Okay, now we get to the real meat of the skill building of this course this is where, frankly, my value comes into play. Sorry, this sounds obnoxious, but I just want to be upfront with you. This is what people pay me as much as $10,000 a day for when they hire me for in person training, what we're about to do here together and you get it at no extra cost. Here's what it is. It's practicing your speech, your story on video and looking at it. But some of you think, well, that's easy.
I'll do that once and you look and you hate it, you never look at it again. There is a specific technique to practicing on video. I have found that if you don't follow this technique, practicing on video will actually make you worse. First of all, most people never practice on video. If they do, they don't look at their video. If they do, they look at it once if they do that.
All they do is latch on To what they don't like. And I think that was helpful in my experience that will actually make you worse. That will rob you of your confidence if all you do is practice your story on video, your whole speech on video once and you look at it, that will reduce your confidence, because you'll be fixated on what you didn't like, oh, gosh, I said, I'm 10 times. Oh, I rushed through this part of the story. Oh, I forgot to introduce the character's name. He'll fixate on blunders mistakes.
Don't do that. Here's what you need to do. And this is what I do. When I work with people. You practice it once you watch it. The first time you look at it.
Only focus on what you like. What do you like about your story? What do you like about your voice, your hand movement, your body movement, your facial expression. Write a list, use a piece of paper, use a computer screen, a cell phone. But literally write a list of everything you liked about your presentation. Then look at it again and focus on the things you don't like come up with a list.
Here's the tricky part. I want you to then do your story again, and focus on just one thing you didn't like and improving that. If you notice you stood holding your hands awkwardly the whole time. This time, tell the whole story again. And just focus on that having your hands held together awkwardly focus on one thing at a time. What I have found in doing this with more than 10,000 people in live face to face trainings around the world is that when people focus on changing one thing that is true changeable, they succeed every time.
If you focus on something that isn't changeable, I could say, Gosh, this next time I want to look like I don't have narrow beady eyes or I have thicker hair. I can't fix that. Just by talking on video one more time, that's a waste time. I need you to focus on one thing that you can in fact, change and do that. Look at it again. Did you make progress, then pick another thing.
Keep doing it again and again, again, each time reducing just one element that you didn't like. For most people, if they just practice a two or three minutes, story or speech 10 2030 times they'll get to the point where they actually like what they see. And here's the thing if you like what you see on video, you like your story like how you come across Like how you move, like how you sound at that point, confidence sinks in, you actually can't get nervous now because nervousness comes from fear being boring. Well, you've already seen a video of yourself and it's interesting. nervousness comes from a fear of looking stupid or awkward. If you've already seen yourself look comfortable, confident, relaxed, it's virtually impossible to feel that you're going to look awkward.
So it solves so many problems. It's not hard to do. It's not expensive to do, you're not to hire me or pay me an extra penny. You can do it on your own. This is the real secret. The TED Talk stars have most of them practiced and watch themselves on video dozens of times, so the hundreds of times some of them thousands of times before they ever stepped foot on that stage to see share their story with you.
So get ready in a moment, I'm going to ask you to record yourself telling your stories. And then I want you to keep doing it until you're happy with it. And then I want to have you upload it, YouTube, Facebook, wherever and post it here for us to look at it. So get ready for the first assignment.