Rehearsal Changes Everything | What Public Speaking Taught Me About Confidence | Episode 497

Practice sounds ordinary until you notice how much of your life depends on it. We dig into the difference between practicing and not practicing, starting with the kinds of incentives that got many of us moving as kids, including the Pizza Hut Book It era where reading at home actually came with a reward. But the real point is bigger: practice is how you build competence, and competence is how you build confidence you can feel in your body.

From there, we follow the shift that hits in middle school, college, the trades, and your first job. Nobody gives you a sticker for showing up, and nobody rescues you from the consequences of skipping the work. We talk about why mentors and teachers can only write letters of recommendation when you’ve earned trust, and how looking in the mirror can be the start of real growth. We also get personal about how long it can take to find what you genuinely care about, because having a reason makes practice sustainable.

Public speaking brings everything into focus: nerves, adrenaline, coping strategies, and the temptation to “wing it.” We share what actually helped over time, like rehearsing in a larger space, repeating the material until you understand it, and using notes as support rather than a crutch. Mental health shows up here too, including panic attacks, and we talk about practicing anyway, one rep at a time.

We close with a story about a small act of kindness at a baseball game and why paying it forward is a skill you can practice like any other. If this resonates, subscribe, share the show with someone who needs a boost, and leave a review so more people can find Voices for Voices.

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Chapter Markers

• 0:00 Why Practice Matters
• 1:26 Pizza As A Practice Incentive
• 5:11 Self Discipline When Nobody Watches
• 10:44 First Presentations And Real Fear
• 15:45 Repetition Builds Confidence
• 22:55 Panic, Preparation, And Doing Hard Things
• 28:58 A Hot Dog And Paying It Forward
• 37:19 Challenge To Practice And Closing

