Latest / Voices for Voices® / Rehearsal Changes Everything | What Public Speaking Taught Me About Confidence | Episode 497
Transcript
- 0:01Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices.
- 0:05Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you so much for joining us, whether you're watching, listening with us here in the United States or across the world.
- 0:14Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We value your time, your love, and support.
- 0:19Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you for that.
- 0:21Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We are going to jump right in into this particular episode, and we're going to talk about practicing versus not practicing.
- 0:34Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And this comes in so many different forms.
- 0:41Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And one thing that I really liked because I love pizza, is it was called, I think, the uh book it, and it was through Pizza Hut, and at the end of like the grading period, you could take your report card in, show it to them, and then you could get you know a personal pan pizza for free uh in return for that.
- 2:06Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So there was uh I'd say that was probably the biggest incentive that I had uh when it came to reading.
- 2:19Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And now that's a form of practice.
- 2:21Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So practice reading at home, doing math at home, uh, other subjects at home, uh, really prepared me and the class and all the students uh for what was uh to come in in the class.
- 2:45Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So all the way back all those years ago, you know, we're talking 35 plus years ago, uh, but Pizza Hud did away with this book it program.
- 3:00Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I don't know why, probably because they don't want to give away free things.
- 3:06Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I don't know.
- 3:08Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh, but that was a cool incentive uh because you know, ask any kid that doesn't have allergies to any of the ingredients in in the pizza.
- 3:24Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh if they if they like pizza, and I I would I would think uh a high percentage of those uh kids those children would say yes.
- 3:38Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So it's all about practicing or not.
- 3:42Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If I didn't practice, I would have an empty space on you know my card, and and and so I would uh get points deducted, you know, the class could have a thousand points or five hundred or you know, whatever the number is, and points got deducted if we didn't do our homework, and that I would say led into uh getting older into middle school, high school, college where we could make the decisions as excuse me, as students.
- 4:40Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We weren't gonna get a star sticker, we weren't gonna get a free pizza, we just needed to do the practice at home, at the dorm, at the uh at the apartment, at the house, wherever.
- 5:08Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Just like nobody was going to wake us up.
- 5:15Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And if you are like me and and love your sleep, uh it's it's easy to go, oh, I I don't want to wake up for that eight o'clock class.
- 5:27Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I don't want to wake up for this nine o'clock class.
- 5:32Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Maybe I take a nap in the afternoon.
- 5:35Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Oh, I don't want to go back to class at 2 p.m.
- 5:38Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: or 3.
- 5:39Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh but that really molds us into who we are.
- 5:47Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Some more than others.
- 5:50Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: It took me a while to kind of get on the wagon of okay, Justin, you know, tell myself, you need to get the class.
- 6:05Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Like, there's gonna be time to party, there's gonna be times for that.
- 6:11Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: You just need to get the class, do what you're here for.
- 6:16Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: You're here to get an education, and even if you're going to the trades, then you're learning, showing up when when you need to.
- 6:30Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh you know, if you're uh in an uh in a apprentice program, uh making sure you show up for everything you need to there, uh because in the end, we want people to vouch for us to say, yeah, I'll write a letter of recommendation to you, for you, uh, that hopefully helps land a job.
- 7:04Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And if we haven't practiced, we didn't do the work we were asked to do, we just tried to escape by a teacher.
- 7:23Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Could have a different answer.
- 7:24Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: They could say, you know, I I don't I don't write letters or recommendation and emotionally and mental health-wise, I couldn't that could really send us into uh I don't know, like a dark place like, oh, they don't like me, they won't help me when we just need to look in the mirror sometimes.
- 7:56Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And that's where the work starts.
- 8:02Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Have to have a reason.
- 8:06Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If you don't have a reason, you're gonna find it very difficult to do.
- 8:13Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I've done it, I failed.
- 8:18Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I failed miserably, and then there's times where I didn't fail miserably, but it sure took a heck of a lot of time to figure out what I cared about professionally.
- 8:42Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I mean, as I sit here forty-four years old, it's taken a betterment of thirty-five, forty years I really got it down, I think.
- 9:04Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And again, I I think God wants me to do the work with voices for voices.
- 9:16Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Maybe not, I don't know, but right now I feel the calling to help a lot of people.
