Something went wrong before a speech? Now what?

You are about to get in front of 150 people and you’ve just realized you left your mojo home.

Mojo is what gives you the self-confidence. It can be the photo of your beloved one, the script of your speech, or as it was in my case, the proper size suit.

The suit was one size bigger than my right size.

Lost the perfect look

It happened to me two times in the recent couple of years. With two very different results. In both cases, I was the eMCee of a wedding.

In the first case I looked at the guests and thought, would they spot, that I had felt uncomfortable? They were all dressed spotless and yet here I was in the middle of the spotlight so sloven.

They looked so carefree while I felt so careless.

The first encounter

The first time I started to talk to them happened during the welcome reception. They were casually chitchatting when all of a sudden my voice came through the speakers…

I delivered my introduction and then stopped… only to realize that 90% of the people didn’t even notice that I had started talking.

I remained invisible.

Can you imagine sounding through 400watt speakers and still being unhearable?

If you don’t have the self-confidence, you will be unhearable, unnoticeable and invisible.

Sadly the whole night went down with the same feeling, that I’m not worth their attention.

Hence, I stuck to very brief announcements, peeking at events from a faraway corner and keeping a distance from the guests. Needless to say, that it was not the best MC experience of my life.

Remaining invisible or power through?

So a few weeks ago the same problem came up.

I was not sure if it was my wrong suit again, but it felt too big. I had lost a few kilos over some couple of months before, so I thought of that as the reason, but anyhow… it didn’t feel right.

Before my first encounter with the guests, I realized, I was in the same shoes again.

But this time I went down a different approach. Just the opposite of last time.

No mojo from the inside? Then get some from outside by powering through!

When I started to talk I gave all my heart to it. I tried to spend as much time among the guests as I could throughout the night and connected with them as many times as I could.

So did they notice me?

They didn’t only notice that I was there, but they listened. We learned each others’ names. We shared stories and a couple of days later I still heard stories from the newlyweds about how much guests loved their MC.

Yes, I could have played it safe. But isn’t that what kills the good things in life?

If you would always have played it safe, you never would have learned to drive a car. You never would have changed jobs. And you never would have had your first kiss.

Where to get your self-confidence?

The biggest self-confidence boost you can ever get is if in times of doubt, you go down the harder path. Don’t think of what could go wrong, just jump right into it.

So if next time you miss your mojo in a critical situation, then don’t hesitate to go with the flow. Maybe a great success or maybe a great story, but definitely something great will come out of it.

 

Also, If you want to learn how to avoid awkward silence, when in the middle of a big event, sign up below to learn about smalltalk.