Monthly Archives: January 2010

Can’t Find Your One True Path?

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So you’re trying to figure out what you’re going to be when you grow up. The problem is you’re 38, have two grown children and a husband, not to mention two cats and a dog named Sirius Black Dixon. Oh, wait, sorry, I guess I got distracted and thought we were talking about me.

Back to you. You’re physically “grown,” but you haven’t found your “one true path.” You don’t know yet what you’re going to do with your life, and you’re feeling lost, confused, and worried.

Okay, let’s start with the brutal truth here. If you have spent a lot of time, effort and creative energy looking for your one true path, I have bad news.

You probably don’t have one.

You see, people who have one true paths know they do and they know what they are. This is not always true. Nothing is always true. But in general, people who “home in” on one career do it early and stick with it, or if they change careers, they do it in a reasoned, considered way.

People like us, who stumble and bumble and jumble from one thing to another to another to another, we don’t have one true path. We have something. It’s just not one true path.

That’s the good news. Because what we have, boy is it better.

We have multiple paths. They fit our multiple passions and our multiple talents and our multitasking personalities.

You and I? We can be whatever we want. For as long as we want. And then go do something else. We can be writers, and while we’re being writers, or when we’re done being writers, we can be teachers, or driving instructors. Now, admittedly, we’re not going to be astrophysicists or CEOs of major companies. But most of us don’t want that. What we can be is just about anything we want to be and just about everything.

Don’t you feel liberated?

Make It Your Destiny To Accomplish Great Things In Your Life

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From this moment on, choose not to let your past dictate your future. What is gone is gone forever. Now is the time to move on, to do and become what you want: to be the best in any area that you choose, so you may design your own destiny.

Here are a few helpful suggestions that you may take on board, and below you will find a couple of simple tips that can quickly move you in the direction of manifesting your destiny to accomplish many great things in your life.

To join ranks with the most successful people in the field of your choice, or merely to achieve your dreams quietly, for yourself, you will need to take the journey toward a better more enlightened future; toward a more empowered and motivated you, toward a life that you will design and achieve. You will live your life as you want it. And you will become that person you have been dreaming of becoming.

Invest in life in your life. No more wavering dreams, staring out the window and wishing and hoping. No more sleepless nights worrying about your future as you only see where you are now.

This time it is for real. What you are dreaming of will happen, and in abundance. From today, you will move forward in your life in a dramatic way. You will do what is required of you to accomplish your daily goals, big and small, and you will always expect to succeed at everything you do.

Embrace your unlimited power and build a life of excellence. Success is your one and only option. Fill all of your days with accomplishments, no matter how small you may think they are. It is important, at this point, to realise that most successes stem from your ability to feel certain that you can set out to achieve what it is that you desire to accomplish great things in your life. And for you to feel certain, you need to become confident.

One of the principle prerequisites to achieving almost anything in life is confidence. Confidence is an indispensable requirement to your success and further development or betterment, be it for your personal or professional needs. Confidence is the doorway to success and fulfilment. With confidence you will have the courage, strength and motivation to tackle and overcome all life’s setbacks and challenges.

The great news is that confidence is a learned skill, and anyone can learn the skills to having awesome and unstoppable confidence.

As promised, here are just a couple of confidence tips that I believe are easy to do and are extremely effective. By repeating the simple tips daily, they will retrain your thinking and become an automatic part of your new successful and confident habit. They will become your new way of life.

Challenge your thoughts that have been holding you back and stretch your mind to raise your limits to unlimited heights.

At the end of each day, put yourself into a confident and resourceful state of mind by jotting down in your diary or daily journal, all of the day’s achievements, no matter how small.

Benefit: The mere act of writing them down reinforces the idea of success and confidence. It is extremely beneficial and motivating for you to feel the successes from deep within so your mind acknowledges them as confident achievements.

Just before going to bed, conceive and initiate your ideal day. Once you have gone through your diary and planned your next day, sit back and take a few minutes to imagine and visualise the entire day, from beginning to end. See it unfolding exactly how you would want it to be, in every situation. Feel the confident emotions that come from success, with the feeling that you have accomplished all that you wanted.

