Are You Faithfully Speaking?

“If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” – Thomas Alva Edison

Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart) said, “Believe in yourself. You are braver than you think, more talented than you know, and capable of more than you imagine.”

Believing in yourself is all about faith in yourself. If you have faith in these three areas, your presentations will be outstanding every time!

Faith in yourself when you speak. Faith in your audience when you speak. Faith you can speak well again to future audiences.

Faith in Yourself When You Speak

Delivering a powerful presentation that makes the audience think, feel, and do is winning in the public speaking arena.

Make your audience think about how they view your subject and ask themselves whether they should change their views on your subject or whether their views are confirmed by what you say.

Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Evoke feelings in your audience members. You want your audience talking about your presentation tomorrow, next week and next month.

Spur your audience do what you say by providing concrete activities they can accomplish the minute they walk out the door.

I’ve said before what Earl Nightingale taught me: “You become what you think about!” It is true. History over millennia shows us that action follows thought.

Did you know thought also follows action. Norman Vincent Peale of “The Power of Positive Thinking” fame is famous for the “As if” principle. Even if you may not believe you can do something, attempt to do it and your thoughts will change so you will, in fact, be able to do it.

Have faith in yourself when you speak. Faith in yourself is greatly enhanced by practicing exhaustively before you speak. In the Air Force, we had a mantra: “We train the way we fight and we fight the way we train.” The public speaking way of saying this is “We practice the way we will speak and we speak the way we have practiced.

So, having faith in yourself is vitally important to delivering a successful presentation.

Having faith in your audience is also vitally important to you having faith in yourself.

Faith in Your Audience When You Speak

It may sound strange to have faith in your audience. What does this mean? It means believing your audience will react favorably to what you are saying. It means they will ask interesting questions. It means they will appreciate you being with them for the short time of your presentation and teaching them something valuable to them.

I am certainly not a psychologist, but I do know that people usually live up to the expectations you have of them. So, in your presentation talk about the hopes, dreams, and expectations of your audience. It is great way to let your audience know you understand them and what they are seeking in your presentation. Doing this engages your audience!

Audiences come to hear you speak to gain knowledge they can use in their daily lives. At the beginning of your presentation, they are already eager to hear what you have to say. Your job as a speaker is to enhance and grow this eagerness with every word you say.

We all know that one success leads to other successes. In this same way, sustained faith in yourself and your audience leads to faith you can speak well again to future audiences.

Faith You Can Speak Well Again to Future Audiences

In the music world, we all know of singing groups that have one hit song everyone loves and then we never hear from them again.

Your job as a speaker is to continuously improve your speaking content and delivery to deliver outstanding presentations time after time and avoid becoming a “one hit wonder” that no one hears from again.

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones, said, “You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.”

So, read widely and every day in the area of your speaking and associate with people in your field. There is a social media platform for every profession. Use it to meet others in your field. These books you read and people you meet all inform the content you write and speak.

There is a final step you must take to continuously improve your speaking: take action on what you read and on the advice others give you.

Earl Nightingale tells this story in his “Lead the Field” program: Earl’s profession at the time was news writing and delivery on local TV. So, Earl joined a writers group to help improve his writing. It did not take him long to realize the people in the group wanted to talk about writing and do little actual writing. Earl made his living from his writing. He soon left the group.

The successful people in this world act on the advice they receive. The unsuccessful people in this world merely think about the advice they receive, but don’t act on it.

You can only improve your speaking by speaking often, reviewing your performance and then making and implementing plans to improve your speaking for the next time. This formula for success applies to anything you want to accomplish. There is no other way to be successful!

Have faith you will continue to improve your speaking and you will. Remember, you become what you think about. Set high expectations for your speaking. You will meet them!

Having faith when you speak is critical to a great performance. Have faith you will deliver a great presentation. Have faith your audience will respond to you spectacularly. Have faith you can and will continuously improve your speaking performance.

Faith ultimately is believing when there may be no outward reason to believe. Faith comes from within you!

Remember, action follows thought, but thought also follows action. You always have the power to act!

Call to Action

• Do what you need to do to improve your speaking even if your faith in yourself is shaky

• In your next and succeeding presentations, always have faith your audience will want to and need to hear what you have to say

• Always think if you’ve spoken greatly once, you can do it again. It is true!




“One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.” – Arthur Ashe





DiBartolomeo Consulting International’s (DCI) mission is to help technical professionals to inspire, motivate, and influence colleagues and other technical professionals through improving their presentation skills, communication, and personal presence.

Contact DCI at
info@speakleadandsucceed.com or
Office – (703) 815-1324
Cell/Text – (703) 509-4424