My TED talk experience - Lýdia Machová | PG 2019

hey everyone good afternoon hi how are you all doing enjoying yourselves they're gathering so am I so am i as you know if you are the opening ceremony you know that I really enjoy being here not as an organizer how does a party see fun and today as a speaker so I'm also having a great time talking to you guys and I think we're it's it's a great event so when the organizers asked me what I want to talk about this year I realized I should probably not answer the questions about my TED talk individually one by one and I'll gather you all in one room and answer all the questions at the same time and I also want to tell you about this experience because I think it may look different if you if you see someone like well Lydia she had a total grade and she did a great job she always does a great job while I block but actually the way I saw it was very very different and I think there are two different stories to tell about this TED talks I want to share my personal account of this of this thing with you before we do I can I just ask you how many of you have seen my talk about how to learn languages oh wow and one question I'm really curious about this because so I talked about the polyglots ways of learning languages and I think for many people it was like polyglots Wow there are these people here there's them while they're meeting in their owning pens right so is there anyone out there who maybe came to the gathering because they heard about it from my TED talk wow this is so cool welcome guys this is so nice wonderful so um before I tell you about how it all happened I think I don't need to really introduce that to this community right so Ted or TEDx maybe some of you don't know the difference between the two Ted is this series of events which are organized from a headquarters in New York the curator is Chris Anderson and there are many many official Ted events happening where speakers are invited who are like leaders in their areas in some type of expertise who have some ideas that are worth sharing with the world and then there are many TEDx events so if it has a little X it means it's a conference of the same type there are certain rules as to who gets to be a speaker what what they talk about or how long the speeches are but these are organized by individuals they need to have a license and they can organize their own own event right and as you can see there are two pictures of me I did a TEDx talk in 2016 I was invited to a small Slovak TEDx event so I my speech was in Slovak and now in New York the one I had in October was the official TED event and I had actually good um so I actually I need to tell you before before that that I actually had both of these things on my bucket list for five years I rolled it down five years ago and I put a lot of crazy stuff in there like I want to dive with sharks you know and I want to do the trans-siberian on my own travel through all of Russia and I want to have a TED talk and just to be sure that I'm sending the right wishes to the universe I made I put in two brackets like not just a TEDx talk right so I was hoping that one day I would I would do this but I was honestly thinking like you know when I'm like in my 50s I have maybe published a book about something I will have become an expert in whatever area I didn't even know what it would be about and so it was it was my great great wish to one day stand on the stage of the Tet events and so the dream came true I remember the one October evening when I was a second of October I was at home in Bratislava and was going to sleep and I was just like going to check my emails before doing that and I see like Ted invitation and you go like no way no way it's someone is playing a practical joke on me so the first thing I checked like is this sent from an official TED conference right and it was and I was like no way so I just did a little dance in my room and then I read the email and it said I media we would like to send you an official invitation to a TED event is this a good email to communicate with you and so I instantly write like yes yes this is a good email attract don't change your mind like is a very good one I'm listening and so then they wrote we really like your ideas about language learning and we think they are important for the future that's a quote and I was like wow this is really cool right how did you even find me like that was the first question and so when we had when I had to talk with my curator Alex so there are 12 curators at Ted as far as I know and I was communicating with one of them with the one who found me and so the first question was like why me you know how did she find me and he smiled and he said well that's the question that all of the speakers always ask us the first thing and they always feel like but there are other people in the area who should be talking about that and you know they have published more books or they're better known or they have more followers but he always he told me that they're always looking for people who have some interesting ideas to share and also are passionate about sharing them and I don't know how but he was following my work for two years and he has actually seen all my videos but there are not even so many but I had a lot of few videos in English and a few in Slovak and he even watched the videos in Slovak and he doesn't speak a word in Slovak but he wanted to see me interact in my natural language and in a natural way so I was like wow this is so cool right and so he told me okay so we want you to come to New York and present at the Ted stage one of the official events and it's happening in exactly three weeks and I was like no no no Peter the dream is getting a little bit further away and I was thinking I mean looking at my calendar my agenda was like okay so six days from now I am presenting at a conference for English teachers in Budapest I still need to prepare my talk for that and two weeks from