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Public speaking education

How can we learn to become public speakers?

How do we learn public speaking?

Formal education will make a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Formal education will make a living; self-education will make you a fortune.

Formal education.

I have post graduate qualifications. Most of the time that I was studying I had no idea what good it would do me,

and at times I had no idea what I would do with it.

And those two things can be very different!!

That was my formal education.

In my employment I was very grateful for those qualifications because they were recognised wherever I went and I was given employment and wages commensurate with their level.

They made me a living and a good one at that!

Self-education.

A lifelong pursuit, self-education! The older I get, the more intense it becomes. Perhaps I am now cramming!!

We learn by doing.

We learn to avoid pain.

We learn to pursue dreams and goals.

We learn to survive, sometimes.

We learn by research.

We learn by modelling.

We learn through our connection with other people.

And while that comes through formal education, it continues and is far more intense through self-education.

I suspect that in Jim Rohn’s time, there was also very little formal education in things like resilience, risk-taking, entrepreneurship, goal-setting.

I suspect also that in his time, formal education was undertaken under compulsion and the subjects studied, like mine, seemingly having very little correlation with the individual’s needs or innate abilities.

We learned a trade or a profession through formal education.

We learned to take that trade or profession out into the world through self education.

And the same can be said of public speaking.

We learn by doing.

We learn to avoid pain.

We learn to pursue dreams and goals.

We learn to survive, sometimes.

We learn by research.

We learn by modelling.

We learn through our connection with other people.

And while that comes through formal education, it continues and is far more intense through self-education.

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[Inspiration] The Holy Grail is something you experience

The Holy Grail is something you experience

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[Quotation about Public Speaking] No audience ever complained …

“No audience ever complained about a presentation or speech being too short”
― Stephen Keague, The Little Red Handbook of Public Speaking and Presenting

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[Quotation about public speaking] Public speaking will have its place

“As long as there are human rights to be defended; as long as there are great interests to be guarded; as long as the welfare of nations is a matter for discussion so long will public speaking have it place.” ~ William Jennings Bryan

Public speaking has its place

In my current obsession with storytelling, I have discovered a Hopi Proverb which says the “Those who tell the stories rule the world.”

Leaders everywhere are those who give their followers something to believe in, a narrative that explains the present and paints a future.

And leaders are not just those in government or religion.

They lead in business, they lead in our institutions, they lead in our families.

We all have the capacity to be a leader at some time.

I am only thankful that the skills of public speaking are there to give us the power to lead and to create a world with values that we can uphold.

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[Inspiration] … from Sir Edmund Hilary

“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
– Sir Edmund Hilary

People do not decide to become extraordinary

It’s quite a powerful distinction, Sir Edmund has made here. I haven’t read a lot about him, but I suspect he was a very humble man. Nevertheless it’s a truth that takes some accepting, when so often we believe that we have to be up to a standard before we can accomplish something. It’s certainly something I am learning – that I can Do, then Be, then Have rather than expecting it to work the other way that I need to Be first.

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How do you express what cannot be said?

music_expresses

This is a beautiful quotation.

But now I’m giving it some deeper thought.

Really? … “what cannot be said” … what is it that cannot be said that music can express?

I would love to hear your ideas, because there are some incredibly eloquent writers and speakers whom I admire hugely, and I cannot help wondering what it is that they cannot express that music can…?

And add to that the criterion … “on which it is impossible to be silent”

Do comment!

Another thought that occurs to me is that we use images as we speak sometimes, and they add a new dimension to our spoken words.

What is the role of music here? Would it add a dimension, or speak for itself?

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[Inspiration] Focus

“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”
Nido Qubein

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[Inspiration] Missing your share of happiness?

“Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.”
William Feather

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[Inspiration] Do you have one foot on the brake?

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“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain.

The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?”

Mary Manin Morrissey

Original image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/truk/3558806/

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[Inspiration] Your distress about life …

Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living.

— Tom O’Connor

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[Inspiration] Seek not to change the world …

“Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.”