- 9:28Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so all those presentations that I I gave in in my classes, if I want to prepared for those, or there were many times that I didn't prepare, where you might hear people say, Oh, I'm just gonna wing it.
- 9:56Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Basically means that I didn't prepare.
- 10:00Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Or if it's an individual presentation, and you or I have to do all the work ourselves.
- 10:15Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Teachers can tell.
- 10:18Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So can parents, and so through all those I'll say, ups and downs, I remember, oh my gosh, my first calm class, my first communication class.
- 10:42Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: There were three different presentation types.
- 10:49Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: One was persuasion persuasion informative, and I can't think of the third one, but there were three three different presentations, so it was literally like a 100 class or a 101, which is you can't get past you've got to take this class before you can take other classes in the major um business or marketing where I ended up marketing management.
- 11:32Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And I remember asking people, I got some interesting feedback.
- 11:42Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Like, what do you do?
- 11:45Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I'm so I'm so worried, I'm so frightened to get up in front of a class.
- 11:53Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And this was I want to say only, but there's only maybe 15-20 students in there added than the the professor.
- 12:03Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So it wasn't like there were hundreds of thousands of people, but it was the first time that I was like, what do I do?
- 12:15Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: How do people and now I know what coping mechanisms are?
- 12:21Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But back then and college I didn't.
- 12:28Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So I asked people, one person said that go for a walk, get some fresh air.
- 12:36Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: That was probably the best one that I got.
- 12:40Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: The second one was run up and down the stairs and tire yourself out because that's basically, you know, that adrenaline is kicking in because you got so much energy.
- 13:02Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And then the last one was have a because I was twenty over twenty-one at the time, was you know, drink, have some alcoholic beverages before you go and give your presentation.
- 13:26Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I forget what I ended up doing on that presentation in particular, particularly.
- 13:33Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But I got a I got a wide range of of options.
- 13:42Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But all that came down to was practice.
- 13:50Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So yeah, I there are times where I drank alcohol before presentations, obviously not the best choices.
- 14:03Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Luckily I didn't get caught uh or it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
- 14:14Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh so when we move on from that and then I had the next presentation, then the next I would still be nervous.
- 14:32Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I would still be I don't say shell shocked or but I would I would.
- 14:41Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I I would still get nervous and what it really came down to over the years was the more you know or the more that I know about the presentation, right?
- 15:05Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We can rehearse and then read it off a teleprompter if we if we need to.
- 15:13Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But if we're not, if we're not gonna if we're not gonna do the teleprompter, which a lot of people don't have access to one, uh plus you're being graded by eye contact and all those you know different areas, uh teleprompter wouldn't probably work very well for that class or a class like that.
- 15:44Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But what I was finding was the more that I practiced, and I remember this vividly, I had a pretty pretty big presentation, and I actually got some good advice was I think we can get into one of these like auditorium type of settings that were set up for speakers, and so there was like a podium and then a microphone, or where a microphone would be, and then there was probably room for at least a couple hundred people, and so I went with my roommate at the time, and I practiced a couple of times, wasn't great, wasn't flawless at all, but that repetition of practice of again understanding the content like it just goes into like the more you go over it, the more you understand it, more you understand it, the more confident you're gonna sound, the more confident you sound, the better I guess it people will be able to follow along and may lead to a higher grade.
- 17:44Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so that's what I've found over the years, whether it was in school, out of school.
- 17:57Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I remember right out of school be on you know conference calls and like nowadays it's just standard procedure, it's just the way it is.
- 18:12Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh but I remember first job out of school and being in a room and had to and you know the interview process, right?
- 18:28Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: You have to sell yourself or try to to get that job.
- 18:34Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I've had so many interview opportunities, and I'm sure I sund in nervous, I probably stuttered, I probably got sweaty, um, I probably got disoriented.
- 18:55Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh it's just the way it is as individuals.
- 19:04Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But what I've found is the more practice, first off, you have to like what you're doing.
- 19:11Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: You have to like the topic or topics.
- 19:14Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So that's where when we talked about in a previous episode, we have to do what we want to do in life, not what somebody else wants us to do, or what a significant other or a roommate, or you get the you get the gist of it.
- 19:35Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We got to we have to do what we want to do.
