114. How to avoid the post-speaking crash

After a big speech do you feel -

🥱 Low in energy?

😢 A bit down?

😐 Lacking motivation?

This is very common.

After the speaking high comes the crash 💥

This episode explains why we have this post-speaking crash and strategies to avoid that feeling.

Transcript

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to That Voice Podcast. Welcome. If you're here for the first time, you have tuned in, on a very important episode, and I actually feel a little bit bad that we have got to Episode 114 before we're speaking about this. How to avoid the post speaking crash. And this came about because one of my clients who did a fantastic keynote, she messaged me and said, Sal, I find it takes so much energy from me. I'm totally depleted. I feel totally crashed. I've got no energy. How do I bounce back? What do I do? And so I decided to do a Instagram post.. And I said, you know, after a big speech, do you feel low in energy, a bit down lacking motivation? It's very common. I do hear it a lot and I experience it myself.

You know, after the speaking high, comes the crash. And this post got a lot of engagement, I'm just reading some of the comments now. Well, so valuable. I often do feel the crash after an engagement. I find having some nice food and quiet time, really helpful. We'll get into all the strategies. Great advice.

If the speech goes well, I'm wound up. If it goes not so well, I'm a bit down. Yes. I feel this. I did six talks this week and stayed in a hotel. So I had time to wind down and recharge. Great advice, Sal. I think we often push and push and then wonder why we crashed. Oh, my gosh, this has totally happened to me.

I did a couple of public speaking competitions recently and everything, energy emotions is just so heightened. And then I came home and didn't know why I felt a little bit down. I've never heard anyone talk about this before, so thank you, Sally. It puts everything in context and that's why we need to speak about it.

We need to speak about it today because the crash is real. There is so much energy and focus that gets put into preparing for the speech. What are we going to say? How do we want the voice? What's the structure? What are the things that we do beforehand? I cover that in what's my speaking runway in an earlier episode.

And then of course, we've got the delivery. What do you do while you're up there? How do you keep the audience engaged? How do you keep your energy high? But a very important part of the piece, part of the piece, very important piece of the puzzle, my goodness... is what do you do afterwards? That post speech ritual is just as important as every other part of the process in Ayurveda, a medicine based on the five elements, they've got the three doshas, Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. And this is a really, really helpful way to look at the importance of the post- speaking ritual and to understand the crash. So everything's a cycle, so Vata, which has the element of space and air. That's all the ideation. Oh my gosh. What are we going to say? It's the preparation. It's the putting the speech together.

It's the lead up. Then we go to Pitta. So Pitta is fire and water energy, and that's the execution. That's the delivery. That's the standing up doing the thing. That's the real energy expenditure time. We cannot just go from Pitta back into our regular life, which is also often Pitta. So Pitta is the go, go, go. The to- do list, the meetings.

At regular life for a lot of people, that's something I've had to watch because if you stay in Pitta too long, you're on a one-way track to burnout. You also can't go from Pitta just to straight back up into Vatta, which is what's the next thing, what's the next idea. The cycle has to play out. We have to go from Pitta down into Kapha.

Kapha is the rest and reevaluate. It's the earth and the water. It's the recharge. And this is what we really need to honor to avoid the post speaking crash, rather than think about it as a crash, we just need to honor it. It feels like a crash when we fight it and don't give it space and allow that cycle to play out.

So the question to ask yourself is after each speaking, engagement, what are you doing to get back into your Kapha? What are you doing to recharge? What are you doing to rest? And this is different for every person. It's also different, depending on what time of day the speaking gig is. For me, I'll do things like clear my calendar.

So if it's a workshop in the morning, I'll clear the calendar for the afternoon. If it's a speaking gig at night or clear the calendar the next morning. And you might be like, Oh well, I can't do that. It's not realistic. Take charge of your own life. Take charge of your decisions. Have boundaries. Be strict because it is so much more important that you can replenish your energy.

If you're not replenishing your energy, you're going to have none to give once you go back out into the world. So clear the calendar. Can you put any self-caring? So schedule a massage, a facial, a float. Can you give your mind a break? And for you, is that reading? Is that trashy TV? Is it quiet? As was mentioned in one of the Instagram posts, she put herself in a hotel, like, do you need to get away from the craziness of your household and have some time alone?

Is it a walk, a walk in nature?

After a really big workshop, I will have a beautiful meal and then I'll come home and have a nice bath and do like a mud mask or something. And then I am in bed early. I'm in bed early because I know that I need the rest. The energy is being zapped. And look, that's not to say that I don't enjoy what I do.

I love what I do. And this is where people get confused. They think if I've crashed after the speech, that must be because I'm not good at public speaking. And the speech went really, really badly. If it went really well, I wouldn't be feeling this way and we can spiral down if we're not honoring our energy and we're just in a heap, we can feel depressed.

We can start second guessing everything we said. We can convince ourselves it went really badly. And these are all just signs that we haven't gone into our Kapha enough. We haven't had that post speaking ritual. For a lot of my clients would include sending me a Voxer, sending me a message, giving me a little rundown of how it went.

So think about what it is for you. That quiet time to rest, replenish and recharge so you can enjoy the whole process. I love after speaking events, I really look forward to it. It's like a little holiday for myself, and then I'm ready to go back up to Vatta. Ideas, next thing. And then back into execution and the cycle can play out.

The cycle can go as was intended. And so if you have your journal nearby, this might be a good idea to write some ideas down. What can you do? As I mentioned, depending on the nature and the time, you can't always do the same thing. It's not like you can always say I'm going to get a facial, read my book and go for a walk.

I mean, maybe you could, but it's, it's hard to do exactly the same thing. So I would just have a lot of ideas. And then before your speaking gig, you can work out what your post speaking ritual for that event is going to be. In saying that you can have a common thread. I have a client in her post speaking ritual.

She takes five deep breaths. Five deep breaths is part of what she does afterwards.

So have a think about what will it be for you and this holistic approach? Thinking about rituals, using concepts like Ayurveda is what we do in Speak from your Soul. So if this episode has been really helpful for you and got you thinking about speaking a different way, you will love Speak from your Soul, that's my six-week online course to help you find your authentic voice and make it heard. And we have a lot of this valuable conversation around. What rituals we can put into place to not just nail our speech, but also to honor, there's that word again, also to honor our energy and enjoy the whole cycle.

I will link to it in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning into That Voice Podcast. I will be back on the 'podwaves', the airwaves, very soon.