104: How to Memorize a Speech in 7 Easy Steps

If you watched the Supreme Court confirmation hearings last Tuesday, you may have seen the nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, reveal a rather notable skill when asked this question by Senator John Cornyn of Texas.

You know, most of us have multiple notebooks and notes and books and things like that in front of us. Can you hold up what you've been referring to in answering our questions? Is there anything on it?

That letterhead that says United States Senate?

That's impressive.

On today's podcast, how to Memorize a Speech in seven Easy Steps to Know It Cold now, most people, many who don't work as public speakers for a living at some point, have to memorize a speech or a statement at some point in their lives. If you've ever given a speech unprepared, you know how stressful it is to be the focal point of the room. All eyes are on you, waiting to hear what you have to say. And when you don't stress, I'm with you. Those first few moments in front of a mic, no matter if you're on stage or getting ready to give a webinar, it's stressful even if you know the material cold. But if you don't, oh, it can be an awful experience, one for the audience. I hate watching people bomb. It stresses me out. I feel sorry for them. But you know what? I also get annoyed because I resent it when people waste my time because they didn't take the time to prepare their remarks. And it's also awful for the person speaking. It's stressful to reach for words when you have a room full of people watching you. And last, it's awful for your rep. People remember bad speeches for the wrong reasons, but they admire the good ones for the right reasons. And that's usually because the person has memorized what they're going to say. Now back to Amy Coney Barrett for a minute. The clip I used illustrated her ability to recall an immense amount of information, and she looked very calm and confident while doing so. Now, she wasn't memorizing a statement, but I'm going to share with you, in these seven Easy Steps for Memorizing a Speech the likely reason why she was able to do so. Now, what was I talking about again? Oh, that's right. How to Remember things. Here are seven easy steps for memorizing your next speech or statement or presentation from my stash of tips that I've used to memorize material. Now, before you get started, it helps to understand what kind of learner you are before you tackle memorization. If you are an auditory learner, the most effective way for you to grasp the information is obviously by hearing it. Conversely, if you're a visual learner, you might prefer to look at the material in order to memorize it. You may want to add graphics or draw pictures to help you remember. Most of us were a mix between the two. Now, the goal here for memorizing a speech is something of a paradox. You need to memorize a speech without seeming like you memorize the speech. It needs to come natural that you memorized it, but you don't want people to know that you did know what I'm saying. So here we go. Step one. This step is the one that most people skip, which is why it is so important that you take this first step. And that is to prepare. Right? I know, obs. But if you're being honest with yourself, how many times have you spoken in public without preparing and you bombed? Very few people can wing it and be a hit. And those who do and tell you, oh, I didn't even prepare my remarks. Not only is it annoying, but they're probably being rather liberal with the truth. Because the truth is, it's very, very difficult to give a speech off the cuff and really land it and sound good. People memorize what they're going to say over and over and over. And when I, I go to a lot of conventions, I go to a lot of meetings and conferences, and I've seen a lot of speakers in my day. And when I see a speaker go up with notes of oh, now I know it's going to be a bad talk. But even worse is when I see a speaker go up without notes. But they're always grasping for what to say. Ugh. People don't like it. So prepare to learn what you're going to memorize. And what that also means is to prepare your space. Figure out where's the most conducive place to aid in your memorization process. Now, for most people, this means choosing an area with few distractions, Though some people thrive off of practicing in public areas. Once, I had to give a speech on a webinar. It's a pretty short webinar, so there I was the night before, practicing for Webinar X. I'll just call it Webinar X because why would I ever tell a client that I was coming up with the material the night before on a walk? But I'll tell you what, it worked. I was able to memorize my entire presentation without using notes to read from while I was walking in the woods on the path. So I was preparing it as I was going, and that preparation, even though it was the night before, worked. All right, step two, you want to write out the speech. Remember when I was telling you about writing on the path? What I did as soon as I got in my car is I started writing out the outline. Now, you don't need to write your speech word for word. It's too difficult. Just write out the bullet points that are the brain triggers for what you need to remember. Now, me, I always talk in threes. Why? Because three is a magic number. Yes, it is. It's the magic number for all Gen Xers, but also for people to remember and for people to remember when they're hearing it. So whether you are speaking your three points or trying to remember three points from an audience, it's easy to grasp. It's an easy amount to remember. But you don't have to stick to three. You can have five topics, you can have 10 topics. But you're going to have to create steps to remember all of them. And here's how you do it. The next step. Step three is thinking on your feet. Remember that earlier step that I shared about memorizing the speech the night before? Great. See? It's