TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

12 Apr 2018 · 3 min

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2:56

A short live-stream segment from TJ Walker discussing verbal tics ("uh", "um", "ah") in public speaking and media appearances. Walker emphasizes perspective: everyone uses occasional filler words, they only become problematic when excessive, and having compelling content matters more than flawless delivery. He promises practical tips later to reduce fillers but warns against seeking perfection.

Chapters

The first thing to realize about occasional verbal tics is that everybody, and I mean everybody, occasionally says it. Once in a while isn't really a problem. It's only when you say so many that it stands out. It's kind of like if you send someone a cover letter and there's an extra comma after every word in the first sentence. It's unnecessary and it will stand out as clutter. But I do want you to put things in perspective. Quite often in my day job, which is doing public speaking workshops and media training workshops with leaders all over the world, I'll record someone, we'll play it back. Everyone in the room thinks they did a fantastic job in their presentation. But the person who was speaking is like, oh, dj, it's awful. I'm so embarrassed. It's pathetic. I said constantly. We look around. Did anyone even notice? No one noticed. We played it back again. The person said two ums in a period of 20 minutes. So it's not really a problem. Now you may have a problem. I'm not trying to minimize it, but don't be too harsh on yourself. I know some people who never, ever say uh or um. The problem is they're so boring with their presentations, nobody remembers anything they said. I also know some of the most famous media celebrities in the world, former broadcasters like David Letterman here in the United States, Martha Stewart, the home goddess guru. What do those two have in common? They say ah, ah, ah constantly, every 22nd segment. And yet they both made tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year talking. So let's keep this in perspective. It's far more important to have something interesting to say than to never, ever say or. Let's not fetishize it. Yeah. I'm going to give you more tips on how to reduce your uhs and ums. But our goal here is not perfection and never, ever saying, oh, no. Our goal is actually good communication and having the people we're speaking to have good feelings about us. By the way, speaking of someone who's very successful speaking, saying lots of ahs and ums. I'm not going to mention any names, but there is a wildly successful public speaking coach right here on Udemy. He's a public speaking coach. His courses have a lot more sales than mine and every other sentence, right? Guess what? Nobody cares. His students love him.