4 TIPS TO MEMORIZING A SPEECH

Memorizing a speech can be an arduous task. Let’s look at some tips to help you conquer the challenge.

1) Visualize Your Speech – Rather than trying to memorize a speech word for word, dissect the speech into a number of key images. By identifying and visualizing the main milestones of the speech, you can commit the anecdotes to memory.

2) Blow It Up – Take 3 images and exaggerate them, so they become distinctive. By exaggerating them the images, they become memorable.

3) Place your images – Next, you assign each of the images a location. To do this, creative a mental narrative featuring the elements, with each image being in a distinctive location along the journey. By traversing these locations in your mind, you can memorize both the different parts of the speech and the order in which they appear.

4) Put it all together – Put the images in order in the locations that they happen in the story.

Here’s an example of a story about a conversation I had with my granddaughter.

At six years old, my granddaughter came to me and said, “Grandma, I want you to teach me French, because when you take me to Paris, I want to be able to communicate”. I said, “I’d be happy to teach you French”. Then she got a worried look on her face and said, “What if they say something I don’t understand?” I answered, “Just say Bonjour!” And she said, “Oh, you mean like Lumiere said in Beauty & the Beast?”. “Exactly!” I assured her. She joyfully answered, “Okay, Grandma!” and walked away with visions of croissants and the Eiffel Tour dancing in her brilliant mind.

These icons can help me walk through the story and remember all the details without having to remember it word for word.
Since we think in pictures, this is a stellar way to map out a speech and not get lost in the delivery, because we have made ourselves visual cues to lead the way.
Bonus tip: Since your sub-conscious mind doesn’t sleep, speak your presentation in its entirety just before you go to sleep. Like a recording on a loop, your mind will be replaying the speech in your mind over and over all night long.
Make memorizing your speech fun and you’ll be surprised at how calm and confident you’ll be when you take the stage.

Let the Engaging Speakers community help you shorten your journey to a successful speaking career. https://engagingspeakers.com/

Gail Brown, Founder of Engaging Speakers, gail@engagingspeakers.com