Benefit: When you go to sleep, your unconscious mind will work all night on ways to bring about that which you have just visualised.

Truly make it your destiny to accomplish many great things in your lifetime by adopting a vital ingredient to success, and that is confidence. With confidence you discard worry, hesitation and fear. With confidence you rise above challenges and failures. With confidence you have unlimited motivation and unrelenting persistence.

Do not underestimate the immense power of confidence. Go ahead, reap the rewards and accomplish many great things in your lifetime.

Handouts As Public Speaking Tools

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Handouts are important tools for effective public speaking. They serve as guides for your audience. Handouts will allow the listeners to follow what you are discussing. Handouts are important and should be well prepared.

When giving out the handouts to your listeners, remember to choose the right time. It is not recommended to give them out right away at the beginning of your speech. This will only make the listeners tend to lose focus. It is important in public speaking to catch the attention of your audience at the start of the speech.

Also inform them that you will be giving out handouts so that the listeners will need not to take down notes while you are talking. Making handouts available will make your audience focus and absorb everything that you say. That is because writing while listening to your speech will only divide their attention.

You may want to use colorful papers if your audience is also kids. Adding drawings can also make it interesting but do not use too much or else they will only concentrate on the drawings that they see.

On the handouts, you can include the objectives of your speech and the things that you expect from your listeners. Do not put the entire speech on the handout. If you put everything that you have to say on the handouts, the listeners will no longer listen to you.

You may also place in it the outline of your speech, a brief introduction and the things that you will discuss. You may also want to include the start time and the end time of your speech and allocate the time when they would like to ask questions. This will allow you to follow your outline and they may reserve their questions for the time you listed on the handouts.

You can also incorporate some activities at the end of the handout. Put a space where they can write and jot down the answers on the activity that you will put at the end of the handout. Adding a space where they can write is also effective so that they may be able to jot down some important points that you have mentioned and are not listed on the handouts.

At the end of the handout, you may also include some information about yourself. You may put your name, nickname or even hobbies to add some spice. This is one way that your listeners will be able remember you by.

Handouts are very beneficial to making you an effective public speaker. Make them ready all the time and make sure that they will last. Handouts are ways that your listeners can remember you; that is why it is important that you make them unique and valuable.

Your Ultimate Leadership Feedback Loop: Their Leadership

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PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: [email protected]

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Your Ultimate Leadership Feedback Loop: Their Leadership
by Brent Filson

Life on our planet flourishes through feedback. If life forms don’t develop feedback loops and get good information about how well they are interacting with their world, the world eventually destroys them.

This holds true with leaders. Leaders must get feedback as to how they’re doing — otherwise they won’t be leaders for long.

One kind of feedback is results. After all, leaders do nothing more important than get results. You should understand the kinds of results you’re getting, if they are the right results, and if you are getting them in the right ways.

There is another kind of measurement that is as important, and sometimes more important, than results. It’s a measurement most leaders overlook. That measurement has to do not just with you but with the people you’re leading.

To explain what that measurement is, I’ll first describe a fundamental concept of how one goes about leading people to achieve results.

There’s a crucial difference between doing a task and taking leadership of that task that makes a world of difference in the task’s accomplishment.

For instance, if one is a floor sweeper, doesn’t one best accomplish one’s task not simply by doing floor sweeping but by taking leadership of floor sweeping?

Such leadership might entail:
— taking the initiative to order and manage supplies,
— evaluating the job results and raising those results to ever higher levels,
— having floor sweeping be an integral part of the general cleaning policy,
— hiring, training, developing other floor sweepers,
— instilling a “floor sweeping esprit”that can be manifested in training, special uniforms and insignias , behavior, etc.
— setting floor sweeping strategy and goals.

Otherwise, in a “doing” mode, one simply pushes a broom.

You may say, “Listen, Brent, a job is a job is a job. This leadership thing is making too much of not much!”

Could be. But my point is that applying leadership to a task changes the expectations of the task. It even changes the task itself. Think of it, when we ourselves are challenged to lead and not simply do, our world is, I submit, changed.

Whenever you need to lead people to accomplish a task, challenge them not to do that task but to take leadership of that task.

