We’re rarely surprised to see deer in the woods, fish in the river, or camels in the desert. That’s because they’re always there: it’s their natural habitat. Now, many of these animals were born in their environments, so it’s tough to give them credit for their qualified survival skills. But all animals have adapted to their environments over many generations of their species’ existence. We know that being “natural” in a given place is a simple matter of time–the longer an animal remains in a location, the better able to survive and thrive that animal will be in said location.
More simply put, experience matters. The only way to gain experience is to gain experience–if you want experience in one field or another, you have to put yourself in the type of situations that will provide the experience you want.
So how does this apply to presentations? Many times, we hear people say things like, “I’m not a natural speaker,” or, “I wasn’t born for the stage.” Both go without saying, just like you could easily say humans are not born to fly. But millions of us fly every day, so it’s really beside the point.
When people decide they want to do something, the limitations of our natural dispositions become irrelevant. Perhaps this is what makes us so special. If you want to deliver excellent presentations (because, among other things, you see the value in doing so, we hope), you have to put yourself in a position to present with frequency. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, estimates that true masters in any given field tend to have performed their specialized skill over 10,000 times. Michael Jordan may have had some natural gifts, but we have far more stories of regular people becoming extraordinary through practice than we do of extraordinarily gifted people doing nothing and remaining extraordinary. Michael Jordan, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods and more greats have repeatedly stated that a commitment to practice, not natural skill, determine success.
This is true in every situation, so if you want to be a natural in the environment of your choosing, you need to immerse yourself and practice every day