now I'm having a webinar in Slovak for a thousand people who have already registered and actually in that week where the Taliban was supposed to be I'm speaking at the polyglot conference in Ljubljana and actually have two talks there which I haven't prepared yet so how do I in a TED talk in between and that was only the speeches I was supposed to have of course I had a lot of other things going on right so I was like oh my god can I even do that so the first challenge the first question that dilemma I had is like am I even going to accept this challenge because it's not an easy one as you can imagine and Alex told me this is very unusual that they would ask someone to come only three weeks before the event there's do two very special circumstances and all the speakers always have three to six months to prepare and I had three weeks and we are talking about you know including the journey to New York including the days at the beginning where you are thinking what am I going to wear and you know and like what about the flights where do I go from etc so really really react to weeks to prepare for the TED talks so that was a really huge huge challenge and my big question was should I take that because this opportunity doesn't come you know whenever of course I asked can I come to another event they said well we are actually booked with all the speakers for at least a year so I'm not really and I was like okay then I guess I'm taking that right and so I did I decided I'm changing it but then the king but second big question and that was what do I want to speak about what is the one idea if I asked you guys if you could give me one good solid piece of advice or something you want to tell talk about language learning I'm sure you could do it easily right you would say like I don't know it's better to learn languages in short chunks more frequently than learn once a week for five hours you agree with me that's good solid advice right or you could say well the only way to improve your speaking is to speak a lot right I like this that's kind of what we polyglots know and what I'm trying to tell the world out there with my project language mentoring and so I was thinking these are all cool but these are these the one idea I want to share is this my one message I want to share with the world is this my thing which will be online forever and will be connected to my name like is this seconds I can say about language learning and when you start to ask yourself that question like what is the best thing you can say that's when it starts to get really scary right because if you pick one thing you cannot do anything else and so I decided to talk about the thing which I believe for me personally it's like my main philosophy about language learning and that is my four pillars about what I think language learning basically can be described with these four things you need to make it fun you need to spend a lot of time with the language so have contact with it use effective methods and create a system so that you can do it with a with a plan like for me this is the thank you I really think like all the languages I've learned so far were always this like I changed the methods I changed the resources but it was all I always had fun whatever I was doing right and I'm a systematic type of person I like to make a plan so I was like okay this is this is what I want to show this is my one idea but out of all these I want to stress the fun aspect it needs to be fun but now came the third dilemma how do I put this in twelve in a 12-minute talk and how do i structure to talk how do i whatever be what do i begin with right what do i what do i say afterwards how do i walk people through these four things without making it boring you know how do i how do i get their interest at the beginning do i talk about myself do i come there and break like hey I'm leading Isis all these languages and I mean you don't want to come across as a show-off but at the same time you need to give them a reason to listen to you you don't want to just come like hey I like learning languages and this is what I you know what I found out so it was just incredibly difficult for me to find that way I started to schedule talks with so many people like every day I would talk to three or four people about this like how to do it I talked to people who are good at public speaking I talked to polyglot some of them are here with us I talked to good speakers in the polyglot community so I tried to really think what how should i how should I put it what should I do and every day I spent about six to seven hours preparing for this talk and writing drafts and I started with the first draft I was like this is pretty cool and I showed it to someone feedback feedback feedback like okay gone let's let's let's try a different way you know second draft third draft it was just crazy it was just so intense going through these drafts one after another trying to listen to the feedback of the people and trying to put it in there but it seemed impossible because I mean how do you structure the talk it was just I did not know where to start I mean you want to make it a little bit amusing but at the same time it can fall flat right so you need to be sure that you can tell a joke in a good way so it was just so difficult and so it's not to haunt me I mean I was really pressured because of the time I knew that my ticket to New York is bought by the way the Ted company covered all my expenses if anyone was curious so they they bought me a flight at the beginning I suggest it like can I please suggest what flights would be good because I want to go to New York and then I need to fly to Leblon and because of the polyglot conference and I suggested some flights and then the reply was that but Lydia but this flight is through Paris why would you transfer like that's that's that's not very convenient we want you to fly directly and I was like I didn't even look at that those fights you know I normally