How to focus and what to focus on to be a great public speaker.

We all need to know what can go wrong in a public speech but, more importantly, we need to know why and what we can do to make sure disaster doesn’t happen. Learn how to focus and what to focus on and your ability as a public speaker will soar. Enjoy.

Ollie Lind

After that we will be moving onto a subject dear to my heart; change. Hence the title of this blog.

The financial crisis engulfing the planet may well herald a change so fundamental that society will never be the same again. As I see it we, as a race, are at a crossroads. On my other site, ollielind.com I have posted comments and a poem that gives some perspective on what is happening. Have a look.

Either the world will descend into chaos and recession will sweep all before it, or what?

Perhaps we, as a society will realize that instant gratification is not the way to happiness. Material things, purchased with future income is a sweet trap that brings only what we see before us today.

What can we do? I suggest we all take a good look at our current situation, begin to retire debt as soon as possible, and only purchase what we have the money for NOW. I realize this may well lead to hardship as our fearless leaders believe the only way forward is to stimulate demand.

But think about this a moment. If demand cannot be paid for, what use is it?  Would you sell something to someone if they didn’t pay for it? Of course not. So, if we took a good long look at ourselves and saw that our desire for short term gain has mortaged our future to an impossible level, we must see that each of us has to do something.

I suggest we, as I said, pay our debts, invest in the future by way of self education and development and increase our contribution to the general good. How do we do that? The little extra things we can do for others. Helping those less fortunate where it is needed and refusing to be drawn into craving more than we have earned.

I don’t begrudge those who are successful and have all the material gains we all admire. Providing they have earned what they have, I say more power to them. Let us all strive to have what we earn and deserve.

We might just make the world a better place.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

PS Do you know when you deserve something?

When you can pay the price without sacrificing anything else positive in your life.

Persuasive speeches and presentations are made to individuals, not mass audiences.

In this talk we examine how to gain greater certainty when public speaking. How to gain the necessary focus that will enable you to be natural and have your speech flow in a seamless way. You will find out what you are really doing when you speaking in public. Please enjoy.

Professional speaking
gets results.

I hope you enjoyed the introduction to public speaking in the first podcast.

This second talk takes you on the next step to becoming an accomplished public speaker. Some people call it presence. It is actually much more fundamental than that and introduces you to the concept of where it all begins and how to lay the foundation for you to be able to deliver a persuasive speech and enhance your skill as a public speaker.

Listen and enjoy. There will be more on this subject in coming weeks.

Click on the video and discover your first How Can I answer.

They arrived here in Sydney, bright eyes and full of anticipation. Oh, quite a bit of fear too. I smiled inwardly as I introduced myself. We had a lot to do and not enough time to get them where they needed to go. To give you an idea of the task in front of them, their reference note books had ninety pages, there were fourteen dvds on technical aspects of sales and a number of practical drills that had to be done.

It looked like mission impossible, but that’s the fun of the challenge. I opened the boot camp by demonstrating to them how difficult learning can be. Then we covered my favourite topic, the philospohy of learning. Now, when you mention philosophy most people think of sage old people speaking about abstract ideas that few understand.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The philosophy of learning I, along with a close collegue, developed some years ago, is an interactive, practical application of Soctraic thinking applied to the Twenty First Century. We focus on not only giving effective learning strategies, but imparting understanding about what happens as we are exposed to new information. This brings about a rapid escalation of the learning rate, but more importantly, the learner really begins to understand what he has to do to effectively master any subject.

We spent the first morning teaching them how to learn. When you stop and think about it, it is the one subject that is not formally taught at school, yet it is the single most vital skill necessary for personal development.

We finished up late today. Everyone was exhausted, but exhilarated at the same time. I get a real buzz seeing ‘the lights go on’ when students really understand the concepts presented.

Everyone passed the course. I am confident they will all be successful in their new careers. They haven’t reached their destination of becoming professional sales consultants yet. They have all made a solid start and know what they know.

More importantly, they understand that every day of their professional lives must be a learning experience and, now that they know how to learn, they are certain that the future will be bright.

I am sitting here, thinking about these young people and the exciting future they have in front of them. I am happy to have made a contribution to their future. It reminds me constantly why I set up this website and the purpose of howcani.

The single most important fundamental skill anyone can possess is the skill to learn. The learning philosophy works because it allows people to understand not only the correct strategies to learn, but gives an understanding of how we make sense of our environment and life in general.

