- So when I was younger I used to be really, really
bad at public speaking. I was super shy, I never wanted to put myself out there. and I was really terrible
at talking to pretty girls. But over time, I've improved
at two of those things and so in this video
I'm gonna be giving you my nine top tips for how to
be a better public speaker. Let's get into it. Tip number one is get the
hell out of your own head. When we're talking in front of people, public speaking is like the
biggest fear in the world outside of like spiders or
like death or something. But like when we're public speaking, we can often feel like
there's all this judgement that's being cast on us
and that people are here to judge the things that we're saying. And so it's very easy for
us to get into our own heads and to worry about the
things that we're saying and to worry about how we're coming across and worry about our body language and whether we're
sweating through our top. All of this stuff gets in the
way of giving a good talk, giving a good speech. And so for me, whenever
I'm giving a speech or even talking to a camera, I always try and remember
that it's not about me. The audience does not care about me. They do not give a toss. The audience only cares about themselves. You the viewer, as much as you like me and
care about me potentially you actually don't really care about me. You only care about yourself. You care about hopefully the value that
I can provide to you. And therefore for me to be in my own head worrying about how I'm coming across is kind of counterproductive because it gets in the way of the message that I'm trying to give. And so keeping that in mind
that no one cares about us, get out of our own head, and let's make it all about the audience, I find that really helpful. Tip number two is to
speak through a smile. Now I'm gonna show you
what this looks like before and after I apply this technique. And while doing that, I'm gonna tell you about
our sponsor for this video, which is Audible. If you haven't heard by now Audible is the absolute best place to get audio books from anywhere. Audible is probably the single app that's most changed my life. And I often say to people that if I could only have
one subscription in the world it would be a subscription to Audible. Now that's me talking normally without speaking through a smile. Now I'm gonna say basically the same thing but I'm gonna have a smile on
my face while I'm saying it and hopefully you'll see
the effect that it has. So Audible is genuinely one of the most life-changing
apps that I've got. I listen to Audible for many,
many, many hours each day and these days, now that I'm actually leaving
the house a little bit more I'm going in the car, going on
road trips, going on picnics. It's like enjoying my hot
girl summer as it were. I've always got Audible as a companion. These days, I'm listening to a book called "Unconditional Parenting" which is all about parenting and it's like really, really interesting even though I'm not yet a parent. And so with that, hopefully you have seen that when I'm speaking through a smile hopefully I come across
as much more engaging and enthusiastic rather than
when I'm talking like this. Because I could be saying
exactly the same thing but as soon as it starts
speaking through a smile hopefully it just sounds
a little bit better. So this is an absolutely fantastic hack for getting better at public speaking. Tip number three is to avoid the British Airways mode of speaking. So, this is what I mean by the British Airways mode of speaking. If you're looking for a great way to experience all your books this summer, then head over to Audible.com/Aliabdaal and if you're an Amazon Prime member you'll actually get 53% off
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it's an absolute no brainer. So that is my British Airways voice. This is the voice that a lot of us put on. Sometimes I call it the primary school teacher voice as well. It's the voice that a
lot of us fake put on when we're giving a speech because we're thinking
of it as giving a speech. And it's like, when I am giving a speech, I have to talk in this exaggerated sound sort of like an air hostess or like an announcement on an
aeroplane flight would sound. But if you're still watching
this, hopefully you realise that that is not the way
we wanna be speaking, we want to be spoken to. We don't like it when people talk to us in this kind of thing. And so, to get over this like
sing songy British Airways primary school teacher way of speaking what I try and do is I think of my kind of when I'm speaking, I'm
sort of going downwards. And so if I tell you about Audible while speaking and going down, it might sound something like this. Genuinely, Audible is one of those apps that's most changed my life. I've been listening to fantasy audiobooks for absolutely years now. Since like 2017 I've listened to Audible for around three hours a day. Particular favourites of