try to try to fly in the best way possible in the cheaper flights and they were really really nice that got me a hotel in Manhattan so that was all very cool but I need to prepare a talk to what you say in between right and I was I was starting to get really scared of this and actually I started to doubt myself and whether I am up to the challenge at all because the drafts were not good I knew that I can I can do a good talk but they were just not good enough I had super high expectations on what it should be like and I thought that everyone else had high expectations because when I wrote it on my facebook profile that I'm going to tell of course you know I got a lot of likes and supportive applauses and comments like this you know rock that stage you go impress them you're gonna rap New York City you smash you have a good time you know so people no one was doubting that I'm gonna do a great job out of this it was just taken I mean this was granted because because Lydia you know she speaks a lot she's a good speaker she will do a great job so these comments actually make me even more nervous to be honest and some of them are from you guys okay I will not point fingers but I get it I mean it's of course you its support and I appreciate it very much but at the same time maybe just an idea for you guys if you if you ever have someone who is who's challenged who is facing a huge challenge and that you usually do well don't take it for granted that they will because it's seriously inside it feels like it feels like that seriously something is haunting you and it's scary so I was trying I was starting to panic three days before the flight I did not have my final drafts I did not know what I'm going to say and how I'm going to say that and I didn't know it two days before the flight and so I was trying to look for a person to turn to and and to ask for help and so I contacted this person anybody from Slovakia probably knows this is me helping BAM he's like one of them he's probably the most successful person that I know it's a good friend of mine and he's super successful in everything he's done he he started a company from the living room of his parents and turned it into this million business that's like really really huge he wrote a best-seller he went to iron man so he got success also in the sports area he then went into politics and this weekend his party won the European elections in Slovakia so he knows success in many different ways and I I wrote to him like me hell please help me like I am just so stressed out I'm like really panicking they invited me to this TED talk I don't think I am actually up to the challenge like what should I do and he's answer was like oh wow that's brutal I wouldn't want to be in your shoes sheesh thanks chefs just what I wanted to hear from a successful person you know that I look up to but then he actually added something else okay it wasn't not the only thing fortunately that he told me and he said look Lydia the stress it's part of that like it has to be there if it was easy anyone would do it right and it wouldn't be such a prestigious thing so they invited you for a reason they know you're a good speaker they trust you they know you can do a good job you don't need to be the best ever you know you just need to do a good job so prepare the best way you can and don't try to fight the fear or the stress just accept it it's it's part of the journey and try to enjoy it as much as you can and you will see that a few hours before the TED talk the stress will pile up and pile up and you will want it to end and you will want to go away and you will regret it that you took it but a few seconds before you go on the stage you will suddenly get into a state of calmness you will welcome the stage and you will deliver a good talk I believe in you so that was like so nice I really loved it and I especially loved the these these words about not fighting the stress and this feeling this panic but just accepting and trying to enjoy it as much as I can so here we come to New York and I had my draft number of 14 ready and having no clue at all if it's a good talk or not I mean at that point I just the final draft is the one I only show to my two closest friends because if I showed the previous drafts to anyone I got a lot of feedback and it was making me very insecure such as showed it to two friends of mine to close his friends and they said Olivia this is an amazing talk but I had no clue if they were just being supportive or you know it was a good talk I mean they knew I didn't have a chance to redo it so I came to New York and I sort of staged and it was it was a bit scary but I did a rehearsal and in the rehearsal I was speaking to an empty audience and I totally forgot my lines and in the middle of the talk so they didn't really help my feeling of panic and nevertheless on Tuesday of 23rd October I went on the stage and exactly like Michael said I actually got into a peaceful state right before the talk and I walked on the stage and I had a very nice connection with the audience they were really nice and supportive and so I started to deliver my talk and I started to actually enjoy it this slide is interesting you see what is in the picture there is a picture of the polyglot gathering so you guys may actually see a glimpse of yourselves whoever was here in 2018 which man how many of you were here in 2018 so you guys are in this picture cool huh and I really got into a really interesting feeling and I got into the flow and I was really enjoying myself I I was delivering the talk and I was like oh my god this is so cool I am sharing my message with the world that's right everything was running really really nicely until in the middle of the talk when I was in my flow the tab even manager suddenly walks on the stage and he says I'm very sorry so really dare to interrupt you sorry guys there is a technical problem with the microphone because Lydia's earrings are interfering with it