowledge and experience you already have in what you want to do and depending on your answer, start in a learning mode – see where it leads you. You can get further information on the field by reading books and periodicals or better yet, talking to an expert in the area for more information, but whatever you do, get a bit of hands on experience before you look at any decision around paths.

Only when you start blogging do you realise that all the analysis around the best blogging platform, themes and SEO is just window dressing, the difficult part of blogging is the writing. Your mileage may vary but you will never know till you start.

I need to know which way ahead is best before moving along down the path

The key to breaking this objection is to understand whether the decision around path is reversible or irreversible. There are very few decisions that are totally irreversible. And there are very few decisions where the loss from taking the wrong path is more than the loss from indecision.

Think about the options open to you, generate a few more options to start on the same path and then pick the least risky. Instead of buying that hobby farm in France, try renting some land and figuring out if you are a farmer, better yet, join WWOOF (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) and see if you are cut out for the lifestyle.

Want to get fit? Start by running at a brisk clip down your street and see how far you go, hire a bicycle and go on a scenic ride around the city, get a trail pass at the gym and try out the equipment, these are all good options to tell you how fit you currently are and what sort of exercise suits you better. Instead of signing up for a full year, see if any trainers are willing to give you counselling for a month or two to see how you go. The options are endless and not as risky as you imagine once you decide to give it a shot.

I feel happy reading about stuff instead of doing, it’s research!

If you like reading, buying new gadgets, talking to people and endlessly researching, you tend to do all of it when faced with a choice rather than making the damn choice already! Its irresistible because you seem to be doing something productive (I am researching, exploring this new area…), when in reality you are not. What will tip you off when you are facing this obstacle is that you will see a lot of activity but will not be moving closer to the goal. In fact, if you observe carefully, the books you are reading and the research you are doing will be the least important thing you could be doing to move yourself toward the goal.

The key to avoiding this is to ask yourself the question. Is THIS the most important thing I could be doing NOW to reach my goal? If NOT, WHAT is the most important thing I could be doing to reach the goal? Go ahead, say it out loud and see where it leads you.

I am afraid I will fail – success is there, just not down this path or the next one…

This is fear of failure. The fear that you will make your choice, sign up for those dance classes, then discover that you have wooden legs with which you promptly proceed to step on your partners toes. What happens to your dream then? You have a vivid image of your dream, lying all shattered by your sadly inept feet… The more real the image, the more we spend time on research. After all, this way, you haven’t started yet, have you?

This is counter intuitive, many of us don’t take action because we are afraid of failure at the end of the path. But not taking action means we are failing everyday and what if at the end of the path is great success and fulfilment? How can we ever know, unless we move forward? Ah, what a sticky dilemma!

Observe the fear that you will not reach the goal and recognise it for what it is. Its a sign that you want to achieve your goal at all costs, a sign of your hunger. As any NLP practitioner will tell you, if you are focussed and hungry for an end goal and flexible with your strategy, you will eventually succeed.

Quentin Tarantino wanted to be an actor, realised he could not reach his dream that way and ended up directing several very successful films. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wanted to write serious literature and drama but is most well known for Sherlock Holmes. Recognise that anything is better than not starting at all and that if you feel attraction towards a path and a goal, it is for a reason. Do not hesitate and start with the first step…

Its an excuse, I am just procrastinating

I am listing this reason here just because many of you would be expecting me to. In reality, procrastination can not be one of the reasons for your non-productive research. If you are taking your time analysing paths and strategies because you don’t feel attraction towards the goal, then its time to get back to the basics. Figure out whether the goal is right for you, is it your goal in the first place or something you have borrowed from the Joneses next door?

If you are stuck in analysis paralysis because you don’t feel attracted towards the end goal, its time to re look at the goal instead of pushing yourself forward.

Well, so you have decided to move forward, you say? Some tips to get you started.

1. Pick the path that looks best to you at this instant
2. Pick something small that will get you started and finish it within the next 2 hours.
3. Then set another task you will finish in the next day and yet another one in this week. Do them.
4. Search for the nearest support group. Dieting – search for weight-watchers, cycling – search for the nearest meet-up or cycling group that rides to work everyday.
5. Write down your goals and the habits you need to accelerate yourself along the path, stick it up at a place where you can see it everyday
6. Use Seinfeld’s chain to prod you along
7. Enlist a friend to kick your behind, preferably someone you talk to often and is not afraid to say it as he sees it

All the best…

Credit: gwilmore

Have you met a person with a magnetic personality? Someone with whom if you spend 5 minutes, it seems like he is there with you for that time, completely present and making you feel you are the only person in the world and the only person that matters. We walk away from such interactions always energized, always happy and the impression we form of the person who gave us the time and attention is that he has a magnetic personality. The secret, is attention.

What is attention?

Attention is energy. Whenever you give someone or something your undivided attention, you are actually passing along energy and benefiting the person/thing that you are attentive towards. This is powerful. Look into your life, and understand how this works.

If you give a situation or object attention, each moment you direct attention towards it, it becomes a bigger part of your life and more important. The biggest concept you are giving attention to in your life (is it money, friendship, growth, fitness?), that becomes your goal and eventually, your life’s work.

If you give another person your undivided attention, you energize the other person. Compel him to act, respond, feel good, grow closer (or apart) and feel larger. In some cases, like family and our beloved, we do this unconsciously. In the case of our close friends, again, we do this at a subconscious level. By giving your heroes and role models your attention, you are energizing them in direct and indirect ways.

The secret of directing attention

Understand the second powerful idea – if you give attention to the good things and people in your life, they grow larger and this energizes you too. There is no limit to the level you can grow if you are focused on ideas and people who harmonize with your life and your principles. Its a multiplier.

If you give attention to whats going wrong in your life and the naysayers, they grow energized and your energy depletes. If you are someone who thinks worrying is a purposeful use of your time, call me, I have some pressing problems you can take up on my behalf!

No, everyone understands worrying is a waste of time, its not purposeful and a lot of your mental bandwidth is consumed.

Paying attention to the payback

When you notice you are devoting a large part of your attention to some thought/idea, ensure its something that leaves you better for having invested this time and energy. Be selfish with where you direct your attention. What is the payback? – this is the key question. And no complicated math needed, you have enough intuition to figure out whether giving attention to an idea is adding positive energy to your life. Its all about being in control of your attention process and directing it to productive and high growth areas of your life. Do this consciously, you will conserve mental energy and achieve your goals with elegance and style.

Its the one secret that powers the highest levels of achievement and is the one mental skill that the highest achievers have mastered. Its not easy, it requires training the mind, but the rewards are huge. Its the development of a subtle power, your will power.

Make a list of the areas in your life where this principle can help and start applying it today. Will power, that directs attention, is a muscle that grows with use.