Chapter 60 Cultivate a good speaking attitude

The words used to express are only part of an important part of a speech, and it also includes the attitude when delivering the speech.How you say it is definitely more important than what you say in your speech. A good speech attitude can make a very simple thing exert a long-term influence.I have noticed that in speech contests in colleges and universities, the winners are not those who have the best subject matter, but those who have the best attitude, simply because he can make the best use of his subject matter. Therefore, you must pay more attention to your speech attitude. What do the clerks at a certain store do when they deliver your purchase to your home?Did that delivery driver just drop that shipment in your backyard and walk away?Is throwing something out of one's hand the same thing as sending something into the other's hand?Think about it, why must the telegraph bureau send a special person to deliver the telegram to the designated recipient in person?In contrast, do all speakers convey their meaning directly to the audience?

Let me give an example to illustrate the attitude of ordinary people towards conversation.I once stopped in Mürren, a summer resort in the Swiss Alps, and stayed in a hotel run by a London company.Usually, the hotel has two speakers invited from England every week to give speeches to the guests.This time, they invited a famous British novelist, and the topic of her speech was: the future of the novel.She admitted that she had not chosen the subject herself, and that, worst of all, she felt that she had nothing to say about it.Since she didn't really care about the subject, she didn't care whether her speech would be good or not.Before the speech, she just prepared some abstracts in a hurry, and when she stood in front of the audience, she completely ignored their existence and didn't even look at them.Sometimes she looked up, sometimes down at her notes, sometimes at the ceiling.She read those empty words one by one according to the notes, her eyes were full of trance, and her voice was ethereal, bringing all the listeners into a boring emptiness.

Look at her performance, is this still an expression? !This is simply performing a personal "monologue", with no sense of communication with the audience at all.The first condition for a good speech is: a sense of communication.As a speaker, you must let the audience feel that there is a message from your head and heart directly to the listener's head and heart.And the performance of the novelist above may only be suitable for the desolate and dry Gobi Desert, because it sounds like grains of sand in the vast desert, and she just treats the audience facing her as a Grains of emotionless sand that don't feel like they're speaking to a group of people.

Therefore, giving a speech is not only a very simple problem-that is, to face your audience with the right attitude, but it also has a very complicated procedure, that is, you have to carefully prepare, invest in passion, and be sincere about the speech you are about to deliver. Facing the audience.Therefore, the above two aspects are easily misunderstood and abused. Once, Mark Twain gave a speech at a mine in Nevada.After the speech, an old prospector came up to him and asked him, "Is this your usual tone of voice?" This is exactly what audiences expect in speeches: your voice is a little higher than your normal speaking pitch.

How can one learn the natural speaking technique of raising one's voice?The only way is to practice.During the practice, if you find that your expression is a bit reserved and awkward, please stop and say to yourself mercilessly in your heart: "Ah! What's wrong? Quickly wake up! Be individual and natural." Then imagine You pick someone out of the audience—maybe the person in the back seat, maybe the least attentive person in the audience—and start making small talk with that person, imagining that he asks you a question, and you're doing it right now. Answer him, and you are the only one who can answer his questions.If he stood up and spoke to you, and you responded to his words.Through this practice process, it is bound to immediately make your speech more peaceful, more and more like your usual conversation with people, more natural and more straightforward.So when you're doing this exercise, just pretend it's actually happening.

With this constant practice, your progress may be smooth.By the end, you'll feel like you're actually asking questions and answering them one by one.For example, during your conversation, you may ask: "Do you guys have this question: Do I have any evidence for what I say? Of course, I do have sufficient evidence. I will now explain it as follows..." You then go on to answer the imaginary question you posed yourself.Doing so will come across as natural, breaking up the monotony of a one-man show and making your presentation seem more direct, enjoyable, and more like gossip with friends.

When you're speaking to the community board, it should be the same as when you're talking to your old friend John.What's so special about community boards?Isn't it just a large group of people like John getting together?What works for you against these people individually will work just as well for you against them collectively. A few pages earlier in this chapter we described a novelist's unsuccessful way of speaking.A few nights later, in the same great ballroom where she had spoken, we had the pleasure of hearing Sir Oliver Rocky speak.The title of his lecture was "The Atom and the World".This topic is familiar to Oliver, because he has dedicated half a century of thinking, research, experimentation and exploration in this field.Some aspects of it had become fundamentally a part of his own heart, mind, and life, and he felt he had something to say on the subject.On the podium, he has long forgotten that he is giving a speech, and he can say that he has no scruples about it.His only concern was to tell his audience about the atom, and he tried to tell them in a correct, clear, and emotional way.You see, he's full of enthusiasm from the podium, trying so hard to get us to share with him what he's seeing, what he's feeling.

What was the outcome?He gave a marvelous speech, and he was simply magical and intimidating.His speech left a deep impression on the audience.His speeches are simply superb.I am sure, however, that he never thought of himself as a public speaker; and I am sure that no one who heard him speak thought of him as a "public speaker" at all. If after you give a public speech, the audience suspects that you have been trained in public speaking, it is not a compliment, and you must not try to save face for your teacher.As your teacher, what I ask of you is that you speak with such a natural ease that the audience has no time to consider your "formal" training.A good window itself does not attract people's attention, it just silently lets in light.The same goes for good speakers.He is so natural and does not set up any barriers, and the audience never pays attention to the demeanor of his speech, they only focus on chewing on the points he discusses.