Josh Sundquist

Hey guys,
As promised, here is my post about Josh Sundquist's speech at the '09 Convention.

If you've never heard of Josh Sundquist, (like me!) Google him.  He's a Paralympic Skier, motivational speaker, and author.  Minus the skiing, that is my dream job.  One word that describes his speech: wow.

Funny story to go along with this though.  As usual the quality of the speech video was crappy, so I turned it on to listen to while I cleaned my room.  It was because of that I missed a very crucial point to the speech: Josh Sundquist only has one leg.  You can imagine my confusion when he talks about what is visually apparent to the audience.  Good thing I watched it the second time, there was a lot of physical comedy that I missed out on.

Man I want to talk about this speech but I don't feel like I can do it justice!  First of all, Josh was really, really funny.  He has some experience with stand up comedy from what I understand, and it definitely shows.  I think that being funny is important if you're going to speak to high school age kids.  But I do have to admit, after a while I was like, "Is this guy just a comedian?  When is he gonna tell me something 'inspirational'?"

Toward the end of the speech though, after he's told all his hilarious stories about living with only one leg, he ties them all together and talks about how to deal with hard things in life.  He tells the story of how he lost his leg, and even when I was just listening to the speech the first time around, the emotion in his voice was SO powerful.  I was surprised how quickly the speech had gone from roll on the ground laughing to so serious and almost made me want to cry.  The story and the delivery was so powerful, and I just thought, "I want to give a speech like this!"

I also listened to Josh's commentary on the speech, which had a lot of good insights on how he plans and delivers his speeches.  When it got to the serious story, Josh said that he always saves it to the end because he feels that you have to earn the right to be serious.  By that, he means you have to connect with the youth by being funny first, so that they trust you, and they don't turn up their noses at your more serious points.  That's something I think I could work on.

Ah!  I want to write so much more about this speech, but I just cannot do it justice.  Please, please, please watch it so that you'll understand.  It's great (and good quality at this link).

Have a great week everyone!
Rachel

PS- Hannah Harrison suggested I read biographies and autobiographies of people I admire...so Josh's book, "Just Don't Fall" is on my list.