When Lived Experience Becomes Your Greatest Speaking Asset

Let me tell you something I wish more speakers understood earlier. The things you have survived are not side notes in your story. They are the story.

Your lived experience is not baggage. It is your credibility. It is your depth. It is the reason people lean in when you speak.

I do not walk onto a stage pretending life has been neat and tidy. I walk on knowing I have been through the fire, and that changes the way people listen.

People Do Not Want Perfect, They Want Real

Audiences are not sitting there hoping to hear a flawless human with a perfect life. They want someone who understands struggle, fear, failure, and getting back up again.

When you speak from lived experience, people feel it. Your words land differently because they are not rehearsed from theory. They come from memory, from emotion, from truth.

That is what creates a connection. And connection is where impact lives.

Your Struggles Are Your Qualifications

Degrees are great. Training is valuable. But you know what cannot be taught? Living it.

Surviving illness teaches resilience.

Facing loss teaches perspective.

Rebuilding your life teaches grit.

Navigating adversity teaches the strength you did not know you had.

When you speak from that place, people trust you. They know you are not guessing. You have been there. That lived experience becomes a qualification no one can take away from you.

Vulnerability Is Power, Not Weakness

For years, people were told to hide the messy parts. To keep it professional. To not share too much. But the moment I started speaking honestly about the hard parts of my journey, everything changed.

Vulnerability is not oversharing. It is sharing with purpose. It is saying, this happened, it was hard, and here is what I learnt.

When you do that, you give everyone in the room permission to breathe. Permission to admit they are struggling. Permission to believe they can get through it too.

Turning Pain Into Purpose

The magic happens when you stop seeing your story as something that happened to you and start seeing it as something that can help someone else.

That is when lived experience becomes an asset.

Your pain becomes perspective.

Your survival becomes service.

Your story becomes someone else’s lifeline.

You are not reliving trauma on stage. You are transforming it into meaning.

You Do Not Need to Have It All Sorted

Here is another truth. You do not have to be perfectly healed to speak. You just need enough distance to talk from the scar, not the open wound.

People do not connect with perfection. They connect with honesty, growth, and real human progress. Your ongoing journey can be just as powerful as a neat, tied up ending.

Final Thoughts

Your lived experience is not something to downplay. It is your greatest speaking asset. It gives your message heart, depth, and authenticity.

People might forget your slides. They might forget statistics. But they will remember how your story made them feel. They will remember the moment they thought, maybe I can get through this too.

When you speak from what you have lived, you are not just delivering a keynote. You are creating hope in a room full of people who might desperately need it.

And that is powerful.

Justine Martin speaks on resilience, lived experience, leadership, and turning adversity into strength.

🌐 www.justinemartin.com.au

📧 hello@justinemartin.com.au