Joanna Newton: [00:00:00] So you think, Oh, I got this TED talk. I'm on a big stage. Great. But you actually have to be as a person probably to be successful at it. Very humble to be able to take the feedback and take the criticism
Diane Gehart: well, yeah, it was humbling. Absolutely. You know, because I did it too. I know several hundred people on my list showed up for when my practice session.
[00:01:00]
Joanna Newton: Today's episode is all about TED Talks as I'm talking to the founder of Therapy That Works, Dr. Dianne Gayhart. Now, Dianne was actually our first ever guest on our podcast, and she recently gave a TED Talk, and today we're going to talk all about it. Welcome back, Dianne.
Diane Gehart: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Joanna Newton: Well, I'm so excited to talk about TED Talks. Ted Talks today, because for so many people, especially in our space as like online business owners, entrepreneurs, course creators, and coaches, this is like a bucket list item for people like to land a Ted Talk. Can you tell me about how you got this opportunity?
Diane Gehart: you know, it started with an email and someone actually saw my YouTube videos who is a TED talk consultant, has an online class on how to [00:02:00] do a TED talk, reached out to me. And offered to do a free, you know, consultation with me. And I looked at their site, sounded interesting. And, and, you know, I get so many of these, I normally like blow them all off, but I don't know.
Diane Gehart: It was something about, I think the fact that it looked like they had done real research to find me, like they had actually listened to my videos. I said, okay, if they'd worked that hard to find me and screen me, I am going to, go ahead and just meet with them for free. And I registered for the course and I got to meet with them.
Diane Gehart: And yeah, so that's how I got started with it really. And, but it was something, I have a friend and we joke, cause she's been saying this for years, Diane, you need to do a TED talk. Diane, you need to do a TED talk. So the seed had been planted. It is a bucket list item for me. I think there's a lot of people.
Diane Gehart: People have the same, you know, kind of whim, whimsical thought. And so when it, when it appeared in my inbox and everything seemed to align, I just, I just went for it.
Joanna Newton: [00:03:00] I love that. That's so cool. And one thing we talk about on this podcast and I talk a lot about when I do consulting is that. Putting yourself out there gets you opportunities, right? You have this YouTube channel. You share your knowledge all of the time out there in the world. And sometimes if you're a creator, now you have a, you have a pretty good sized YouTube following, but if you're a small creator, sometimes you probably feel like, is anybody listening?
Joanna Newton: Is anybody paying attention? Well, people are looking for people who create content to give them more opportunities, right? So if you're out there creating content, creating things. Putting yourself out there will get you opportunities, right? And then those opportunities will get you bigger opportunities and so on and so forth.
Joanna Newton: And I think it's just so great that this came as a part of your YouTube channel.
Diane Gehart: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Joanna Newton: So I know that a lot of preparation. must go in doing a TED [00:04:00] Talk. Can you talk to us about what that sort of preparation is like? I'm sure so many people are thinking like, how do you write a TED Talk? How do you practice a TED Talk? You could probably write a whole book about this.
Diane Gehart: Yeah, it's a lot and it's even more than I thought it was going to be. So I have been a professor for 27 years and I have spoken at professional conferences for over 30 years. I do a ton of professional speaking. I do keynotes. I do multi day events. Training psychotherapists is kind of my area of focus.
Diane Gehart: So I have, I have spoken a lot. I've given literally hundreds and hundreds of talks. It's presentations and I have my YouTube channel that I've had for a decade. So I'm like, okay, you know, certainly Ted talks at next level. It's like one step up from a keynote. And I've done lots of those, but boy, this was a whole different level.
Diane Gehart: ball game. It is not for the faint of heart and it is not a casual endeavor. I'll start by saying normally with every other [00:05:00] presentation I've ever done, I just write an abstract and then they look at it and then they decide, yeah, we want that. And then I get to put the talk together with a Ted talk.