This gets back to the key measurement of your leadership. Your leadership should best be measured not by your leadership but by the leadership of the people you lead.

Now, in becoming leaders, they can’t simply do what they want. They must come to an agreement with you as to what leadership actions they will take. You can veto any of their proposed actions. However, use the veto sparingly. Cultivate your confidence and their confidence in their leadership.

When you evaluate the effectiveness of your leadership by the feedback loop connected to their leadership, you are assessing your world as it should be, and great results will follow.

2006

Keeping Others Happy At Every Cost

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To give happiness is considered a virtue. Please try and make others happy, say the thinkers. I don’t know what precisely they mean by that. So unless I meet one of them and find out the true meaning of the statement, let me put my ideas here and think.

If accidentally, I step on someone’s foot on a busy street, and the other person is not ready to accept my apologies, but thinks that he will be happy only by beating me to pulp, shall I let him do that? Should I reason with him, or make him feel happy. All right, I lie down here without offering any resistance and you please be happy by kicking me as much as you want. After getting so badly beaten, I try to reach a hospital and find out that the doctors and nurses will only feel happy by making me wait for endless hours. If I request them to look at me sooner, they will get angry because many other patients have to be attended to and the medical staff is over-burdened, or so one thinks. So I make them happy, by remaining in pain for long and then get operated wrongly. It was my liver that was injured, but the surgeon wrongly operated on my kidney. Shall I make him/her unhappy by complaining of this blunder? The poor surgeon is already burdened with work and home-related problems. How can I add to them? So? I keep quiet. What of my family? They want me to get healthy again and begin taking their care as soon as possible. But I am in no state of doing that. What shall I do now? How can I make my family unhappy? Some of them have planned vacations; some have to buy other expensive gadgets. If I stay in the hospital, who will pay for all those expenses? So I try going back to work and make money.

But I am so weak and hurt, that I cannot work. My boss feels that he will be very happy by removing me from the job. I accept that without protest. Protesting may make him unhappy. I walk out on the road and am very happy to be killed by a drunk driver on the road. In the whole sequence, if I take a new birth, and go back to every character of this story, I will be surprised to find that they are all are very unhappy with me. My family thinks that I cheated on them by not getting treated properly. My surgeon will think that I should have given him one more chance of operating upon me and making me sicker. My boss thinks that I left an important position that is now difficult to fill. The drunk driver thinks that I intentionally came across the car and got hit.

Life is very difficult, whichever the way you live. Should someone happily surrender to a rapist to make him happy? Strange thinking always produces strange and painful results. Before we start getting beaten by others, we must think about it and decide to find out if they have that right. Otherwise they will always remain unhappy, and we shall always get hit. Does this make us think?

Are You Missing The Key To Success?

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Are you currently struggling to reach your objectives? Do you have everything in life that you desire? Is it easy for you to reach your goals after every success? Are you calm and patient at all times? Or, are you frustrated, angry and disappointed at your lack of progress in life? If you are not living the life you wish to live then the solution lies in your mind!

Your mind has two parts, the conscious thinking logical part and the unconscious part. Your conscious mind is that part of your mind you are using right now to read and analyse this words. However it is the subconscious part of your mind that is interpreting the symbols on the page and telling you what they represent. This part of your mind is more powerful than you can imagine and is capable of helping you in ways that seem miraculous at times.

Everything that has ever ocurred in your life is stored somewhere in the subconscious part of your mind. It is literally an unlimited warehouse for memories and emotions. This is an extremely important aspect of the subconscious mind. You need to have instant access to this stored information so that you can find your way home, remember names and faces, how to do your job etc., it does have major disadvantages!

Not only does your subconscious mind store valuable information it also stores essential emotions. For example it stores the emotion of pain and fear connected to certain activities such as placing your hand too close to fire. When you find yourself getting too close to fire and feel the heat on your skin your subconscious mind will immediately alert you with a feeling of fear. This mechanism is designed to keep you safe and works very effectively. It also works to your advantage by replaying positive emotions connected to certain situations – think of a time when you caught a glimpse of your spouse or child, heard a piece of music or smelt some perfume or aftershave and were immediately reminded of an earlier time that evoked strong loving emotions.