mine are the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson,
Stardust by Neil Gaiman also a great public speaker. Incredible for listening to if you want to improve
your public speaking. But if that sounds up your street then head over to Audible.com/Aliabdaal and if you're a Prime member you'll get 53% off your first four months. So that was me talking in
not British Airways mode. I was sort of talking in a
more matter of fact fashion and sort of aiming to go down rather than talking in a sing song fashion and aiming to go up at
the end of a sentence. And so that's just
something to keep in mind, avoid speaking like a
primary school teacher. Avoid speaking like a British
Airways flight attendant. Be yourself and think, and
try and speak how you speak when you're around your friends which is not in this kind of
sing-songy kind of fashion. Tip number four is let your
personality shine through. Again, one of the issues that we have when we're public
speaking is we think of it as I'm giving a speech and we
don't wanna be thinking of it as I'm giving a speech,
because then some reason we feel all stuffy and we feel formal. And even if it's something
like a business presentation or a presentation at work, I've given so many presentations
at like medical conferences and at teaching sessions in the hospital. And I always try and let my
personality shine through and try and be a little bit more casual and a little bit less formal. Like if I'm at a medical conference even if I'm talking about
something really serious, the audience wants a personality, the audience wants
banter, they want humour, they wanna have a good time. To an extent they care about
the content of the speech but broadly, they all just
wanna have a good time and they're all just kind of sitting there kind of sweltering in the heat. I was at a conference in
Singapore a few years ago sweltering in the heat and I
just wanna have a good time. And when you let your
personality shine through, when you're your own
unapologetically weird self, the audience really appreciates that. And so whenever I think of public speaking or speaking in general I
think that I should not stifle the kind of quirky
aspects of my personality. Maybe I'll throw in a
toilet joke here and there. Maybe I'll reference Harry Potter. Maybe I'll talk about Disney songs or how I was singing in
the shower the other day. That kind of stuff sounds a
bit trite and trivial right now but generally it helps my personality hopefully shine through through
videos and through speaking. Ramping that up slightly
rather than dampening it down, which is what we're prone to
do when we're public speaking think that's the way forward. Tip number five for public
speaking is try and add banter and humour and stories to
the stuff that you're doing. Again, which is getting
outside of this mindset that I'm giving a speech therefore, I have to be formal
and I have to be boring. And instead think that really the only thing the audience
cares about is having fun. And so how do we make
the audience have fun? We can add jokes, we can add banter and
we can add storytelling. This is not a video about storytelling maybe we'll do one in a little while. But fantastic book by one
of my friends, Matthew Dicks it's called "Storyworthy." It's absolutely incredible. My favourite book of 2020 and that is basically all about
how to tell a better story. And in fact, that's also
available on Audible So go over to Audible.com/Aliabdaal to get your audio book of
"Storyworthy" by Matthew Dicks if you wanna learn to be a
better storyteller in every way. Tip number six is don't
read from a script. Whenever we're reading from a script, it's gonna sound absolutely terrible. Like there is no way to
make reading from a script sound not like reading from a script because we all go into this reading thing and we've all seen people
at speeches and stuff where they look down,
they've got the notes and the way they deliver it, it's obvious that they
reading from a script. They automatically go
into British Airways mode. This is basically not the way
forward and certainly for me, I find that whenever I'm
having to read from a script to make a YouTube video, it's just not fun and it sounds absolutely terrible and it takes me absolutely
ages to get it right 'cause I just hate reading from a script. So what I would recommend is
if you're giving a speech, just use some talking points. It's useful to have an outline. It's useful to know how you're gonna start and how you're gonna finish
and it's useful to know what broad talking points you wanna hit. But beyond that, I think there is a degree like it's very possible
to over-prepare a speech. And as soon as you get it into
that realm of over-preparing you're gonna sound like
you're reading from a script and that's not gonna be
particularly engaging. So don't worry about the script,