Diane Gehart: It's pretty much reversed. Um, I spent six months writing my Ted talk. Before I even thought about applying. And when I say writing my TED talk, I, that includes the research, that includes the first draft of the first draft with everything was, I mean, almost over 24 pages. And the final version, um, was four pages.
Diane Gehart: So you literally give it your all, and then you cut and cut and refine, and every word is crafted.
Joanna Newton: How many minutes is like your final talk?
Diane Gehart: Well, you know, it's funny. I had targeted it to be 13 minutes and then right before I went on stage, like a week or two, I was doing all my final, you [00:06:00] know, um, getting feedback from my final kind of practice performances. Everyone said, slow it down, slow it down. I was talking too fast. So my final talk is about 16 minutes.
Diane Gehart: Um, so I really slowed it down, but normally. It has to be under 18. Nowadays they want them to be 12 to 13, but it was funny when I was practicing, they're just like, slow it down. It's too much information, too fast. I can be a fast talker when I'm not nervous. Okay. And when you are nervous, it tends to go off faster.
Diane Gehart: So
Joanna Newton: a lot faster when you're nervous.
Diane Gehart: yup.
Joanna Newton: And you have to have your talk completely memorized, right? Was that like a different, because you, you lecture, you probably have a PowerPoint, you have slides, you're chit chatting, like, how different was it to give a completely, to prepare a completely memorized talk?
Diane Gehart: Yeah, and it was totally different and it was like giving a performance. I mean, it was like, um, when I was a musician or a dancer, you know, [00:07:00] when I was in high school and college, you know, you memorized all that stuff. Um, there, there are, well, I will, I had to, I had to have slides. There are two slides that go with my talk that I think have a, I don't know, a total of 12 words on them.
Diane Gehart: Um, and cause it's not supposed to be a slide based presentation cause eventually when it's on YouTube, the slides usually aren't there. They can't edit them in properly. So that was a huge endeavor and I really was surprised at how much time it took, but I use three different methods. to memorize three or four, depending on how you count it, um, to memorize the talk.
Diane Gehart: And I practice for at least an hour a day for two months. So it was, it was a lot of practice and rehearsal. So the first, um, my, my Ted talk coach, she used something called a binaural beat, which is just kind of this low kind of beat thing in the background that's supposed to kind of help you memorize.
Diane Gehart: [00:08:00] And I recorded myself doing the speech and this was the passive memorization where I would listen to this, right? And while I was walking, exercising, you know, um, cooking dinner, folding laundry, that sort of thing. It just like constantly playing to kind of get it into your subconscious, um, was the first phase.
Diane Gehart: And then in the next phase we color coded it. And as I was doing that, there were certain lines that just like it truly just went into your subconscious. It was kind of amazing. And then there are other ones where I was just like stumbling and I couldn't remember it, but we. I broke it into seven parts and each one was color coded for the second phase.
Diane Gehart: And so then I'd listen to the recording, follow along with the script. And then once that was pretty good, the last phase was, and I thought this sounded totally corny in the beginning. I didn't think it was going to work for me. but it was absolutely the best technique. Um, and she called it a scenic [00:09:00] memory and I know some other people call it different types of memory, but literally for each of the seven sections, I imagined being in a room in my house for one, you know, one room per section and then you, uh, you know, find three to four objects in that room that you can attach to your talk.
Diane Gehart: And, and so that if you get nervous and you lose your place, What room am I in? What objects are around here? And you can grab the object and then pick up with your speech, which I thought, I'll try it. Right. But it really ended up being the most helpful. You know, I had a lot of fun with it. There were certain lines, um, that were really tough to remember, you know, like there was one paragraph that said, you know, the key to is to break down, you know, every goal, smallest little, you know, step that you can do even on your most difficult day.
Diane Gehart: And then next I needed to talk about, you know, eating baby carrots. And so I have like the, my kids do karate and they have practice boards. I had the broken, you know, it's [00:10:00] great. I have a board that I can break. And then I'm like, I just couldn't remember carrots. So I ended up going and taking a picture of the boards with some carrots on it to just remember break and then carrot.
