Looking for a winning formula for your speech – use your eyes

You have ideas for your speech. You know what you want to achieve with your presentation, but you’re stuck, trying to find a powerful slant … and material that will give your points life? Where will you find the stimulus to develop your ideas?

Look …

Magazines. Again, you are reading these already. Look at them from the slant of your speech. And look with new eyes at the racks in the newsagents, the library and the train stations.

Look at Facebook. Go beyond the ordinary and let your mind and the ideas you have already interact with what you see.

Look at Pinterest. Why did the person upload these pictures and/or text? How would you have dealt with that material?

Slide your eyes around your world. Catch the corners and edges of life and look at what happens, why it happens and what might have happened instead, all with your particular speech topic in mind.

Somewhere, a idea will develop, a crystallisation of your thoughts and attitudes, something that will hook your audience with its simplicity, its originality and its relevance to their worlds.