Speaking Publicly is HARD!!!

I haven't spoken about the very few times (twice to be exact) speaking at virtual webinars, but after this last time, I finally felt...comfortable in my own skin. The first time was during a showcase webinar, "Lessons Learned Using CenarioVR: Real World Examples in Pharma" with eLearning brothers. https://blog.elearningbrothers.com/lessons-learned-using-cenariovr-real-world-examples-in-pharma

I was definitely not ready for the dynamics of speaking to a closed audience, it was daunting seeing just myself and having to speak without any cues from the audience. A very eye-opening experience and for the moment made me think that speaking engagements were not my thing.

But life is funny and about a year later I found myself speaking at another engagement virtually for the University of Irvine and the University of San Diego, "Instructional Design: Career Pathways & Trends in a Thriving Industry" but this time I walked away feeling very proud and thinking "maybe I'm not so bad at these speaking gigs".

So I guess my take-home message on speaking publicly is that you can't base your decisions on just one time of trying, you need to push yourself into uncomfortable situations more than once, because who knows I may find myself on a TED Talks one day.

-Val