We all know that public speaking is one of the biggest (home grown)fears that people have.
In fact I think public speaking and self confidence (or lack of) is still at number one: beating death and moving house hands down!
Even though I’m a trainer it doesn’t mean before I stand up there I don’t feel slightly anxious or have a little bit of the butterflies.
People look for information on public speaking and self confidence all over the Internet and there are many books that tell you how to give the perfect presentation.
My thought…if you don’t deal with the fear I would be surprised if you actually made it through the book. The fear would be so intense you may get to end and not remember a word, always in the back of your mind is the looming thought of ’standing up there’.
Let’s look at this logically. Genuinely, what is the worst that could happen? Dry mouth? Sweaty palms? Forget your topic or speech? You freeze? You trip going up there?
I think people get so hung up on what others will be thinking and that’s where the lack of self confidence appears in public speaking – Am I good enough? Why should they listen to me? Am I entertaining? Will they laugh? What if they hate me?
Here’s a few suggestions:
Always remember your audience are human beings, and the vast majority of them will also hate presenting. Therefore be human…build a relationship first, before you even get onto your topic. They may have been sitting there for hours already, acknowledge that, say something ‘you have been sitting there a while, at least I have had the chance to move my legs coming up here, I bet your jealous’.
Keep them curious…the most fatal mistake is going through your material verbatim from a PowerPoint screen. Plan a story, ask for people to put their hands up to a question, ask for questions at the beginning ‘here is my topic, any questions before I start?’…okay you may not get any, if you don’t say ‘that’s okay, you have the opportunity at the end’. At least that way you have basically said ‘look I want you to input, your comments are valuable and I see you as valuable’.
What’s happening on your inside during your public speaking cannot be seen. Honestly it can’t Think about it, how many times have you been nervous in the past and you have covered it well. Have you not taken back control of your breathing, your posture, your words. It is possible in a public speaking scenario as well.
Spend 90% of your planning time on you and the other 10% on the content. Getting ‘you’ in an excellent state of mind will massively improve your public speaking. Visualise the event, think about how you want to feel after you have done, picture how it’s all going to delivered, talk yourself up as opposed to down.
The free confidence building training course will help you with public speaking and self confidence.
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