Joanna Newton: Carrots!
Diane Gehart: yeah, there's another one where I talk about exercising. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, little by little, you know, you're going to build on these micro habits where, and I talk about, you know, in a. You know, you're going to be, you know, soon you'll be finding yourself eating a, you know, a whole kale salad after a long run with a circle of your best friends.
Diane Gehart: And I couldn't remember that one either. So I just have a treadmill desk. So I just threw some spinach on it, you know, and I took a picture of the treadmill with spinach and that's that line. So I had a lot of fun kind of putting it all together. but that was really key in terms of the scenic memory really helped me remember things and he kind of moved through the whole house in order.
Diane Gehart: And that is what I relied the most heavily on and actually what I found the most helpful.
Joanna Newton: That's amazing. As you were talking about having to memorize everything, it reminded me of [00:11:00] my theater kid days because,
Diane Gehart: Mm hmm.
Joanna Newton: used to memorize lines and monologues and things like that. But I never spoke for 13 minutes straight. And what I love about that, that visualization technique reminds me of like what we did to memorize scenes because we would it. Um, use what our like counterpoint said in the scene to remember our next line. So rather than focus on like just memorizing your lines, you're memorizing your lines in relation to what the other people are saying. So like the other person's line, you like build an association to your line. So it's, it's really honestly the same memorization technique.
Joanna Newton: But when you're up there for 13 minutes by yourself, you don't have another person. And so you're. You're associating to objects you can easily memorize and picture, which is so fascinating.
Diane Gehart: Yeah. It really worked great. There were also a few places where I ended up [00:12:00] having certain movements. There were some of them where I had three points, you know, it's like a list of three things. And so you'll see my hands go one, two, three. And that's like how I memorize, you know, those lines.
Joanna Newton: Yeah, because putting together like a movement with a phrase, you know, if I do this, I say this, if I do, not
Diane Gehart: Mm hmm.
Joanna Newton: is watching this podcast, some people are seeing this, but I'm moving my hands in odd directions. Like you can use that body movement to connect to to that. Memory. It's like using muscle memory, right?
Joanna Newton: To memorize those, those words.
Diane Gehart: yeah, it was really fun. I had a, had a really great time doing that.
Joanna Newton: Very cool. Now talk to me about the promotion of, of it all. I know you did some things like before, during, after, like how did you kind of get out into the world that you were doing the TED Talk and were there like restrictions, things you couldn't do, you could do, stuff like that.
Diane Gehart: So there were [00:13:00] lots of restrictions even in announcing it. And so even though I was, you know, I got accepted and I signed the contract, um, it was about 48 hours after signing the contract. I get an email. They're like, don't tell anyone you're doing a Ted talk. And I'm like, oops, I just put it on, just sent it to 20, 000 of my closest friends. So, um, So yeah, they were very restricted cause they wanted to do the big reveal and they took a month to do their reveal. So, so I didn't get a whole lot of time beforehand, but I did once they did. So I started lining some things up. I mean, obviously I had stuff going on my, um, um, with my list and my, my people, so my, and so I did a, a live, um, practice.
Diane Gehart: with them. So I got feedback from everyone. And I think people really enjoy it. People really enjoyed giving me feedback. They're like, this is really kind of cool. So I got feedback from people that way. I also did a little mini [00:14:00] YouTube series with just, you know, some of the preparation stuff I was doing, which actually made it really fun for me too.
Diane Gehart: Cause otherwise it's a pretty lonely thing, kind of getting ready for your Ted talk. So it was a lot of fun. You know to do that and so my TED talk is supposed to be out any day now And so once it's out, I'll be doing you know, some more live events, you know that I'll you know Notify people on my mailing list or a YouTube channel I hope to, I'll be partnering with some other, you know, folks, kind of like yourself to just talk about, you know, the, the talk and feedback from, you know, other people, other professionals about how this talk, you know, what they think about the talk, whether it resonates, what works, what doesn't, to, um, to promote it that way.
