Three days. Thirty people. A whole lot of overlap. (And yes, if you’ve been following along, this is part three…part one is here and part two is here.)
Over the course of nine days of class, I listened to my colleagues deliver their speeches. They came from sales, finance, functional medicine, skincare, engineering, you name it. Different industries, different life stories. And yet, the same themes kept surfacing again and again.
At first, I wondered, “Does this mean my message isn’t unique enough?” Or thought “Well, they said it WAY better than I did.”
What I realized over time was, in fact, the opposite: The overlap was proof that the ideas mattered. And even more importantly, the way each person said it, who they were, and who they were speaking to, made it land differently every time.
It took me a long time to find my voice. Some days I’m still finding it. We hold back from sharing because we think, “This has been said before.” And it probably has.
But just because someone else said it doesn’t mean it resonated across the board. There’s a lid for every pot. The words that don’t click coming from someone else might be exactly what someone needs to hear from you (or me!) 😊
Will people judge? Absolutely. That’s biology. What helps me to forge ahead are two things.
- There is nothing truly new and novel. Just people’s individual takes on something. If others have said it, so can I. With my own spin on it.
- I remember that they’re judging the idea, not my value and worth as a human.
And let’s be honest (yes, I know that is a standard AI ”tell” but I swear to you this is how I talk!), you judge too.
When we hold back out of fear that it’s “already been said,” we deprive others of the chance to hear it in a way that could finally connect. We deprive ourselves of finding and having a voice. When you share, you make it possible for others to feel seen, to act, to grow.
Michael Port is the founder of Heroic Public Speaking. On the second-to-last day of class, he said, “You need to fight for your ideas.”
What’s an idea you have that’s worth fighting for this week, even if it’s been said before?
