Levare Wellbeing Development

Grab Attention at the Beginning, and Close with a Dynamic End.

Do you enjoy hearing a speech start with “Today I’m going to talk to you about X”?

Most people don’t.

Instead, use a startling statistic, an interesting anecdote, or concise quotation.

Conclude your speech with a summary and a strong statement that your audience is sure to remember.

If the idea of having all eyes on you makes you nervous, visual prompts are a good way to divert the audience's attention yet still stay on topic.

These prompts can be by way of a slide of an image or graph or something more concrete, such as pouring a half glass of water to emphasize the effect of "living with your glass half full."

It might feel good to have their attention diverted, even if only for a moment. Plus, it gives you something to do with your hands.

You’ll want to have a pretty clear idea of what you’re going to say, of course. But you also don’t want to sound like a robot regurgitating a pile of words you wrote down.

If you memorize everything word for word, it’s not going to sound very natural.

Instead, plan a structure but keeps the words themselves a little loose with a couple of exceptions:

I generally try to memorize the opening sentence and the closing sentence for example.

The goal is to ensure you start and end strong while still giving yourself the room to speak naturally in between and showcase you peak personality.