Diane Gehart: So, so yeah, so those are some of the things I'm doing to promote it.
Joanna Newton: Awesome. I love, I love that you brought up this idea of like getting feedback on your talk because I think sometimes when we think about someone doing a TED Talk, we think like this [00:15:00] person has arrived. They have it all together, right? They don't need it. They don't need support. They got this opportunity because they're a perfect public speaker.
Joanna Newton: They have everything together. But throughout your process, you had a coach, you had someone helping you, you had someone, you know, giving you feedback on the actual content, helping you memorize it. And then you put it out in the world to get feedback from the community. You know, peers are just people you know, right?
Joanna Newton: To get that, it's almost kind of very humbling. So you think, Oh, I got this TED talk. I'm on a big stage. Great. But you actually have to be as a person probably to be successful at it. Very humble to be able to take the feedback and take the criticism and adjust and, and go through that process. What was that like?
Diane Gehart: well, yeah, it was humbling. Absolutely. You know, because I did it too. I know several hundred people on my list showed up for when my practice session. You know, and different people had different reactions and, you know, you [00:16:00] know, some of it was like, just how I moved in my shoes didn't seem natural, which is probably very true.
Diane Gehart: I hadn't worn heels cause the pandemic for very long. These were like four inch stilettos. I'm like, yep, little Rocky on those. I did it in front of my son's fifth grade class and I handed them the script and I said, let me know if I forget any lines. Um, and so my kids actually spotted me. I mean, every single night, it's funny.
Diane Gehart: Both my kids are black belts, one's 11, one's 14. And so three times a year before they got their black belts, we would do these, um, they had to do testing. And for one or two months before each test, we would, every night after dinner, we spent an hour just practicing karate. And it's funny, we just picked up with that and we just reversed it instead of me you know, testing them.
Diane Gehart: They, they were testing me. And so it was funny. My one son had just gotten his black belt, my 11 year old. So my two boys would sit there with the script and they would let me know which, you know, where [00:17:00] I stumbled or, you know, if I missed a section, cause there were about 32 paragraphs and it was, it's easy to miss one of those when you're going through it.
Diane Gehart: So my kids were spotting me, which really, I think helped build their confidence. And I think having them watch, see how hard I actually had to work to memorize it. Which just kind of normalizes a lot of the work they have to do. Cause my other son, one of my kids just had a play the month after. Right. So he had to memorize all of his lines.
Diane Gehart: And so, you know, it just kind of gave a template for like, yeah, people don't just arrive on stages and have this flawless talk and it was, I think they really enjoyed reversing roles for once. Um, and giving me corrective, uh, feedback.
Joanna Newton: Yeah, I love that you involved your Children in that. That's so cool for them to see their mom doing this right and seeing them out in the world. And I think too many times we You know, expect mothers to just be [00:18:00] mothers,
Diane Gehart: Mm hmm.
Joanna Newton: if you're not, you know, if you're not putting everything into your children and supporting their dreams, then you're not doing your job as a mother.
Joanna Newton: But actually, families should support each other. And teaching your children to support someone else in their dream is also such an important life skill, right? They're going to encounter people all of the time that they support, and then sometimes people are supporting them. And that's a really cool piece that I didn't even like, think about, you know, in, in the process.
Diane Gehart: Well, I actually took them with me cause I'm a single mom and you know, my mom, my mom actually passed away six weeks before my talk. So it was a really, I mean, and there was a point where I'm like, I literally, I got the acceptance to do it. And then my mom went into the hospital and she was gone 18 days later.
Diane Gehart: It went really fast. It was really difficult. And, um, I had to ask myself, am I going to accept this? Cause once, you know, [00:19:00] and go through with it. And so it was, it was, so it was an interesting time. So I ended up taking the boys with me cause there was no one to really leave them with. And it was like the best.
Diane Gehart: Experience for them. They just loved it. They were so excited. Like, Oh my God, mom's doing a Ted talk. I gotta be there. So, um, so we've had to fly up to Canada from Los Angeles. So it was in the middle of winter. It was, you know, January 20th, 27th was my talk. And so, and we had to, we flew all day and then we took a train for three hours.
