This is part of a series on the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking Course.
I did my make up session of week 3 of the course last night. It was a room of totally new people, but for one of the first times in my life, that didn’t bother me at all. Maybe it was something about knowing more about the course than they did. When I think back to how I felt after week 2, it was really early days and all we’d learned was some basic memory techniques and people’s names. I was able to remember a lot of names, more than I would have before the course, certainly. It really does seem to be all about paying attention and making a conscious effort to remember people’s names.
Week 3 is a presentation to the whole group, which would have been much harder if I hadn’t already done the rest of the course. This group seemed to have fairly confident people in it, overall, as none of them had much trouble getting up in front of the group and talking about something for a couple of minutes. The talk was about a defining moment, and from just these talks, I got the feeling that I would have enjoyed getting to know the people in this group.
My defining moment was a performance I gave back after I’d just left high-school, back when I used to be a musician. I played percussion, for those who are interested, and I played a xylophone solo to a full house in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House back in 1995.
The other talks were far more interesting. One guy had saved a workmate’s life when he used to work as a roofer. His workmate had slipped and put his arm through a glazed tile roof, then passed out from shock, wedged into the tiles. This guy managed to get his mate down from a 2 story roof and take him to hospital. Pretty amazing stuff.
Another girl had been suffering from debilitating headaches. ‘Suicide headaches’, they’re apparently called. Cluster migraines, or something. She completely changed her life, giving up a pretty spiffy career as a lawyer in London (her office had a really nice view), to try to get all the stress out of her life and reduce the amount of pain in her life. She was doing pretty well.
They both won awards last night, and deservedly so. I hope they enjoy the rest of the course, and it would be great to see how well they can speak on the last night.
As for me, well, I’ve got my little gold star on my certificate now, so I can put that on the wall and start looking for my next challenge. This will be the last entry in the Dale Carnegie Course series. If you’re interested in this course, or any other training Dale Carnegie have to offer, check out their website: http://www.dalecarnegie.com/. Note that I have no interest in the company besides having done one of their courses and thinking that it was awesome.