- 19:45Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So it starts there.
- 19:48Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Right?
- 19:49Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Because if we like what we're doing, we're gonna probably spend a little energy and time on that particular topic or adjacent topics.
- 20:07Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And if we do that, and we're asked to give a presentation or give an update, aside from the introduction of hi, my name's Justin Allen Hayes, and here's my background, and I'm here to talk about baseball or whatever the topic is, or multiple topics.
- 20:41Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So if we like what we do but if we like what we do, there's gonna be hard times.
- 20:50Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Always gonna be hard times.
- 20:52Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But in general, if we like what we what we're doing, it's gonna make us want to give a good presentation.
- 21:09Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so we're probably gonna again, we're probably gonna practice.
- 21:16Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Here we are back to practice.
- 21:19Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Yeah, you hear dog barking.
- 21:22Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We have we have dogs in the neighborhood, I think a lot of neighborhoods do.
- 21:28Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So you'll hear that.
- 21:30Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so when we like what we do, we're gonna put the energy and time into that, and then it comes down to practice.
- 21:43Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I can't tell you how many times I've put notes together or even like a script, a script like preparation.
- 21:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Like written down, typed up, printed out.
- 22:04Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Then it comes to the delivery method.
- 22:10Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Do we read it monotone?
- 22:14Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Like, hi, my name is Justin Allen Hayes.
- 22:20Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Or do I say, hey everyone?
- 22:24Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thanks for including me.
- 22:27Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Nice to meet everybody.
- 22:29Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: My name's Justin Allen Hayes.
- 22:32Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: It's just one way.
- 22:35Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I'm just going right off the cuff.
- 22:37Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And years ago, I couldn't do that without feeling like I was having a panic attack.
- 22:55Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So that's where the mental health came in.
- 22:58Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Because there were some topics that I I didn't really care about.
- 23:03Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But again, if you're getting getting paid by a company, and that's what they do, and that's what management's telling you you have to do.
- 23:15Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Well, you don't have a whole lot of choice.
- 23:19Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I had panic attacks all the time.
- 23:30Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I still get them not as frequently.
- 23:35Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So by practicing, that helps us get closer to something.
- 23:52Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Previous episode, check it out.
- 23:55Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: What are we getting closer to?
- 23:57Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So we do the practice, we do the hard work.
- 24:06Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Uh appear more confident.
- 24:18Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And I can't tell you from a couple minutes ago how many times when I talked about you know putting like a script kind of together.
- 24:36Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I can't tell you how many times it kind of the beginning stages of my presentation presenting career.
- 24:47Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: How many times once I learned what I was talking about that I didn't have to read?
- 24:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I didn't have to read off a slide and PowerPoint or another another like program.
- 25:09Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I didn't have to read the script verbatim.
- 25:14Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: That was because I internally liked the topic or topics.
- 25:26Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And it was nerve wracking, yes, leading up to the presentation as I started to get my feet under me.
- 25:44Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Yes, it was nerve wracking.
- 25:49Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But then for whatever reason, I don't know how, I don't know why.
- 25:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Once I got started, then it was like, oh wow, I know what I'm talking about to a better extent.
- 26:17Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so I didn't have to rely on notes as much.
- 26:25Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If there were key points, key areas that I wanted to make sure I mention, I would make sure to include, and I would make sure that I look down to find those, highlight them, circle them, underline.
- 26:47Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so all those presentations, all those years, all those panic attacks, all the mental health challenges that I still battle each and every second of every single day.
- 27:14Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Voices for voices, helping others.
- 27:31Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So sometimes people ask me, how do you get started?
- 27:52Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And like why do you why why are you so passionate about helping people?
- 27:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Give you this example of might have been part of the feel that I needed to say to myself, Justin, feels good when you do this.
- 28:32Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And this, oh my word, twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe twenty-four years ago.
- 28:47Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: A while ago, let's call it that.
- 28:53Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So I was in a relationship and we like baseball, so we went to a baseball game.
- 29:05Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: There's a hot dog vendor that we would go to when I would go to the ball game with my family because hot dogs were inexp less expensive than buying inside the the ballpark.
- 29:32Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So we would that's what we do.
- 29:36Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We would we drive up, we park, and we go to the hot dogs in.