Diane Gehart: We arrived and there's like six feet of snow, right? And they were in the theater with me for like eight, 10, eight, 10, 12 hours at both days that we were there. Because there were always two rehearsals before the live events at night. So it was these monster long days, but it was so beautiful because they became, and it was run at a university campus.
Diane Gehart: So there was these teams of college students, mostly the tech team. You know, we're hired professionals, but um, but they were just hanging out with the college students [00:20:00] I remember right before my actual talk in the second day. I'm like, okay, I've got about an hour to go Let's go rest at the hotel. They're like mom you go back to the hotel.
Diane Gehart: We're gonna hang out with the guys They were trying to join the Minecraft server for Queen's University because they had the clubs were out Why can't I join their Minecraft server? I'm like, Oh, probably not age appropriate. But, um, but they had a great time. You know, they're on the stage with the Ted letters.
Diane Gehart: We got all these cute little pictures and they're just like crossing their fingers, helping me. And my son actually is the one who got all the good pictures. Um, and for my live practice runs. So my, my son has most of the pictures I have from the Ted talk or actually the best ones I have are from my son.
Diane Gehart: the rehearsal actually. So it was really nice and they were very excited for me and you could see their relief when I was done that it went okay. They're like, mom, you really did. Okay. It was great. So it was, it was a really special family, [00:21:00] um, experience.
Joanna Newton: That's amazing. If, if you're, if you're listening and not watching, I have the biggest smile on my face. Like this is such a lovely heartwarming story and for your children, I just think what a great experience for them to like on, like it's a great experience for you. But, you know, think about what you're teaching them about going after your dreams, about doing things that are hard, about preparing for things that are hard.
Joanna Newton: things that are hard. Then they also saw this whole production and what went into it and just got to experience something that not everybody gets to experience and it'll help them see a future for themselves that is, they're able to dream big and think big and all of those things.
Diane Gehart: Yeah. And I actually had mothers from my son's fifth grade class who said that my practice TED talk made such a huge impression on their child, just in dreaming and thinking about what they can do and just even understanding, you know, what type of [00:22:00] hard work really goes into, I mean, a TED talk is a performance, you know, and we make it sound like it's a casual conversation, but boy, we work really hard to make it sound like a casual conversation.
Joanna Newton: So I want to talk about you stepping out on stage, right? You've got your four inch heels, You've got that whole thing, you get out there, you've got to talk, it's the real thing. There's people in the audience, you're being recorded, all of that. What was that like?
Diane Gehart: It was intense. And I, you know, I will tell you when I saw the video, I was a little disappointed. The first half you, I can tell I'm a little, I'm a little nervous. It's not horrible. I stumbled on three different lines. And then that's the honest to God truth. I was like, Oh, so I had, I did go and get some editing.
Diane Gehart: So it's a little smoother than the original. Um, but the second half, I am in like full flow mode and it's really, I love that half. So if you watch my talk, go to the second half, that's the better half. Go to the [00:23:00] second half. But that said, um, you know, it was, I'm on the stage, you know, it's so bright. You can hardly see the audience, right?
Diane Gehart: Uh, and it's an, it was, it's intense, you know, you're just, the adrenaline's pumping, the lights are blaring, you're wanting to remember your lines and trying to go slow enough that you don't, you know, don't rush, go slow. And so doing that little self talk and just praying to God. My biggest fear was I wanted to hit, you know, all of the sections.
Diane Gehart: I didn't want to miss a section with 32 sections. There are a few places, um, Um, where it was easy to skip. It's funny when I got super theoretical or conceptual, those were the sections. It's when you had something concrete, like carrots, you know, and kale. I remembered those sections because there was a real noun there.
Diane Gehart: So I was worried about missing one of those sections. but yeah, you know, and I watched the video, I can see the second half. I can, you know, you can see the flow, you can see the, Yeah. I had a lot of, it was fun. [00:24:00] It was fun. So you got to finally relax into it.