and we need to adjust that and I was like no no no I was in the flow you know I was was giving my best version of the 14th draft of my TED talk and like no don't interrupt me now but okay we had to do it so a guy came up on the stage almost didn't reach up enough you know first to adjust my microphone I had to lie to give him my earring so actually hearing are you cannot see it in here here I still have my earrings in the second part of the talk I don't have my earrings so that's that's how you will know now insider information so he adjusted my microphone and the audience was super nice they were like they clap their hands and you know supporting myself and the teddy band manager said okay Lydia please go back three or four slides and and start again we are recording it so everything's fine I was like oh boy you know so I took a deep breath and started to say it again but the feeling I got from the audience changed so much at the beginning and the first part of my talk I had genuine interest from the people I saw them sitting listening to me like tell us how to learn languages now I saw them thinking I hope you can do that you know I felt sympathy I felt pity I mean you know I made it in a very very good way they were really sweet very supportive but a speaker does not want their audience to feel sympathy for them right you want genuine interest so I I felt that I even I I looked at one of the guys in the audience and and his body position changed so at the beginning he was like listening like this and then when this happened he was like you know like that and and I don't know what that man I he was probably just changing position because of his back or something but it looked to me like well we'll see how you cope with that right so I'm sure you did not mean that it but these were the things that we're going on in my head I really want to give you the account that happened to me and how I saw it and so while I was giving my talk for a second time this this part I was thinking about a thousand things at the same time I was thinking is this is this ever going to go online like or is this gone am I just delivering it for the people here are these people here now bored with the things that they have just heard a minute ago should they actually go to the right place or should I have gone a few slides back right and and I was just thinking about all these things and trying to do the talk at the same time so it was like several layers of consciousness in my mind and and then I stopped in the middle of the sentence and I totally forgot what I was going to say and like more sympathy from the audience more clapping I was like no Behati huh I just wanted to flee from there like this was a fight-or-flight mode like I've never had before I I do quite a lot of public speaking but I've never ever forgotten anything I wanted to say I always finish my sentences or whatever I could improvise but here just blank you know for a few seconds so then I was like okay there is fight or flight I mean there is no flight possibly to here I just have to do this right in any best way I can so I took a deep breath and I finished the talk and I somehow managed to get into kind of a flow state again was not as though the one at the beginning but I could I could deliver my talk and I actually gave my message to the audience and they clap their hands and they loved it so the ending was nice I mean when I was leaning the states you don't really see it in this slide but I have a very sad smile because I was like oh god this is not going online ever like I just I just really need with the stupid pearl earrings you know so I I went down but then I received really good feedback from the people there was a networking event afterwards and they were like this was a cool talk you know we would love there it was interesting but inside again I didn't know if they were just being nice or it was a good talk so I spent a few more weeks waiting what will happen because not all the talks make it on the Ted website right they they make a selection afterwards and if the talk was good enough then they put it online if not well thank you very much for you know speaking at the Teddy down in New York which of course is cool by itself but of course I wanted to have my talk online and so in December and they wrote me an email and said Lydia your talk has been edited you know they obviously they cut out the part in the in the middle and they put the two things together and they didn't met an amazing editing job on it and we are going to publish it on the website I said can I say it's like it will sit on the 4th of January you know when it goes online okay so I really I saw like together with everyone else I was like okay I know they wouldn't put it there if it wasn't you know good or anyway anything but I was nervous and then what happened I really really really did not expect that it was just crazy I mean it was put online the secrets of learning a new language and in the first five days it hit a million views it became the TED talk of the week it was sent by email to millions of people who are who are subscribing to the newsletter and today it had more than 4 million views and it's just been online for more than 4 months you know [Applause] I know right it's crazy it's just crazy like is this is this for real like sometimes you know it's I still cannot quite believe it but what's funny it's that sometimes people recognize me so sometimes I talk to people or not in the language learning community at all and they and they talk to means like wait aren't you the girl I saw what told recently so it's really nice to be recognized and actually in March I was in Cambodia backpacking and I'm a does a 19 year old girl who was backpacking - she was telling me that she likes one languages and she lives by herself like oh really cool how do you do that she was like yeah basically I lend my languages by watching friends and reading Harry Potter and if you've seen my tattoo