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Transcript

Why Practice Matters

Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices 0:01

Hi everyone, it's Justin here, Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us, whether you're watching, listening with us here in the United States or across the world. We value your time, your love, and support. Thank you for that. We are going to jump right in into this particular episode, and we're going to talk about practicing versus not practicing. And this comes in so many different forms. And one thing that I really liked because I love pizza, is it was called, I think, the uh book it, and it was through Pizza Hut, and at the end of like the grading period, you could take your report card in, show it to them, and then you could get you know a personal pan pizza for free uh in return for that. So there was uh I'd say that was probably the biggest incentive that I had uh when it came to reading. And now that's a form of practice. So practice reading at home, doing math at home, uh, other subjects at home, uh, really prepared me and the class and all the students uh for what was uh to come in in the class. So all the way back all those years ago, you know, we're talking 35 plus years ago, uh, but Pizza Hud did away with this book it program. I don't know why, probably because they don't want to give away free things. I don't know. Uh, but that was a cool incentive uh because you know, ask any kid that doesn't have allergies to any of the ingredients in in the pizza. Uh if they if they like pizza, and I I would I would think uh a high percentage of those uh kids those children would say yes. So it's all about practicing or not. If I didn't practice, I would have an empty space on you know my card, and and and so I would uh get points deducted, you know, the class could have a thousand points or five hundred or you know, whatever the number is, and points got deducted if we didn't do our homework, and that I would say led into uh getting older into middle school, high school, college where we could make the decisions as excuse me, as students. We weren't gonna get a star sticker, we weren't gonna get a free pizza, we just needed to do the practice at home, at the dorm, at the uh at the apartment, at the house, wherever. Just like nobody was going to wake us up. And if you are like me and and love your sleep, uh it's it's easy to go, oh, I I don't want to wake up for that eight o'clock class. I don't want to wake up for this nine o'clock class. Maybe I take a nap in the afternoon. Oh, I don't want to go back to class at 2 p.m. or 3. Uh but that really molds us into who we are. Some more than others. It took me a while to kind of get on the wagon of okay, Justin, you know, tell myself, you need to get the class. Like, there's gonna be time to party, there's gonna be times for that. You just need to get the class, do what you're here for. You're here to get an education, and even if you're going to the trades, then you're learning, showing up when when you need to. Uh you know, if you're uh in an uh in a apprentice program, uh making sure you show up for everything you need to there, uh because in the end, we want people to vouch for us to say, yeah, I'll write a letter of recommendation to you, for you, uh, that hopefully helps land a job. And if we haven't practiced, we didn't do the work we were asked to do, we just tried to escape by a teacher. Could have a different answer. They could say, you know, I I don't I don't write letters or recommendation and emotionally and mental health-wise, I couldn't that could really send us into uh I don't know, like a dark place like, oh, they don't like me, they won't help me when we just need to look in the mirror sometimes. And that's where the work starts. Have to have a reason. If you don't have a reason, you're gonna find it very difficult to do. I've done it, I failed. I failed miserably, and then there's times where I didn't fail miserably, but it sure took a heck of a lot of time to figure out what I cared about professionally. I mean, as I sit here forty-four years old, it's taken a betterment of thirty-five, forty years I really got it down, I think. And again, I I think God wants me to do the work with voices for voices. Maybe not, I don't know, but right now I feel the calling to help a lot of people. And so all those presentations that I I gave in in my classes, if I want to prepared for those, or there were many times that I didn't prepare, where you might hear people say, Oh, I'm just gonna wing it. Basically means that I didn't prepare. Or if it's an individual presentation, and you or I have to do all the work ourselves. Teachers can tell. So can parents, and so through all those I'll say, ups and downs, I remember, oh my gosh, my first calm class, my first communication class. There were three different presentation types. One was persuasion persuasion informative, and I can't think of the third one, but there were three three different presentations, so it was literally like a 100 class or a 101, which is you can't get past you've got to take this class before you can take other classes in the major um business or marketing where I ended up marketing management. And I remember asking people, I got some interesting feedback. Like, what do you do? I'm so I'm so worried, I'm so frightened to get up in front of a class. And this was I want to say only, but there's only maybe 15-20 students in there added than the the professor. So it wasn't like there were hundreds of thousands of people, but it was the first time that I was like, what do I do? How do people and now I know what coping mechanisms are? But back then and college I didn't. So I asked people, one person said that go for a walk, get some fresh air. That was probably the best one that I got. The second one was run up and down the stairs and tire yourself out because that's basically, you know, that adrenaline is kicking in because you got so much energy. And then the last one was have a because I was twenty over twenty-one at the time, was you know, drink, have some alcoholic beverages before you go and give your presentation. I forget what I ended up doing on that presentation in particular, particularly. But I got a I got a wide range of of options. But all that came down to was practice. So yeah, I there are times where I drank alcohol before presentations, obviously not the best choices. Luckily I didn't get caught uh or it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Uh so when we move on from that and then I had the next presentation, then the next I would still be nervous. I would still be I don't say shell shocked or but I would I would. I I would still get nervous and what it really came down to over the years was the more you know or the more that I know about the presentation, right? We can rehearse and then read it off a teleprompter if we if we need to. But if we're not, if we're not gonna if we're not gonna do the teleprompter, which a lot of people don't have access to one, uh plus you're being graded by eye contact and all those you know different areas, uh teleprompter wouldn't probably work very well for that class or a class like that. But what I was finding was the more that I practiced, and I remember this vividly, I had a pretty pretty big presentation, and I actually got some good advice was I think we can get into one of these like auditorium type of settings that were set up for speakers, and so there was like a podium and then a microphone, or where a microphone would be, and then there was probably room for at least a couple hundred people, and so I went with my roommate at the time, and I practiced a couple of times, wasn't great, wasn't flawless at all, but that repetition of practice of again understanding the content like it just goes into like the more you go over it, the more you understand it, more you understand it, the more confident you're gonna sound, the more confident you sound, the better I guess it people will be able to follow along and may lead to a higher grade. And so that's what I've found over the years, whether it was in school, out of school. I remember right out of school be on you know conference calls and like nowadays it's just standard procedure, it's just the way it is. Uh but I remember first job out of school and being in a room and had to and you know the interview process, right? You have to sell yourself or try to to get that job. I've had so many interview opportunities, and I'm sure I sund