- 29:43Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: That's what we would do.
- 29:48Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So the relationship I was in at the time is not the relationship I'm in now, so it's not my wife.
- 30:00Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We we were in line at the hot dog vendor, and I had seen over and over and over and over again, you know, go to quite a few games a year.
- 30:25Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: There always seemed to be a veteran.
- 30:31Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And I'm not saying a veteran deserves any additional help.
- 30:53Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But if they've fought in a war, if they've completed their military service here in the United States, yeah, that's part of what allows baseball games and so many other things go on and keeps us safe.
- 31:16Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So there's a veteran, he was uh he had lost a limb, and he was always in the same spot.
- 31:28Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So we're in the hot dog vendor line.
- 31:36Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We get up, we order our hot dogs.
- 31:39Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: What would you like on them?
- 31:43Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And and then I ordered an extra one, and then I told the person I was in a relationship with, I said, hey, uh I'm gonna go over here and give this person a hot dog.
- 32:05Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I don't I don't know if he he's eaten today, but I'd I'd I'd rather give something tangible, like food for nutrition.
- 32:24Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I mean, we can say how nutritious hot dogs are, but that's beside the point.
- 32:30Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: The deal was I went over and I gave this person a hot dog.
- 32:39Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And I said, Are you you know, like, are you hungry?
- 32:43Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And you kind of nodded, and I said, Here's I got a hot dog.
- 32:48Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: If you want mustard or ketchup, I got a packet, uh, but I just wanted to get this for you.
- 32:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So small in the grand scheme of things of life, and the person I was in a relationship with was like, Well, why did you do that?
- 33:12Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I was like, 'Cause I don't know if he's eaten, and the hot dogs are again very inexpensive, so I didn't have to spend fifteen dollars or whatever they charge now, and then I felt good because I helped somebody, and so when I got the well, why'd you get him the hot dog?
- 33:43Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Like, why don't you just keep it?
- 33:46Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: It just got me thinking, like, maybe that's something that maybe that'll come in handy sometime.
- 33:57Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I don't know.
- 33:58Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Like I said, 20 years plus ago that this occurred.
- 34:04Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And so it's the little little kind gestures gestures like that.
- 34:16Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: It's the presentations and the practice that all comes together fuses together into who we are.
- 34:41Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So practicing is very important.
- 34:49Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I'm learning that more and more every single day.
- 34:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: How important practice is so give it a try, whatever that is for you.
- 35:15Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Something you like, just give it a try.
- 35:20Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Give it two or three of tries, or four or five if if you can.
- 35:26Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Because practice is gonna help you feel more confident, and your confidence is gonna show to others, and I'm doing all this with all these mental health challenges.
- 35:53Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I mean, I got a laundry list of diagnoses.
- 35:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So by all intents and purposes, I shouldn't be able to do a show.
- 36:07Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I shouldn't be able to to talk.
- 36:11Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Not trying to say that I'm the best speaker at all.
- 36:19Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I'm not.
- 36:20Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: But I'm better than if I never tried.
- 36:25Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I feel like I've tried, I've given up my all.
- 36:40Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: That's all that matters.
- 36:43Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: There's gonna be all kind of noise, chatter, no matter what.
- 36:49Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So stay true to yourself.
- 36:56Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Once you find what you like, what you enjoy, what you feel you're called to, maybe try it and practice, and then practice maybe a little bit more.
- 37:15Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And then one day you can be teaching others how you learned, how you practice, and that's the goal, and that's what that let's call paying it forward, is I'm sharing my story, my experiences with you, so that you're able to share your experiences with others.
- 37:53Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And that, my friends, is how we're gonna reach and help at least three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond.
- 38:06Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Thank you for watching, thank you for listening.
- 38:09Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Follow us on socials, give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, and we can do it.
- 38:20Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: I know we can.
- 38:21Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Have a great day, let's celebrate all the voices in the world, and let's not only be a voice for ourselves, but maybe there's somebody else that may need or may want to share their voice.
- 38:38Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: And maybe you can be that maybe you can be that lifeline, that person that uh helps that individual or individuals share their voice.
- 38:53Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: So until next time, Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices.
- 38:59Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: We'll talk to you, we'll see you very, very, very soon.
- 39:04Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices: Bye bye for now.