Joanna Newton: yeah, and the first time you do it. Anything is always the scariest, like I even remember like the first podcast episode that Michelle and I filmed, even though no one's watching us, you're, you get like jitters, like it makes you a little nervous because you're doing something you've never done before.
Joanna Newton: And then the more you do it, the like, less nervous you get and the more relaxed into it. You know, I'd imagine if you gave a similar style of talk again, where you had to memorize it, get on a stage with big lights and all of those things, your performance would be. that much better, right? Because you had this experience.
Diane Gehart: Yeah, correct. Absolutely. So yeah, it was nice to see that I did eventually relax into it. I'm sure the next time I would hopefully start in a more relaxed place, but it was intimidating for me and there's not a lot that intimidates me, but that red dot stage, man.
Joanna Newton: It just [00:25:00] did it for you. But like, you have to do those things, right? I always think about how, you know, we've talked about this on the podcast before, but if, you know, if you get every opportunity you try for, if you do every single thing that you ever try perfectly without a hitch, then you're not like, reaching high enough, right?
Joanna Newton: You're not reaching your full potential because you're, you're not stretching yourself in that way. And so stretching is how you learn, how you grow, how you get bigger opportunities, how you get on bigger stages, right? You have to be on, you know, one stage first to get on the next one. And so I can't wait to watch it.
Joanna Newton: And I know you said it's coming out, um, this week, which means.
Diane Gehart: haven't gotten a date yet, but it should be, yeah, it should be hopefully sometime in the end of April here, uh,
Joanna Newton: Okay. So I think that it will likely be out by the time [00:26:00] this podcast episode is out. So we will, assuming it is out, link it in the description of the video. So for everyone listening, you can go watch the actual talk after hearing Diane talk. all about her experience. Um, I'd love to know before we start to wrap up, is there anything else, any sort of story or tidbit or life lesson that you learned during your TED Talk that you'd like to share?
Diane Gehart: Well, you know, I, you know what I'm going to share? Because in my Ted talk, I talk about micro habits and kind of the, I don't know if it's ironic or paradoxical kind of thing, but, um, I wrote my Ted talk five minutes a day. during that six month period. So I actually use the, the technique that I teach in the talk to did promote mental health.
Diane Gehart: I actually used it to draft the Ted talk and including during the research. I mean, I just set a timer for five minutes right [00:27:00] after breakfast. I take five minutes, work on the talk and then go about my super busy day. Next day I kept doing it. And so I talk about using that, those micro habits. to promote mental health, but I actually use it to write my books and to write my Ted talk.
Diane Gehart: And the real key is when you're working on something professional, you're creating something is that, yeah, you're like, how much, what good is five minutes of work? Well, you get more than five minutes of work when you use the micro habits, when you're creating something, cause you spend five minutes, you know, typing or writing or researching in the morning.
Diane Gehart: Um, but then if, when you do this every day, your mind is constantly percolating on it. And so when you read a news article, you're like, Oh, that relates. And you're, you know, you chat with someone about it or you, you know, and so you're, so you get a, probably an hour's worth of work on it by the time you're done with your day because it's always.
Diane Gehart: there in the back of your mind with every piece of information, every person you encounter, every free moment while you're washing dishes, right? [00:28:00] You can go, your mind wanders back to it. So you end up doing a ton of work on it because you're doing five minutes a day on it.
Joanna Newton: That's so cool and I'm so excited to dig more into those habits, um, which is the perfect segue because in a couple of weeks we'll be releasing an episode where Diane's going to talk. All about the actual content that she talked about during her TED talk, which is all about micro habits to promote your mental health.
Joanna Newton: I'm so excited to learn about that and you'll have that in our next episode. We'll also put all of the information, um, about Diane, like where you can find her online, her TED talk, assuming it's available, um, below in the show notes. Thank you so much, Diane, for being here and we'll catch you again.
Diane Gehart: Thank you so much for having me. This was so much fun.
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