already working. You want to get on your feet as early as possible in the process of memorization because it's easier to think on your feet when you're moving as opposed to sitting. Same idea when you're taking a shower. Now, why is this the case? Because your blood is moving, your body is moving, you have a distracted mind. And especially if you are in a safe place, like when I was walking in the woods or you're in a shower, that's when you get that dopamine hit. It relaxes you, and it creates a distracted mind in the sense that the walking, the showering, whatever you're doing, it's distracting you from the stress of having to memorize something, but not from creating the material to memorize. So dopamine, it's critical for creativity once it's released, because it relaxes you, helps you feel good, and it keeps the ideas flowing. The same thing for when you speak and when you're trying to memorize a speech. Step four, store the material in your memory by associating visual icons with your ideas. All right, if you're practicing in your room, you want to pick items from the space that you're in. Left, center, right. You can picture the room that you'll be speaking in. Before the virus, it would have been maybe A hotel ballroom. But now for many of us, it's in front of a computer screen. But you want to place these items. If you're at your desk, you can physically place an item. Or if you're in a room, just look for these items. Look at what is residing at 10 o', clock, what is sitting at 12 o', clock, and what's staring at you at 2 o'. Clock. Then associate them with, with a topic. For instance, when I was presenting the webinar, I used these visual cues and I was talking about social media engagement, you know, in general. I didn't want to look at any notes at all, but I put out these items on my desk. So 10, there was a bulletin board above my desk at 10 o'. Clock. At 12 o', clock, I had a little plant, little succulent. And then at 2 o', clock, I had little people from my vintage 1974 Fisher Price little people family castle set. All right, it's a Gen X themed episode, but I had my royal family, my king and queen and prince and the horse all sitting there looking at me. So these toys from my Gen X childhood were there to remind me of something. All right, now step five, Once you have your items in place, associate them with your ideas. Now, my social media messaging, my bulletin board, it was how to make a message stick. My plant was about growing your followers. And my little people, they were telling me about stakeholder engagement. It was that trigger to talk about the people. Well, not the little people, the royal people and the little people, I suppose, but all working, all together. Those were my visual cues I used to help me memorize that speech, but I also put them there during the webinar itself. Now next, step six, review and repeat and repeat and repeat. If you're trying to memorize a speech, you want to repeat it as often as you can. And you're going to notice that the words will likely change, the cadence will likely change, change. But these keywords, the bullets, they are going to stick. Even better for auditory learners is if you record yourself giving your speech, it comes in handy because you can hear yourself and how the material comes out of your mouth and you will retain the information faster. Now, a tip that I have given in my talks to help people give presentations is an app called Oray. I believe I looked it up and that's how I think you pronounce it. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's O R A I. You can find the website@orai.com where you can download the app. It is a public speaking app that will help you time your speech. You'll understand the pattern and the rhythm of your speech. It will also pick out the filler words in your speech. And if you remember, if you listened way back to my first episodes, I did an episode about filler words. And what is a filler word? It's usually a word that you're sticking in there to fill a blank space because you've forgotten something. So if you memorize a speech, it's also going to remove those pesky little filler words. All right, step seven the Final Step the reason why I believe that Amy Coney Barrett was able to memorize and recall so much information. It's the idea that when you speak in a speech or a statement or a webinar or presentation, you are teaching someone something. Studies have shown that teaching information is to someone, anyone is a surefire way to remember that information because it requires you to retrieve it from your own memory. And you can do this in a variety of ways. You can speak to someone right in front of you. You can speak to a mirror. You can speak down a hallway. You could speak in the woods. You could do this on a webinar practicing, you know, with friends on a zoom call. You can do it in a recording with other people, or you can do it during a confirmation hear. But if you recall things, information that is helping someone by teaching them something or teaching them a solution to a problem, chances are you're going to remember it a lot easier. So there you have it, seven easy steps for remembering your next speech. Wait, what's this is my Fisher Price Castle royal family telling me to remind me of something? Oh, yes, yes. Stakeholder engagement. They want me to remind myself to tell you to one. Follow me on Twitter @Molly McPherson. Let me know some of your tips for memorizing speeches. Number two subscribe to my weekly newsletter@mollymcpherson.com subscribe and also rate and review the Confident Communications podcast on Apple Podcasts. Hey, is there any better way to engage with a podcast host than rating it and reviewing it? I suppose if it's five stars, it's a better engagement, but it's a prince of an idea to always leave a rating and review with your favorite podcast. All right, that's all for this week. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.