focus on the bullet points. Tip number seven is to just speak louder. Like generally when we're giving a speech, we wanna be adding a little bit of energy because people wanna have fun ultimately, they don't really care about the content. They just wanna have fun. And a super easy way of adding energy to whatever we're saying is to just speak a little bit louder. So the way that I think of this is that my normal speaking style
is about a 5 out of 10. So this is about 5 out of 10, this is how I'd be talking normally if I was hanging out with friends. But I'm gonna ramp it up to a 7 out of 10 if I'm giving a video. So this is me kind of
talking at a 7 out of 10 and certainly if I was
doing a speech in public, I'd kind of be talking
at this kind of pace or this kind of loudness rather. So this kind of loudness
would be kind of weird if I was sitting across from
someone at a coffee table or if I was at a dinner
party, this sort of loudness would probably be a little bit excessive but it's a YouTube video,
I'm giving a speech or if I'm giving a speech in public, I would ramp up my
loudness to a 7 out of 10 rather than a 5 out of 10
which would be my baseline. Tip number eight is to
speak slower and pause more. This is something that I really, really, really struggle with. I did a course called
Ultraspeaking, which is really good. Link in the description
if you wanna check it out and then of course,
and like the main thing that the instructors were
telling me on this is that like, you just need to be more
okay with it taking time, be more okay with speaking slower, and being more okay to take pauses. Because a pause to the audience does not sound nearly really
as long as a pause to us. And if I'm actually giving a speech rather than trying to race
through a YouTube video at breakneck speed, the pauses are what allows the audience to appreciate the thing
that we've just said. And the guys at Ultraspeaking
the way they talk about it it's like when we're speaking. Like if you imagine a snow
globe, when we're speaking it's like we're shaking up the snow globe and then when we pause, we're giving time for the snow to settle. So I still kind of suck at this. It's a work in progress, but certainly I found that my speeches and my talking in public
becomes more powerful when I'm more confident
that I can speak slower and I can take more pauses. Whereas, otherwise the thing
that I struggled with is that I'm sort of in my head where I'm like, oh my God, what if what I have
to say isn't really valuable. I'm trying to respect people's time. Therefore I'm gonna race
through this as quickly as I can so that they can go on and do
something more interesting. But I'm having to kind of
rewire my brain into thinking no, people are here, they
want to listen to me. I am providing value and it's actually better for the audience if I slow down a little bit, if I let the snow globe thing settle, and if I take a little bit more pauses. And finally tip number nine,
something that I find helpful is to actually play public speaking games. So again, my friends at Ultraspeaking they have this Ultraspeaking Simulator that gives you lots of interesting games. And so I'll show you what
one of these looks like. So this is Triple Step, which
is one of my favourite games and the idea here is that
we've got to give a speech about a random topic and then we've got to
incorporate the words that are appearing on screen
as they're coming on screen. And this is like kind of hard
but it's also quite fun to do. I enjoy doing this
sometimes in my spare time. So I'm gonna do it on
the maximum settings. Let's do 30 seconds
integrating eight words into it and it's gonna suggest me a title, so let's see what this looks like. The colour of life. To be honest I think the
colour of life is blue. Blue is my favourite
colour and I find that for example, if I'm running a marathon I see the blue sky and it really helps me, it helps me focus. If I roll the windows
down in my blue Tesla again, it allows me to
feel the breath in my face. Even when I'm going to the toilet having just been for a
round of horse racing, I just feel the colour
blue everywhere around me. It's sort of like an engine. When you have the perfect colour, you can feel as if you're
like a Ferrari engine driving down the road. Even if you're like voting
for popsicles or whatever, it's just the colour in the sky it feels like colour of luck. That's scary. That's hard. These sorts of games, you
can get on Ultraspeaking. They're free. Put the link in the video description if you wanna check it out. It is kind of fun. Good way of improving public speaking. So those were my nine tips of getting better at public speaking. If you like this video, you might like to check
out this video over here which is the lessons that I've learned from the last four years of being a public speaker on YouTube. Those are just general life lessons that kind of being a public figure D-list celebrity has taught me. So thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.
