- Hi, my name's Marisa Peer.
And today, I want to talk to you
about the number one secret
to communicating effectively with other people.
See, many people have a message
and they have something they want to say,
but they really struggle to communicate with others.
So let's talk about why,
why can it be so hard to talk to somebody?
Well, usually because we have an inner belief:
"I'm not really worth listening to."
"I don't have anything interesting to say."
"Who wants to listen to me?"
And that often goes back to parents saying things
like, "Don't draw attention to yourself."
"Stop showing off."
"No one is listening to you."
I worked with an amazing girl who had a great message
but just couldn't deliver it.
And it turned out she was the youngest of five children.
And the others would say, "Well, you're the baby.
Nobody wants to hear what you've got to say.
Shut up. We're not listening to you.
You don't know what you're talking about."
And that may sound quite silly,
but she heard that so often, so repetitively,
so consistently that it sank in until she believed:
"I don't know what I'm talking about."
"Nobody wants to listen to me."
So if you are told a lot: "Stop showing off."
"Nobody wants to listen to you."
"You don't know what you're talking about,"
it will affect you.
If you have a belief that, "Well, I didn't go to college
so I'm not interesting."
"I didn't finish college so I'm not smart."
And that simply is not true.
Oprah Winfrey had a traumatic childhood,
and yet she's one of the best paid communicators
of all time.
Tony Robbins also had a traumatic childhood
and is a phenomenal communicator.
So if you want to be incredible at communicating,
first of all, you have to take some time
and start to say this to yourself:
"I have got something to say
and people are interested in what I have to say.
What I have to say is worth listening to.
I am worth listening to. I have a message.
I have a voice, and I have something to say."
And I want you to think of Greta Thunberg.
She has a voice, and she has a message
and she has a delivery,
and she is passionate about what she has to say.
And you have to learn from that and say, you know,
"If I've got something I'm passionate about
and I believe in it, and I believe in me,
and I think I'm the person
who is meant to deliver that message,"
then you can go out there and deliver that message.
I am passionate about making therapy easier
and more accessible for everyone.
I'm passionate about ending bullying in schools.
And because I'm passionate about it,
I can talk to anyone at any level.
It wasn't always that way.
When I was a kid, I was very insecure.
When I used to speak, I'd speak very fast
and I'd play with my hands a lot.
And the first time I was on television,
I had to literally sit on my hands
and make myself speak really slowly.
So if Greta Thunberg can go out
into the world of the message, so can you.
And then I want you to think of Amanda Gorman.
How amazing was she?
She wrote the poetry that she delivered
at Biden's inauguration, and she was incredible.
She was 23 years old.
So having a message is not about having a great experience,
being highly educated,
coming from a family of orators and speakers.
It's about believing that you can deliver your message.
So how can you overcome your fear of communicating?
And this is true,
whether it's talking to someone in a bar,
talking to someone at a party,
going to talk to your boss at work,
going for an interview,
in any situation where you are going to be called upon
to speak to somebody.
Even if it's socially, just take a minute and think:
"What would I like to say?"
"How would I like to say it?"
Practice makes perfect.
When I gave my first TED Talk, unlike other talks I'd given.
And I had to really make sure I delivered every word
within 18 minutes.
So I had to practice it and time it.
And it was very useful for me to do that
because I realized that when you practice it,
it just flows.
It's like the words of a song.
When you say the first line, the second line comes to you.
So practice what you want to have to say.
But it isn't just what you say;
it's how you say it.
When you are speaking,
keep your shoulders down, make eye contact.
And many people make the classic mistake
of speaking really fast and thinking:
I just deliver this really fast.
I don't want to take too much of this person's time.
I just gavel it through and go (mumbles).
And then I won't take too much of their time.
And others do the opposite.
They take too much of your time.
They spend so long telling you their story,
and they haven't quite tuned into the fact
that you're not that interested.
That you were, but they've lost interest.
So read the other person.
A way to read someone is when someone is interested in you,
you'll notice that their shoulders face yours,
their knees face yours, their hips face you.
And if you're talking to someone on they're bored,
what happens is they tend to do that,
their shoulder tends to turn away,
their hips and knees turn away.
They start looking somewhere else.
They're looking for someone else in the room to talk to.
I was somewhere recently
and somebody came up to talk to me, and he was lovely.
He was talking to me for so long.
I eventually said, "I'm really sorry.
I just need to go and find my husband to give a message,"
because I felt very cornered by this person.
He was perfectly nice,
but he told me so much about his life,
and I kind of tuned out.
So read the person.
When you can sense they're tuning out,
that they're looking somewhere else,
they're moving around,
they're making signs they want to leave,
draw your story to an end very quickly
and say something like, "Oh, I need to go
and talk to someone else."
Or, "Let's go and talk to other people,"
or just draw it to a close.
So the pacing is very important.
