Well, first class of the Speech and Drama Competitions for me tonight; the Impromptu Speech - feared by many and mastered by next to none. One minute to think about the topic, three minutes to talk. While I've not come close to mastering it, the discipline no longer strikes the fear into my heart that it used. It was quite pathetic really, I'd be doing a practice speech at my teachers house and I would literally shake and sweat from nervousness. I regularly had to use tissues to mop my face afterwards. If I managed to cobble anything coherent together in my half-panic it was by pure chance, let me assure you.
They say that the most prevalent fear in society is speaking in front of people. I've never had a problem with that actually, but the fear that has plagued me for years is that of speaking to a group off-the-cuff, without a script to hide behind. This is still a problem to some extent, in that I'll often carefully (mentally) script a telephone conversation that I'm about to have if I don't know the callee. I'm not quite sure when I aquired this hang-up, because when I was young I would routinely bowl up to complete strangers and start a conversation with them. Once I apparently told someone who was pulling on a ciggy that smoking was bad for them, and that if they didn't stop they'd die. Amazingly (or perhaps not) they quit. The power of words when we believe them, eh?
So how did I go from a quivering puddle of sweat and jelly to someone who is okay with "speeching" on the spur of the moment? One word: Practice. If you do it over and over again, you begin to realise that really it's not so bad after all, and maybe you only need to break a little sweat this time.
It's like boxing - when you start you're radically concerned that you're going to get hit, so you are very defensive (or frantically aggressive, depending on your personality). After a while you learn that you are going to get hit, and that yeah, it does hurt - but mostly not that bad. And there's always a chance to give it back.
1 comment:
I've had some of the same difficulties with actual immediate conversation. It's weird, because I didn't really feel this way until I began writing more. It seems that having all your words written down perfectly clear makes it a little uncomfortable to have your time for thinking shortened.
I have a certain appreciate for someone who can spin off a long speech without any thought... but I have to remeber that those same people often of little of importance to say.
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