TJ Walker argues the Law of Attraction is oversimplified but attitude matters for public speaking: acting confident and having fun makes audiences more receptive and breaks bad habits like reading slides. He offers online courses, monthly NYC workshops, and private training worldwide.
Chapters
You may think of yourself as a fantastic world class speaker. You may think of yourself as a horrible speaker, a bad speaker. Either way, you're probably right. Now folks, I want to be up front with you and tell you I frankly think a lot of the motivational speakers out there talking about positive attitude all the time are full of baloney. I am not a fan of the so called Law of Attraction. A lot of that is just complete nonsense and it's oversimplified to the point of being meaningless for most people. I can have the greatest positive attitude in the world. On golfing. Go out there, say, I'm going to be Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer in their heyday, Tiger woods on his best day ever. I can have a great attitude, get out there and I'm going to hit it in the woods, in the pond, I'm going to shoot 180 and that's cheating. My attitude is really not going to have much of an impact on my golf. At my golf score, speaking is different. I have found that simply having a good attitude on public speaking, acting like you're good at it, acting like you're having fun, rubs up. The audience can see that in your eyes. Too many people act like, well, I'm not very good at this. Let me get up here, let me get through this. This is going to be awful for me and awful for you. Okay, well, you convinced me. If you as a speaker act like you're no good, I'm going to think, well, TJ Seems like a smart guy. If he thinks he's awful, he must be awful. There's a crowd psychology there. The opposite is true, though. If you act like you're having fun, if you act like you're good at it, there's a certain part of that that is persuasive to the audience. Now, of course, there's the risk of acting arrogant in a way that's off putting. So I don't want to make it sound like it's guaranteed. But in general, just acting like you're good at it does help. Now, when you do act like you're good at it, it means you're a lot less likely to commit bad habits of reading. If you know you're good speaking, why would you want to bury your head reading or spend your time reading bullet points? If you know you're good, why grab a lectern? You're going to want to walk around. So it solves a lot of other problems too. I do want you to spend some time not just practicing. Not just practicing on video, which you've heard me say, but just actually telling yourself you are a good speaker, even a Great speaker. I'm T.J. walker. I help people become the best speaker they can be, because how you present your ideas is often the number one factor in your success. If you're looking to improve your own speaking skills, I have three main options for you. I have online courses you can learn anytime, anywhere, starting right now. I have monthly public workshops here in New York City where you get together with other people, I work with you, you get on camera a dozen times and you improve. And then finally, I have private training workshops, one on one, and group workshops all over the world. If you're interested in any of these options, give me a call or check out the website.