Not too fast, not too slow.
Read people.
If you are talking to them and they're talking back
and they're nodding their head,
and they're very enthusiastic
and their body language is matching yours, then carry on.
But another part of communicating
is listening to the other person.
You have two ears and one mouth,
and that means you should talk a little less
and listen a bit more.
And the worst communicators
are those who talk about themselves for a long time:
"I did this and this happened."
"And then that happened."
And they don't ask you about you.
And that can feel incredibly rude.
So if you are communicating,
make sure to ask the other person about themselves.
Even if you're speaking on stage,
ask your audience questions.
So look at some great communicators.
Look at people on TED Talk who find it really easy to speak.
One of my friends, who's head of a major network,
said, you know, "People who are good at what they do
make it look easy."
That doesn't mean it is.
But I believe that if you love communicating,
it is actually easy.
You just have to be aware
of not monopolizing someone's time,
not taking too long with your message.
So think about your message.
What is your message?
What would you like to share with the world?
What are you passionate about?
And then think about how would you like to deliver that?
How would you like to speak?
And just get used to it.
One of my clients who was very famous,
and his job was to speak, said,
"I just can't increase the volume of my voice.
I can't speak loud enough.
I can't orate with power.
And I just don't know why."
And his interesting scene was going back to a time
when the father would come to visit them.
And the mother would say, "Don't answer the door.
Be very quiet. Don't let anyone know we're here."
And then the debt collector would come,
and they all had to huddle in the background
and be very quiet.
And he was always told: "Don't make a noise. Be quiet."
They also lived in someone else's home.
They didn't have any money.
And they were constantly told: "Be quiet.
Don't make a noise.
You've got to be very quiet here.
We're guests, and they might throw us out."
And then there was this whole thing
about the people living underneath
and they couldn't run or shout.
And he learned over and over again to be incredibly quiet.
And when it was his turn to speak,
and he was speaking about very important events,
he just couldn't raise his voice.
After that understanding,
that revealing, if you like,
he went on and gave the most amazing speech,
which he's done ever since.
And I tell you those stories
because I wonder what is your story?
I think we tell ourselves stories.
My story might be well, I was the fourth kid.
No one's interested in me.
Your story may be, well, I'm a woman,
and how can I progress in this male world?
I feel uncomfortable being the boss of all men
and giving them instructions.
We tell ourselves stories,
and our stories cause us a lot of harm.
But this is an old story.
You can create a new story.
I was lucky enough to decide to change my story,
to tell myself I was smart; I was bright.
I could do something amazing.
And knowing what it was like
to feel like an unfulfilled child
made me have a passion to help other children believe
that they matter, that they're significant,
they're worth it.
So don't make your initial story,
or indeed your parents' story.
I wasn't wanted.
And my mom would say things like,
"Well, we're not the kind of people that can do that.
We're just ordinary people.
Those things don't happen to us."
Don't make someone else's story your story.
Your teacher's story: "You'll never amount to anything."
That's her story, his story.
It's not your story.
So you need to tell yourself a better story:
"I'm here."
"I've got something really valuable to offer the world."
You may not know what it is,
but if you think about that movie,
"Catch Me If You Can,"
well, Leonardo DiCaprio was getting onto planes
with some amazing skill.
And now he works for the FBI.
Because although you could say, "Well, he was a fraud.
He was a cheat; he was a criminal,"
He had a great skill, and now he works for the FBI.
So everyone has a skill.
Everyone has a talent.
Everyone has a gift.
And everyone has something to offer the world.
You have to find out what your gift is.
What is your skill?
A way to do that is to think:
What did you love to do between the age of seven and 14?
Whatever you loved to do at those key ages
is often an indicator of your unique skills.
So I used to love to write stories.
My mother kept them all.
And they were all stories about families that were unhappy.
So that's kind of interesting that I became a therapist
and worked with families that are unhappy.
My mother obviously didn't realize the message in the story
was that I was in an unhappy family,
because she kept them.
She was very proud of them.
She loved the writing, loved the illustration,
and she gave them all back to me when I was a grown-up.
But what is your story?
And who can you share it with?
And why would people want to hear what you have to say?
You need to look at those questions and answer them,
even if you think people aren't interested
in what you have to say.
After all, Nelson Mandela went to jail
for I believe 27 years.
And he said, "I knew I'd come out
as the prime minister of my country."
And so he had an interesting story.
I can do this.
He also said, "My whole people are in jail.
You can't separate my imprisonment from theirs.
I decided to make something amazing from that."
And that's quite a story.
He could have made that story terrible,
but he made it amazing.
So look at your story. Make it amazing.
Believe you have something to say, something to offer,
something to give, because you absolutely do.
If you believe you are a great communicator,
get your breathing and speaking right
and read your audience.
You will indeed become and stay a great communicator.
Thanks for tuning in. See you soon.