Context
- my biggest accomplishment in 2024-W34 was Presenting in the closing ceremony. Actually felt like I was doing a Ted talk. Just like my improv performance after graduation, I was so nervous before going to stage but as soon as I went up there. I trusted myself and knew that whatever happens:
- I will make at least one person get inspired by my speech
- I have so many things I can talk about that if I forget something, I know I will be able to find something else to share.
- Thatās all you need. Trust in yourself
Title ideas
- How Improv can help you become a better Public speaking
Script
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I have lost numerous opportunities in my life because I failed to explain myself clearly or present something properly in both conversations and public speaking. But in just six months, I was able to significantly improve my public speaking abilities. The goal of this video is to help you start your journey towards improving your public speaking abilities.
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I was given an opportunity to share the biggest lessons I learned from an Entrepreneurship course I took to 100s of other exchange students.
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5 minutes before my presentation, I had no idea what I was going to say. I was feeling extremely nervous. Heart beating fast, my palms are sweaty, knees weak arms are heavy. Iām nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready, but I was not.
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That made me think of previous situations where I was going up on stage with no preparationā¦ ah Improv! where you are given a topic, a word, etc.. and you are required to create a universe around that topic and perform a scene about it
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the same idea can be applied to presenting. if you had a topic and you are an expert in that topic. you can just come up with the words on the spot just like in improv.
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it was at that point where I learned a big lesson about presenting: if you have 5 minutes to prepare, The best thing for you to do is to brainstorm while writing or typing your thoughts out. Whatever comes to mind, write it down and donāt stop yourself from jumping to different topics until you land on that one that you are confident in speaking about. And the beauty of that method is that youāre going up there with no structure so you can adapt and jump to different topics if you wanted to, just like in improv. Your brain, as youāre presenting, will come up with different ideas and topics that you can branch out to, but to reach that point, all you need is a good starting topic just like all improv scenes.
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This also makes me realize 2 other things:
- In general, a good way to deal with your nervousness or anxiety is to write things down instead of just keeping everything in your head. And as we mentioned, the same can be said about presenting
- the level of preparation you feel you need is different for each person and you can easily change it.
- Before I started Improv, I would need a script to be able to confidently speak to an audience.
- I also lost so many opportunities because my ability to speak in public was so bad. I would always not make sense, or not sound engaging enough to hold anyoneās attention. As a result, I was never able to win hackathons because my pitches to the judges were so bad So I was in the far left side of the spectrum.
- But after doing Improv for several months now, Iām in the complete opposite side of the spectrum because I continually exposed myself to situations where Iām up on stage with no preparation. So now, unlike last year, Iām able to remain calm, and not let my nervousness cloud my ability to speak confidently in public even with no preparation
- itās basically exposure therapy which can help you conquer a lot of your fears as it did for me
For any activity that you do, Your performance level, how well you do, heavily depends on how much you trust yourself. It all comes down to how much you trust yourself. If you have low trust in yourself, you will spend a lot of time preparing for it to compensate for that lack of trust to eventually reach a point where you trust yourself enough . Whereas if you trust yourself in these public speaking situations, just like I did in my example, you just need 5 minutes to find something to talk about and once youāve found it, youāre off to the races. So in other words what Iām tryna say is: We all have this baseline of trust that we have in ourselves and take with us in all situations in life. What improv does is increase that baseline of trust that you have in yourself in any situation in life including public speaking
- I believe that my performance level in presenting is directly correlated to how much I trust myself with what Iām saying. So I just spent the five minutes I had brainstorming and writing down my thoughts trying to see what I wanted to talk about in my presentation
- In my case, I just started writing down the most obvious things I learned.
- After 5 minutes I was called up. At that point, I still didnāt know how to start and what exactly Iām going to say but because I had an idea on what topic I wanted to focus on, and because I knew the topic well, I was able to trust myself enough when I went up on stage
- and this is what it all boils down to: How much preparation do you need in order for you to trust yourself?
- since Iāve been doing improv for several months, the level of preparation i needed is so low. I just needed a topic and the rest I can figure out on the spot, just like any improv scene.
- this is just one way improv can help you in your day to day life. More on that in another video
- The reason we prepare is because
Feelings
Thoughts
- 5 minutes before the presentation, I had no idea what I wanted to talk about. So I started brainstorming by just typing different things I learned from the course I took. Eventually, I arrived at a point that I think was worth sharing: Curiosity & Kids. So I just went out there and shared what I knew about that