then you know these words - things that I mentioned like the two examples of all the things that I've done right and I said oh really I mean that's that's so interesting like Harry Potter and France really she was like well really I mean I watch other series not friends and I'm just starting to read Harry Potter I was like but wait but why did you use these two examples and did you like maybe talk or something and it's just like yeah I did and I was like it's me and and she was like no way I'm talking to a touch speaker here this is so cool you know I mean she obviously didn't recognize me backpacking and Angkor Wat or something you know you wouldn't expect that but it was just so nice to see that people are actually they remember the stuff they heard in my TED talk you know so many people write me emails every day that they got so inspired to learn languages and like I've really motivated them and they want to refresh their French or Spanish or whatever because they believe they can do it so I actually managed to share a message with the world and I'm really really amazed at that and when people ask me like how do you feel being at-at speaker you know it's so interesting because I I'm telling you it was a it has always been a huge thing for me like Ted is huge right it's just it's incredible that's why I didn't believe the email when it landed in my inbox but at the same time these things change once you do them because I did a TED talk but I don't feel any special you know I think I'm a normal person who got very lucky because I got noticed by by the one of the curators and I could invite it but I also got to know many other Ted speakers at this event and and they're all normal people too they were also wondering like why me you know so it feels amazing and I'm incredibly grateful grateful grateful for it for this thing but at the same time you know it's not like I wake up in the morning and like oh I'm a TED speaker you know what I mean so I just wanted to share this with you as my as my private account off of the story and that's actually all thanks so much for listening [Applause] and I believe we're doing that questions with a slider right are we good with time oh we are it's perfect so if you have any questions you can ask them on slide oh now with the polyglot being the code word and then II at I hae is that as the room okay did you learn your speech by heart okay yes because 12 minutes right and I'm not used to doing that and I don't like doing that but it was totally necessary because I you cannot really improvise you cannot you know decide that in the middle of the talk oh I will tell this story I mean you you want to know exactly what you're saying because you just have 12 minutes so I did I didn't feel comfortable doing it but I had to what is next on your bucket list you see I have a lot of items in there oh yeah actually so I've always wanted to publish a book and I'm actually going to write one this year so we'll see about that now I made it public so it's a commitment so did you actually meet Ted you mean you made from the movie Ted like the bear right that's cute um okay how did Ted influence your life no Jake oh she's asking I mean I don't I don't know I mean it's it's it feels amazing you know and and I got my message to at least four million people out there and so they obviously many of them many of them came here right so I flows you guys coming here to salokya that's one of the things I guess many of them found my website language mentoring where I'm offering courses so that might have helped as well and besides I don't know I just whenever I mention it you know people go like oh wow Ted speaker that's cool and I got invited to several really interesting events so far I haven't been able to accept them because they were rather short notice but like for example the biggest today second in Asia in India and a few other conferences so that's yeah that's amazing okay how much is it paid and so Ted is very open about this they are they do not pay their speakers it's this you share your message because you think your message is worth sharing and because it's a really prestigious thing but they cover the expenses that they will not pay you as a speaker okay I wanna see how did they know to invite you did you apply or are you just really popular so no they found me I didn't even know that she can apply to be a Ted speaker I learned afterwards that you can but so this curator said that he's been following my work for two years I don't know actually I suspect that he found one of my colleague lore gathering talks because two years before the TED talk one of the first talks I ever did was at the polyglot gathering so thank you guys for you know coming to these events and it's it's um it's great that you know I had a chance to start speaking about languages in this way so I don't think they are trying necessarily to to find the most popular person in the area or you know one who is most followers but someone that feels passionate about sharing a certain message what inspired you to start language mentoring journey was it an immediate success mm-hmm so for those of you don't know language mentoring is is my approach to to be a bridge between us polyglots and the world out there who are struggling to learn one language for many years and they just they don't know what they're doing wrong and so I realized these things after I started coming to these events the polyglot gatherings and the conference is in length fest in in Canada meeting you guys that to to learn a language you know we we have something in common we we have fun you know we make it systematic we we spend a lot of time with the language using effective methods so my language mentoring project is my way of of putting these together and and showing to the people out there telling them you can learn a language too and it doesn't need to be your 15th language you know you can just learn one language in the same way and I'm basically