From A Course In Miracles

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[Inspiration] Inexpressible comfort

“Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling
safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but
pouring them all right out, just as they are — chaff and grain together —
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth
keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.…”
— Dinah Craik
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[Inspiration] We all have to start with ourselves

“We all have to start with ourselves. It is time to walk the talk. Take the journey of making very difficult decisions. Start removing things from your life that are not filling your cup and adding things that bring joy in to your life.”

Lisa Hammond

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[Inspiration] Don’t aim for success

Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.

– David Frost

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[Inspiration] Why aren’t you happy?

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[Inspiring quote] Investing in eternity

“Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater

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[Inspiring quote] All men dream but not equally …

All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.

T.E. Lawrence

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How to win audience support for your cause

“In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.”

William Hazlitt

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You learn to speak by speaking …

“You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.”

Anatole France

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Inspiration – Learn by doing

One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.

Sophocles

Learning by doing

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Inspiration – the height of your accomplishments

The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.

– William F. Scholavino

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The price of success

“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”

––Frank Lloyd Wright

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Inspiration – The best thing about the future …

“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.”

-Abraham Lincoln

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Inspiration – What there is

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do
with what there is.”

-Ernest Hemingway

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Inspiration – Take charge

“If you don’t take charge of shaping your own destiny, others will apply their agenda to you.”

— Eric Allenbaugh

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Inspiration – Shine

“Light tomorrow with today!”

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Thought for the day – Fun is like life insurance

“Fun is like life insurance: the older you get the more it costs.”

-Kin Hubbard

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Inspiration – Love of invention

“One thing I feel most passionately about: love of invention will never die.”

-Karl Benz

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Inspiration from Edmund Hillary

“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

Edmund Hillary

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Inspiration quote – change your life

 “It only takes one person to change your life – you.”

— Ruth Casey

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What are you purchasing today?

“The future is purchased by the present.”

-Samuel Johnson

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Gore Vidal on public speakers today

Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.

Gore Vidal

Do a little well …

“Better do a little well, than a great deal badly.”

-Socrates

Sparks

The idea of Utopia is mischievous as well as unrealistic. And dull, to boot. Man is born pushing and shoving as the sparks fly upward.

D. Lilienthal

Dreams of the future

“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”

-Thomas Jefferson

Planning

“You can never plan the future by the past”

-Edmund Burke

… realise your goal in a minimum of time and with a minimum of physical effort

The person with a fixed goal, a clear picture of his desire, or an ideal always before him, causes it, through repetition, to be buried deeply in his subconscious mind and is thus enabled, thanks to its generative and sustaining power, to realize his goal in a minimum of time and with a minimum of physical effort. Just pursue the thought unceasingly. Step by step you will achieve realization, for all your faculties and powers become directed to that end.

Claude M. Bristol

Memory

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

Aeschylus

Explore. Dream. Discover – classic Mark Twain

I haven’t seen this for some time and as always it strikes a chord. He was so eloquent, was Mark Twain, a wonderful example, and in this case, so inspiring.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
— Mark Twain

Ambition

“The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”

-William Shakespeare

Patient success

“Impatience never commanded success”

-Edwin H. Chapin

… but I want it now!!

“Impatience never commanded success”

-Edwin H. Chapin

Leadership

If your actions inspire other to learn more, dream more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
— Quincy Adams

The first lesson

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”

Thomas H. Huxley

How are you spending your day?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

— Annie Dillard

Thought for Thursday – speaking about others

“When you speak of someone or about someone, you should speak as though they were in the room with you. The ears that you speak to today are attached to the mouth that could relay the message tomorrow.”

William ‘Biddy’ Allen

Plans for life

“Life is what happens to us when we are making other plans”

-Thomas la Mance

Thought for Thursday – Choices for success

“So it is, life is actually made up of our choices. We are the sum total of them, and if we hold to an attitude of love and thanksgiving for all the good things within our grasp we may have what all ambitious people long for – success.”

Delma Neeley