in nervous, I probably stuttered, I probably got sweaty, um, I probably got disoriented. Uh it's just the way it is as individuals. But what I've found is the more practice, first off, you have to like what you're doing. You have to like the topic or topics. So that's where when we talked about in a previous episode, we have to do what we want to do in life, not what somebody else wants us to do, or what a significant other or a roommate, or you get the you get the gist of it. We got to we have to do what we want to do. So it starts there. Right? Because if we like what we're doing, we're gonna probably spend a little energy and time on that particular topic or adjacent topics. And if we do that, and we're asked to give a presentation or give an update, aside from the introduction of hi, my name's Justin Allen Hayes, and here's my background, and I'm here to talk about baseball or whatever the topic is, or multiple topics. So if we like what we do but if we like what we do, there's gonna be hard times. Always gonna be hard times. But in general, if we like what we what we're doing, it's gonna make us want to give a good presentation. And so we're probably gonna again, we're probably gonna practice. Here we are back to practice. Yeah, you hear dog barking. We have we have dogs in the neighborhood, I think a lot of neighborhoods do. So you'll hear that. And so when we like what we do, we're gonna put the energy and time into that, and then it comes down to practice. I can't tell you how many times I've put notes together or even like a script, a script like preparation. Like written down, typed up, printed out. Then it comes to the delivery method. Do we read it monotone? Like, hi, my name is Justin Allen Hayes. Or do I say, hey everyone? Thanks for including me. Nice to meet everybody. My name's Justin Allen Hayes. It's just one way. I'm just going right off the cuff. And years ago, I couldn't do that without feeling like I was having a panic attack. So that's where the mental health came in. Because there were some topics that I I didn't really care about. But again, if you're getting getting paid by a company, and that's what they do, and that's what management's telling you you have to do. Well, you don't have a whole lot of choice. I had panic attacks all the time. I still get them not as frequently. So by practicing, that helps us get closer to something. Previous episode, check it out. What are we getting closer to? So we do the practice, we do the hard work. Uh appear more confident. And I can't tell you from a couple minutes ago how many times when I talked about you know putting like a script kind of together. I can't tell you how many times it kind of the beginning stages of my presentation presenting career. How many times once I learned what I was talking about that I didn't have to read? I didn't have to read off a slide and PowerPoint or another another like program. I didn't have to read the script verbatim. That was because I internally liked the topic or topics. And it was nerve wracking, yes, leading up to the presentation as I started to get my feet under me. Yes, it was nerve wracking. But then for whatever reason, I don't know how, I don't know why. Once I got started, then it was like, oh wow, I know what I'm talking about to a better extent. And so I didn't have to rely on notes as much. If there were key points, key areas that I wanted to make sure I mention, I would make sure to include, and I would make sure that I look down to find those, highlight them, circle them, underline. And so all those presentations, all those years, all those panic attacks, all the mental health challenges that I still battle each and every second of every single day. Voices for voices, helping others. So sometimes people ask me, how do you get started? And like why do you why why are you so passionate about helping people? Give you this example of might have been part of the feel that I needed to say to myself, Justin, feels good when you do this. And this, oh my word, twenty-two, twenty-three, maybe twenty-four years ago. A while ago, let's call it that. So I was in a relationship and we like baseball, so we went to a baseball game. There's a hot dog vendor that we would go to when I would go to the ball game with my family because hot dogs were inexp less expensive than buying inside the the ballpark. So we would that's what we do. We would we drive up, we park, and we go to the hot dogs in. That's what we would do. So the relationship I was in at the time is not the relationship I'm in now, so it's not my wife. We we were in line at the hot dog vendor, and I had seen over and over and over and over again, you know, go to quite a few games a year. There always seemed to be a veteran. And I'm not saying a veteran deserves any additional help. But if they've fought in a war, if they've completed their military service here in the United States, yeah, that's part of what allows baseball games and so many other things go on and keeps us safe. So there's a veteran, he was uh he had lost a limb, and he was always in the same spot. So we're in the hot dog vendor line. We get up, we order our hot dogs. What would you like on them? And and then I ordered an extra one, and then I told the person I was in a relationship with, I said, hey, uh I'm gonna go over here and give this person a hot dog. I don't I don't know if he he's eaten today, but I'd I'd I'd rather give something tangible, like food for nutrition. I mean, we can say how nutritious hot dogs are, but that's beside the point. The deal was I went over and I gave this person a hot dog. And I said, Are you you know, like, are you hungry? And you kind of nodded, and I said, Here's I got a hot dog. If you want mustard or ketchup, I got a packet, uh, but I just wanted to get this for you. So small in the grand scheme of things of life, and the person I was in a relationship with was like, Well, why did you do that? I was like, 'Cause I don't know if he's eaten, and the hot dogs are again very inexpensive, so I didn't have to spend fifteen dollars or whatever they charge now, and then I felt good because I helped somebody, and so when I got the well, why'd you get him the hot dog? Like, why don't you just keep it? It just got me thinking, like, maybe that's something that maybe that'll come in handy sometime. I don't know. Like I said, 20 years plus ago that this occurred. And so it's the little little kind gestures gestures like that. It's the presentations and the practice that all comes together fuses together into who we are. So practicing is very important. I'm learning that more and more every single day. How important practice is so give it a try, whatever that is for you. Something you like, just give it a try. Give it two or three of tries, or four or five if if you can. Because practice is gonna help you feel more confident, and your confidence is gonna show to others, and I'm doing all this with all these mental health challenges. I mean, I got a laundry list of diagnoses. So by all intents and purposes, I shouldn't be able to do a show. I shouldn't be able to to talk. Not trying to say that I'm the best speaker at all. I'm not. But I'm better than if I never tried. I feel like I've tried, I've given up my all. That's all that matters. There's gonna be all kind of noise, chatter, no matter what. So stay true to yourself. Once you find what you like, what you enjoy, what you feel you're called to, maybe try it and practice, and then practice maybe a little bit more. And then one day you can be teaching others how you learned, how you practice, and that's the goal, and that's what that let's call paying it forward, is I'm sharing my story, my experiences with you, so that you're able to share your experiences with others. And that, my friends, is how we're gonna reach and help at least three billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond. Thank you for watching, thank you for listening. Follow us on socials, give us a big thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe, share, and we can do it. I know we can. Have a great day, let's celebrate all the voices in the world, and let's not only be a voice for ourselves, but maybe there's somebody else that may need or may want to share their voice. And maybe you can be that maybe you can be that lifeline, that person that uh helps that individual or individuals share their voice. So until next time, Justin Alan Hayes, Voices for Voices. We'll talk to you, we'll see you very, very, very soon. Bye bye for now.