Speech Retraction
Speeches, soon after delivering can sometimes be wished upon to be retracted
I had to chuckle when I walked passed this Lululemon retail outlet. I felt sorry for the mannequins that also had to endure the recall of all their clothing. This being the contest season in Toastmasters, I wondered how many times I presented a speech and almost immediately after finishing, wanting to also, “recall” my speech.
Before I even sit back in my seat, I immediately start reflecting and realize, “I forgot to mention this line” or “I missed inserting this funny part“. Winning is nice, don’t get me wrong, but the main reason I want to win is so I can deliver that speech again, after polishing and tweaking just a bit more, so I do remember to add the funny part or throw in a longer pause, perhaps even a humorous smile.
Competing is stressful, in that, after you practise, rehearse, tweak, polish, for so long, you do eventually have to “set the ship free“, like letting your child go upon the free open world for them to take on a life of their own. So too does a speech eventually have to be “set free” to take a life of its own, in the form of pictures taken, videos recorded, judges marking on their score sheets and people analyzing next day about what they liked and didn’t like.
As much as we want to, it is just too late for us to recall our speech. Whatever the speech did, has been done, good or not so good. We have to live with it and probably not even look back (atleast not too much to where we are beating ourselves up).
And if you are competing, you just hope the judges did not notice what you know you left out or just didn’t do quite right . . .
Here’s to all YOUR speech competition attempts, “set your speech to a life of its own“, this International Speech Contest season . . .
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or this episode where I analyze a speech;