Therefore, we can view your subconscious mind as acting, in its simplest role, as a recording and playback mechanism – a bit like a fully interactive video recorder. The things that occur to you in your life are recorded and then played back when you access those memories. The problem that often arises though is when incorrect or inappropriate emotional memories are accessed by the subconscious mind when you find yourself in new situations. If your subconscious mind has been “programmed” with negative emotions or a negative self-image then these are the things it will play back to you when you try something new or reach out past your comfort zone.

There is another problem with this mechanism that is rarely addressed by the self improvement industry and hypnosis communities when they seek to change this negative subconscious programming. Although they will admit that the subconscious mind is mostly a playback system of past events, they rely too heavily on the reprogramming of this mind with positive beliefs and do not address the other, just as important, issue.

If the subconscious mind is just a playback device, and it replays past emotions in new situations, then it is obvious we need to ensure it is playing back positive supportive emotions and thoughts when we undertake any new venture. But what about the other problem? How do we address that?

Well the problem is this; if the subconscious mind is a playback device and we want to do something new how can it help us do it when it has no knowledge of what it is doing? Let me explain.

You set a goal to make $2,000 per week. You set about writing your goal and affirming your intentions, visualizing, using self hypnosis, and a myriad of other techniques, to reprogram your mind for success. However, you are only doing half the job, albeit a very important half but only half all the same!

If the subconscious mind is merely a playback mechanism and you set an intention to create something you have never created before it will merely playback everything you know about that subject – which is probably very little! Let’s look at our financial example again.

You want to make $2,000 per week yet you have only ever made $400 per week. You use your self improvement techniques daily and quickly reprogram your mind for success thinking. Now you find yourself full of confidence and enthusiasm for your objectives. Great! You are in the right mind-set for success. The problem arises when you begin to think about making the extra money. When you quiz yourself about how you can actually go about doing that your subconscious mind will play back everything it knows about how to make money. You will probably immediately think that you need to get a higher paying job, work more hours, take on an extra job etc.

Although you have successfully programmed your mind for success your mind does not yet have the knowledge or experience of how it can actually go about creating the success you desire!

There are two ways to overcome this problem. The first is to acquaint yourself with as much knowledge as you can about making money. This is a great thing to do. You can study the lives of people who started in similar situations to you and increased their net worth and determine if their way of doing it would suite you. I highly recommend this approach even if you find it easy to reach your new goal with your new positive outlook.

However, there is another way. It is easier and faster and always works. As well as programming yourself for success you must deprogram your old negative beliefs and, (here is the key) your limiting programming!

When you remove your self-imposed limitations – i.e. I have to work extra hours, take a second job, get a higher paying job etc., to increase my earnings – you will find inspiration coming to you. You don’t have to reprogram these limiting beliefs with new ones all you have to do is deprogram them and let your mind do the rest!

As your subconscious mind is no longer replaying everything it knows about making money it must seek new answers from somewhere else! As you deprogram your limiting beliefs and emotions you will become more aware of the possibilities that are all around you. Your intuition will be more accessible to you and you will find yourself almost effortlessly drifting into new, exciting and highly profitable opportunities.

Deprogramming your limiting beliefs is much easier than you think and the results you experience will be many thousands of times greater than if you just concentrate on creating new beliefs through traditional personal development techniques! Try it, you may just be surprised.

Create Your Path to Success

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Creating your path to success depends on walking on a firm foundation. Knowing WHAT you want is only the beginning. Visualizing what you want and repeating affirmations makes your intentions stronger. Yet, this is not enough. So what IS the secret to realizing your goals? Let’s walk the path together. As we walk the path step by step, I encourage you to write the answers to these questions:

Step 1: Where are you now? What are your strengths, resources, and areas of improvement?

Step 2: What do you want to achieve? What is important to you? Money? Relationships? Having fun? Creating a vibrant body? …Use your imagination to explore. List everything you want without editing.

Step 3: What do you REALLY want? What lights you up and gets you excited? What is your heart’s desire?

Step 4: Now explore the risks, obstacles, or challenges that could interfere with achieving these goals. Notice what is stopping you from having what you want now. This is the most powerful question to answer because it is how you sabotage yourself from success. By recognizing the challenges, obstacles or risks and addressing them in your Action Plan, you manage your productive tension to focus on your desired outcome.