I'm doing courses for people to do that and so what inspired me is this polyglot community that's why I always love coming back and and and meeting you guys and then obviously my own experience in learning languages and then teaching languages at the same time because I used to teach for 10 years and I was just frustrated with the fact that my students are not getting the result that I was getting with all my languages and I was thinking what is different and I realized that the main difference is them expecting to be taught by their teacher and not doing anything else and the moment they realize that they need to do something by themselves and like listen to podcasts and and you know read Harry Potter or watch friends or whatever that's funny it starts breaking and working so yeah that was the polyglot community ok there are a few more but let me see if I missed some questions okay heavy ok 20 likes have you ever put on earrings before speaking on stage ever see yes that's a good one I'm actually having some now right quite courageous right now the thing is I I wouldn't do it if I knew that I would have this type of mic it's not worth it and yeah I talked to a famous TV presenter Abdullah means over for selects who told me like yeah earrings are treacherous you know don't wear any if you don't have to so I would be careful about that okay are there any questions in the audience does anyone want to ask a question just shouted without a microphone shall I just go through the rest of the questions then yeah okay cool thanks for all the questions by the way it's really nice how do you memorize practice your speeches yeah that was that was tricky I find it so difficult to memorize like a word by word so I was just rehearsing rehearsing rehearsing always saying it a little bit in a different way but yeah it's just do it many times and preferably sleep on it if you have the time and luxury you know of doing it in a few days and not not in a short notice okay yes how much time I rehearse this talk okay so the thing with me is I always rehearse a lot I never go unprepared to to any talk and so I always make sure I do it all with the timing and checking at least five or six times so that's what I always do before any talk and actually there is a really cool quote by Woodrow Wilson that I wanted to share with you they asked him once how long he takes to prepare a speech because it was a very good speaker and he said well that depends on how long I'm supposed to speak for if it's if it's a 10-minute talk I need two weeks if it's a half an hour talk I need a weekend and if I can speak as long as I want I'm ready let's go right and that's that's so true if I was to tell you about the TED talk in 12 minutes I would have needed much longer to prepare for that for this one so I yeah at least I I did it at home like rehearsing in front of a mirror I always do that I think it helps at least five times and so it's a it was a 40 minute talk at home so you do the math I don't know and yeah and of course thinking about it writing notes writing yeah preparing the presentation so I guess all in all seven eight nine hours probably now do you give pieces of advice to me cow for public speaking no that's sweet I don't think he needs that are you still learning Swahili it's interesting guys you're interesting so much different things cool okay so my swahili learning now that we are having an honest discussion no because I always learn a language with a special purpose and my purpose was to go to Tanzania and spend a mouse there and I was going to do it in August I even know an organization from the Netherlands who would take me as a volunteer and you know they would they would make sure they have an interesting program it looks so cool but I'm having health problems I've been having call for two months and I just don't have the health state to take the yellow fever vaccination so I think I will actually not be able to go to Tanzania in August and that kills my motivation right away I don't just learn a language to learn a language you know I want to use it for something so I'm having a little break from Swahili right now okay I think we don't need to go to okay this is a good one have you ever made have you ever met two random Russians talk to each other I mean this probably about the TED talk you know I said I said this story of Lukas who I suppose that was the question to do with that so one of the most popular things in the TED talk for those of you haven't seen it was that Lukas baguette II came up with a really interesting way to to learn languages because he wanted to learn Russian and he was really bad at learning English so he didn't want to do it the school way and so he added a hundred random Russian speakers on skype as friends and then he opened a chat window with one of them and Google Translate in the middle and a chat window with another person and so he wrote in Google Translate hello and it showed him privyet and he copied this to the first chat window and the guy said like 3-bit kak dela it's like hi how are you and he copied this to the second person and the second person said kind of show tibia you know I'm fine thank you so he copied it back to the first person and he had to Russians have a conversation with each other without knowing it right it's so cool I love this I love this method that's why I really really wanted to include it in in the TED talk and I think we can actually end with that right if you have any further questions please come to me let's let's talk in the next two days that I will enjoy as a carefree participant and thank you so much for listening thank you guys [Applause] you you

Channel: Polyglot Gathering

Views: 24,807

Rating: 4.9550562 out of 5

Keywords: Polyglot, Gathering, Lydia Machova, tedtalk, language mentoring, jazykovy mentoring, ted talk, lýdia machová, tedx, Lýdia Machová

Id: Y1HVZavHog0

Length: 37min 30sec (2250 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2019