If you have been made best man, chances are the minute you were asked, and then accepted your body went into anaphylactic shock at the prospect of having to make a best man speech. Nobody sensible likes the idea of public speaking and with the role of best man you’ve got the added whammy of having to make people laugh. Some may disagree with this, and in you live in the USA, you may have a point, as culturally your best man speeches don’t focus so much on the humour. However, in the UK, Australia and NZ, it’s always a dollop of fun and you have to step up to that. So with that in mind, why oh why do nearly all best men around the world tackle such a huge leap outside their contort zone by doing absolutely nothing about it?
The one single best piece of advice I would give anyone who has a speech to make, is to do something about it as soon as possible. This generally means you have anywhere between 6 months and a year to plan for it. Most best men deal with their biggest fear of public speaking by ignoring the situation for 99% of that time period, and then doing something about it with a few weeks, days, or in some cases hours to go. Actually, this is the best case scenario, because most guys don’t ignore it, they spend a huge chunk of their lives worrying about it, suffering sleepless nights and getting themselves into altered mental states, and then do something about it at the 11th hour. Why?
Why put yourself through all this torture when starting as early as possible means all that time spent worrying can now be invested into the writing process, and also getting to know the speech. Instead of laying awake on Sunday night thinking about a speech you’ve got to make in a few months, you could be silently debating a better way to tell that story, or land that joke. The more time spent with the speech simply means the better it will be, and the better your performance will be. If you leave it to the last minute, not only will your anxiety levels be off the scale, but getting to learn the speech and creating something that really works will have been made so much harder thank to the time pressure and what that is doing to your state of mind.
Do yourself the biggest favour of your life…and start now.
