Give a Ted or Ted(x) talk

“After I finished giving my talk, I thought it had been a disgrace. The critical voices in my head were screaming nasty judgments at me. From my panicked perspective, there had been long, eternal, gaping pauses. I had forgotten a bunch of ideas that I had planned to say, and I couldn’t catch my breath more than once. To imagine that it was coherent at all felt delusional. Luckily, my speaker coach assured me it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But those who know me could see it. In the theater lobby afterward, a stranger even said, “You did a good job of pulling it together there.” She saw my stress too.”

“In the end, all the preparation in the world is never quite like the actual experience of doing something. Things are always a bit different from how you imagine. When I walked onto the stage to give my talk, I was incredibly excited and terrified all at once. As I turned around to face the audience, I felt quite emotional to be standing there and sharing my story with a sea of unfamiliar faces. The slide clicker was a bit finicky, and I couldn’t get my first slide to advance immediately for some reason.”

“Doing a TEDx talk took way more than I could have imagined. When I first applied, I had no idea what I was in for. I didn’t know there would be so much to learn about what to do and what not to do during a TED talk. And so much to learn about myself, my message, and the creative process.”