I just read some Mind Mints at www.garyforman.com.  The guy can write.

Who is Gary Forman?  He’s a speech writer, a good one.  I know he’s good because last year I partnered with him on a speech for Endo Pharmaceuticals, and he kicked butt. 

What are Mind Mints?  They are nuggets of observed experience that Gary bakes into rich morsels of insight.  They are short, conversational, intelligent, positive, and practical.  They make you think about speaking in new ways.    

Gary surrendered himself to me one day last year to try out a speech he wrote about kicking butt.  Kicking butt is important to Gary because he dislikes mealy-mouthed speeches.  He is adamant about the value of edginess, verve, and the unexpected.   His speech and his delivery were very, very good.  He kicked butt.

If you want to read some good, short presentation tips about speaking, presenting, and speech making, subscribe to Mind Mints at www.GaryForman.com.  

And no, he did not ask me to write this, and I have no financial interest in his business.

Robert Zajonc (pronounced ZYE-unts) was an American social scientist who explored the interplay between feeling and thought—between emotion and cognition.

He was interested in determining which influenced the other more strongly.  On balance, he came down on the side of emotion.

He was best known for establishing what he called “the mere exposure” effect.  In this experiment, he showed subjects a series of random shapes in rapid succession—so rapid that they could not possibly tell if any were repeated.

When subjects were later asked which shapes they found most pleasing, they reliably chose the ones to which they had been exposed the most often, though they had no conscious awareness of the fact.

Familiarity, in other words, breeds a kind of affection, an established truth that has, ever since, encouraged advertisers to repeat themselves.

Speakers can do the same.  Find a phrase, an image, or a single word to weave throughout your talk. 

“I have a dream,” is such a phrase.  “Of the people, by the people, for the people,” is another.  And the current American President, Mr. Obama, has been repeating the word, “Responsibility,” perhaps to defuse the charge that he’s bailing out reckless banks and irresponsible people.

“Every word uttered strikes a note on the key board of the imagination,” said Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

Choose the words or phrases to repeat so that your audience will remember your message with affection.

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.

The sensation of stage fright is bad enough, but what’s worse is the damage it can do to your career and your self-esteem.

If you let it stop you, your sense of self gets smaller and your stage fright gets bigger and more powerful.

However, when you step into your stage fright, you learn quickly that it’s a phantom–a fog—like most of our fears.  When you step into that fog, you soon realize that it is a figment of your imagination—and that your effort to cut through it can easily succeed.

Here is a pep talk, courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt, who knew something about courage and determination.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”                            

Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Sims Wyeth is a speech coach in Montclair, NJ specializing in presentation skills and public speaking training in order to give accomplished people the knowledge and skill they need to become accomplished speakers. Learn more public speaking tips at www.SimsWyeth.com.