CJ Moneyway's TEDx slides crashed minutes before he spoke. He used deep breathing and self-talk to stay calm, leaned on three months of rehearsal, and delivered from memory. He explains how preparation and mental resilience got him through.
Welcome to CJ Moneyway Media.
You're a leadership expert, and I know how to reset, and I know how to bring my heart down— sorry, heartbeat down— how to calm myself, how to control my thoughts, how to manage my brain. And the unexpected happened, and I had to step on that stage the day before my actual TEDx and do my talk and do the whole thing and run through it without my slides because the slides weren't working. And we're completely on my memory.
So that was a huge unexpected event for me.
And of course, my thoughts went to panic, like, I'm gonna screw this up. Your brain is like firing all these things to go, don't do it, don't do it, it's dangerous. The idea is to be able to interrupt the pattern and say, no, no, these thoughts are not serving me right now. I need to calm down, take a deep breath. You got this. You've rehearsed it 3 months. Don't be silly. You don't even need the slides. Literally, that's what I told myself on the inside. And I stepped and I did it and I did it. And I was able to be focused because I was in my strategic brain. I calmed myself down in order to remember my words because I wasn't going to remember my words. And it was really tough though, because it's much harder to speak to nobody in a room and pretend somebody's listening and caring. Moneyway Show!
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