What’s Stopping You?

Feelings of unworthiness?

Self-sabotaging mind talk?

Do you dress for success?

How is your love life? Do you regularly express your love to the significant relationships in your life?

Release negative people from your life

Release self pity Focus on gratitude instead. Make list of what is good in your life.

Attitude are you usually upbeat?

Health: attitude, energy, mental clarity, and overall well-being are all linked to good health. Health is supported by

Exercise: Pleasurable forms can include weight lifting, dance, belly dance, Tango, golf, tennis, jogging, walking, cycling, yoga, and many other forms.

Diet: Well balanced diet is best. Studies have shown that excessive protein creates health risks/issues.

Medical exams: Regular checkups help you know where you stand and how to get back on track if necessary.

Spiritual Life: Your spiritual life builds your foundation.

Complacency or “Golden Handcuffs” When we get too comfortable, we can set ourselves up to fail. If you are at the top, keep your edge and passion by giving yourself new challenges.

Do you have the passion to win or achieve a goal?

Step 5: Select your favorite goals and write an affirmation for each following this format:

I have/am/achieve specific goal stated in present tense by specific deadline.

State your goals in specific, measurable terms so you can recognize their achievement. Avoid the use of the words “try, not, don’t, can’t, shouldn’t…” The mind does not hear the “not” and cannot produce results with “try”. An example of an affirmation is “I achieve my monthly financial goal of $$$ easily by the 28th of every month.” Another example of an affirmation is, “This is my LUCKY day!”

Step 6: Imagine yourself already having your goals accomplished. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel? What do you smell? What do you taste? Let yourself BE there now!

Step 7: Create an Action Plan to achieve your desired results. Be specific about every step required. The goals need to be compelling to be achievable.

Step 8: Reinforce your goals daily. Create a vision map with YOU in the picture and place it where you can see it daily. Record your affirmations in your voice and listen to them daily. Repeat your affirmations morning and night. Focus on what you desire.

Step 9: Be Accountable. Find a coach who you will allow to hold you accountable in a supportive way. Ultimately, accountability is the key to success. A coach supports you by inspiring pride and self-discipline. For best results, the coach is someone who has no attachment to the outcome. The coach walks the path with you but not for you.

Ultimately, your success depends on your ability to monitor and manage your level of productive tension.

Your Thoughts and The Law of Attraction

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We have all heard the expression, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But to carry on without thinking about why you failed only leads to more failure.

The ability to create is a God given gift. A gift given to everyone without exception. Thought is the first step to manifesting any creation. Thoughts are energy, they are real. Your thoughts act as magnets and attract other thoughts, people, and circumstances that harmonize with them.

Thoughts operate and adhere to certain universal laws. Without these laws there would be no order; the universe itself would sink into chaos.

The Law of Attraction states that like attracts like. Much of what was once considered metaphysical, esoteric knowledge in the past is now scientific fact. Physics has shown that the principles involved in the Law of Attraction are every bit as valid as those governing the Law of Gravity. So it should come as no surprise that dwelling only on your problems simply attracts more problems.

The idea of attracting success by thinking about it is very appealing. So appealing in fact, people often get the wrong impression that it’s easy. Affirmations can be helpful, but mindless affirmations alone have no real value. On the other hand, once an affirmation becomes part of your belief system the subconscious goes to work attracting opportunities. It is not the success itself we attract, but the opportunity to succeed.

Our world is ruled by cause and effect, yet we often fail to see how this rule applies to the thoughts we think. This happens because the results of our thoughts are so far removed from the cause that we fail to see the connection.

The subconscious mind is working tirelessly 24 hours a day. It doesn’t analyze, it doesn’t judge, it simply accepts and attracts more of what the conscious mind is focused on. Are you attracting problems or solutions? By focusing on desire and showing gratitude for what you already have, the subconscious mind is given the necessary material to provide a constant stream of opportunities. Whether we take advantage of these opportunities or not is another story.