I have included some quotes from the students on the “What People are Saying” heading elsewhere on the site.

Have a look at the introduction to the learning philosophy on the products page. It’s worth a look.

Live well,

Ollie Lind

This small French car loomed up in my rear view mirror and started tailgating me. I wasn’t too concerned. There was no room for me to pull to the next lane to let him through and, anyway, I was doing the speed limit. He got verrrry close, so I raised my hand and waved him back.

We got to a right turn lane and he roared into it. About two hundred yards along the lights turned orange. I slowed down and stopped. He had his hand out the window gesticulating and swung to the right, straight through a red light.

Immediately to my left a gray car accelerated and swung across the front of my car. I caught sight of the blue light on the dashboard and, I must confess, I smiled broadly. No prizes for guessing how the morning of the french car diver was going to turn out.

How often in life, not just on the road, do we see people ‘do the wrong thing’ and seem to get away with it. How many times do we just stand by, shrug, and say, “Life sucks?”

I got to the gym and started my workout, my mind still on the ‘justice’ I had witnessed. You know, our society is built on behavioural agreements, nothing much else. If you think about it, what are laws, or rules in any game?

That’s why I smiled at the incident. The ‘good guys’ won. Every time someone breaks the rules society suffers to that extent. Every time we witness a breaking of the rules and don’t speak up, we, and society suffers to that extent.

Perhaps it’s time for the good guys to strike back.

What do you think?

Live well,

Ollie

No, not blank; I just have so much I want to share with you it jumbles up in my head and it makes no logical sense for a while. Then I sigh, shake my head at my stupidity, and begin.

It shouldn’t be hard, you know. I’ve been writing seminar notes for years. I have a system I use that helps me analyse and segment the material into chunks that are easy to understand.

But they were all for live workshops. (Many still are) When you do a DVD though, it’s different. There is no audience, just you and the cameraman. I never refer to notes when I speak, live or in front of a camera. I prefer to communicate with you in the instant. Usually we shoot the DVD in one take. That means I have to make sure I get it in order, leave nothing out and make sense at the same time.

I now realise what happens. I make sure I am crystal clear in what I want to share with you. I originally worked it out logically, so I simply follow the ‘logic path,’ so to speak.

The real key to creating something from nothing is to create it ‘in the moment.’ I just talk with you as if you were there. Just a conversation on something I am passionate about. I sometimes do not know what the next sentence is going to be. But it comes out and makes sense.

I wanted to share this with you because I am saddened at the lack of spontaneity in the world. Just listen to politicians of late everywhere. I just get a high when I film a DVD because it is spontaneous, it is important  (at least I think so) and it helps people.

Who needs drugs when you can communicate?

Live well,

Ollie

I started on about my passion, developing people and really got into it. The topic of public speaking came up and I indicated that one of my favourite activities was teaching public speaking.

Two of the guys said, almost in unison, “That’s something I can’t handle. I really fear it.”

My response was immediate. “You’re not alone. Studies indicate that fear of public speaking is the number one fear.” I then indicated that I knew the origin of the single fear that dogs every would be public speaker and that it could be addressed rapidly.

They looked at me as if I was a liar. I smiled and invited them to my web site. If they were really serious about overcoming their fear, the answer lay there. I don’t know whether they have visited or not. I hope so.

I was discussing the incident with a friend the next day and he asked me how I started public speaking and I began to laugh. He frowned and asked me what was funny. I replied that at no time in my life was I afraid of speaking in front of a group. I then told him my story.

I was in first class at Primary school. I was about six years old. One day my teacher called me up in front of the class. She said that the teacher for the babies had to go home ill and she wanted me to go next door and tell the babies stories. (I must have been a talkative little fellow)

Well, next door I went and stood in front of this group. I still see a picture in my mind of all the little round eyes gazing up at me. For the next two hours I told stories. I have absolutely no recollection of the stories I told.

From that point on for the rest of the year, each Thursday at two in the afternoon I would go to the babies class and tell stories. They called it “Ollie Time.”

Today I sometimes call my workshops Ollie Time. All my life I have loved telling stories. At this point in my life I am writing the fifth draft of a novel (finger crossed)

I don’t know why I was never afraid, but maybe I was just lucky. I did, over the course of my life and after much study establish just what that fear was and how to overcome it.

I still smile as I recall that lucky time that brought about Ollie Time.

Ollie Lind