It’s impossible to operate outside the law of attraction. Consciously or unconsciously your thoughts, feelings, and emotions, determine if this law works for or against you. Stay focused on your success and reaching your goals. As one success leads to another, success becomes a habit. Problems and obstacles are seen as no more than stepping stones on the road to your ultimate goal.

Get What You Want Out In Life

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Whatever it is you want, get ready for it. Make a place for it in your life. Get comfortable with the idea of having it. With preparation it is summoned to come to be.

We can wish all we want for what we want. We can dream, we can hope, we can pray. Anyone can do that, we all do that, so what? It won’t just work like that unless you show that you are serious. You’ve got to prepare. Preparation turns the uncertain into the inevitable.

Believe in magic, it happens all the time. We manifest what we want through the ritual of preparation. Toil in the expectation of change and change will come about. The work you do will have a way of removing doubt. Doing and acting out can transform your unconscious and your conscious, in essence transforming your life.

Your mind sees yourself doing something in preparation for something and gets convinced that the something is something that will definitely be. It is real, it is coming, and you are making it happen.

Put in the work, put in the time, and especially put in the passion. If you feel it, then you can have fun with it and the ball will really start rolling. You can let it control you as if you’ve surrendered. Go ahead! It is what you wanted anyway!

Preparation could be playing, learning, practicing, growing, developing skills, acquiring objects and tools, investing, building relationships, creating strategies, planning inventions, giving attention, making observations, discovering how to use your unique qualities.

Remember you’re always walking some path, whetter you like it or not.

With preparation there is no apprehension, no fear, no wondering what is going to happen. Don’t lament over a far away desire. Prepare! You are then taking steps toward the desire. Additionally your desire is making way toward you. ‘Tis the operation of magic, run with it!

Focus your attention and energy on you desire goal.

It matters not that you have not what you want right now. You know you want it, you only need be patient, prepare and know you will get it with persistence. Preparation is a positive attraction energy. It is getting yourself ready. A doing on the road to being. Are you making room for being? Are you making preparation? Are you making magic?

Remember the formula for success: get to know exaclty what you want, keep it in your sight, go for it until you get it.

Public Speaking: Plan Your Timing For Maximum Impact!

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Timing is everything and public speaking is no exception. Long drawn-out presentations will only result in a bored, distracted audience and you’ll lose their attention very quickly! On the other hand, rushing through your material can give an impression of nerves, or your key points could be missed. Public speaking presents huge challenges for many people, but sorting out your timing can be the difference between a great speech and a mediocre or downright appalling presentation.

Break your public speaking presentation into defined chunks.

An effective method of preparing your public speaking notes is to organize each part into smaller sections. List your key points first and break the whole thing into short effective chunks, remembering to include an introduction and closing statement.

Timing your introduction is an essential factor in public speaking.

The people in the room you are addressing already know why you’re there (unless they’ve turned up in the wrong venue!). Successful public speaking begins with an effective introduction; whether you’re presenting at a seminar or conference, making a wedding speech or preparing an audio course, you have to capture your audience in the first few words. Keep your opening short and to the point, then move on to the main part of your talk or lecture.

List your key points clearly and avoid a public speaking timing crisis.

One of the worst things that can happen in public speaking is losing your place, especially if nerves kick in. Your carefully thought out timing has just been blown out and your presentation will no longer make sense, or you will lose your momentum and confidence. Your public speaking notes must be neat, well organized and easy to refer to quickly to keep your timing on schedule.

Pause and effect in public speaking.

Timing is of course not just about how long your speech takes, but how you present your words. In any public speaking setting, you want your audience to stay with you throughout your entire talk. Using effective pauses or a few seconds of silence (for applause hopefully!) will give your speech a more natural feel, and allow you time to check your notes.

Finishing off your speech.

Don’t waste your great lecture or talk by rambling on at the end. The most important aspect of public speaking is leaving your audience remembering what you’ve said and a long-winded ending will wipe out all the good work you’ve done up to this point!

Finally, when you’re timing your speech before any public speaking event, keep in mind that the duration is likely to be different in practice compared to talking to a live audience. Allow yourself a little more time to get through the presentation, and to answer questions if required. While public speaking can be a daunting prospect, there are excellent training materials and resources available to help you overcome all the aspects involved.