If you are an overall stressed or anxious person, here are some solutions to fix it.
Public speaking is one art that not all of us are blessed with. Some people are born with the skill to speak in public while some are not. However, you can easily learn how to be an effective public speaker by following certain tips.
If you are speaking in public, chances are people that are present want to listen you. However, you might either be shy or afraid to speak in public which may pull you down at times. Improving your public speaking skills is not about doing big efforts, but small repetitive efforts. These are things that can be simple to follow but efficient in many ways for you and your career.
BUILDING CONFIDENCE
You should know your strengths and have believe in yourself. Remember, if you are speaking here, it means you are qualified for it, you are the expert of the room. That means almost nobody in the room know better than you your topic.
As a professional pianist doing a concert in front of newbies, chances that if you play one wrong note among thousands, few people will notice. If the overall of your presentation is good, the few mistake that you do will be diluted in the ocean of knowledge you are giving.
So, having confidence when you address a crowd can be very important to your public speaking ability and skills. So, always ensure that you are high on confidence before you face the microphone for public speaking. Fear of public speaking is feed by lack of preparation.
Meditation can help you feel great with yourself, here are a few tips about how to start meditating.
We are going to see on the following tips and hacks how to build step by step your confidence and overcome the fear of public speaking.
KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE REDUCE FEAR & ANXIETY
Knowing your audience and what they expect can work wonders in your preparation and delivering of a speech.
This means you understand the expectations that people have and deliver accordingly. This way reduce your fear of not meeting expectations, because your speech is design for this.
What I like to do before going on stage is arriving much earlier to start speaking with people. The team, the technicians, the first participants… This allows me to take the temperature by knowing a bit better my audience. But more importantly it helps me to create a positive loop. I start by speaking with one person, than two people, three… By doing this i gradually decrease my fear and get warm up for the speech.
EXERCISE TO ELIMINATE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
• Make a quick list of criteria about your audience. What are their expectations, what do they want to know? You can find answers on internet (forums for example) or by asking to people directly. Why not call some of your participants?
PREPARATION FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING
In case you are given an assignment to address an audience or crowd it is better to be prepared in advance. By being prepared you develop the confidence to be able to deliver what you are expected or supposed to. This is because the results of the public speaking start even before you start speaking and happens when you are preparing.
EXERCISE TO ELIMINATE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
• Structure your presentation and repeat it several time, alone and in front of a few friends. This reduce the unknown possibilities and will help you to have a clear image of your presentation.
BODY LANGUAGE
By being confident your body language changes when you are addressing people.
And the opposite is also true. If you have a confident body language your mind will tend to think everything is ok and therefore not release any stress reaction.
People who are successful public speakers have a communicative body language. They command respect through their body language and their actions when they speak. Their body language is powerful enough to make them persuasive and inspiring.
So, you too, always try to have a good body language and posture when you address people and ensure that you do not sound lacking in confidence. Don’t show your back, never.
If you want to know more about the importance of body language in charisma, read this awesome article “Become a charismatic leader in 7 steps – Charismatic leadership”
EXERCISE TO ELIMINATE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
• Go in front of a mirror and repeat your speech. Try different positions, faces, gestures, do you find some that goes well with what you say?
• Start smiling to random people in the street, start with a slight one if you are shy, and increase your expressiveness little by little. This way you will be able to communicate more confidence and good vibes on the stage.
In this video you will learn about the importance of nonverbal communication and how to become charismatic with your body language. Pay also attention to how Mark Bowden is captivating his audience.
TIPS TO REDUCE ANXIETY AND FEAR
Think about it for one second, what are exactly your fears when it comes to public speaking?
Anxiety feed itself in blurry fears and abstract supposition that are not founded. To help your realize that, write down a list of all the reasons why you are afraid.
Now this is a list of your challenges.
FEAR IS A STIMULUS
Like any stimulus you can get less sensitive to it if you overexpose yourself to it for a longtime period.
Any form of public speaking becomes an opportunity to decrease our fear of speaking in front of people.
What I would recommend you is that you do it intensively on a short period of time. For example, doing 7 speech in one week instead of doing 7 speech in two weeks. This is because by reducing the time between each session, you increase the likelihood that you become use to it. Humans tend to evolve better during crisis, as mentioned Charles Duhigg.
So liberate some time in your planning and spend some days doing any form of activities to destroy your fear. Can be theater, flirting, workshop…
A good solution against fear is inspiration. To boost yourself, read some of those 100 quotes from hustlers.
POSITIVE LOOPS
Positive loops are easy to do and really powerful.
You start doing a small action that triggers a bigger one, and so on until you reach really difficult ones. For example if you have to do a speech, smile to random people on your way. Then start to speak with some of them. Then make some jokes. And so on. The point is that while you are doing this your fear and anxiety disappear because you are in the flow. Your body generate many positive hormones so you will feel great and ready when the main action (public speaking) will come.
ENERGIZERS
Energizers become really trendy those days. An energizer is a quick exercise that you do alone, with your team or with your audience that aim to wake up your mind and body and put yourself in a good mood. For example you can do hola with your audience, it’s easy to do and everyone will feel better. One of the most done is asking to people how they are and to shoot the answer or to clap. This works because it involve the public and makes everyone do an action.
You can find a list of energizers here.
MEDITATION AND BREATHING EXERCISES
One of the best way to improve your public speaking skill and reduce your stress reaction without leaving your bedroom is to meditate. Meditate helps you to visualize a situation several times and correct your feelings and reactions.
Breathing exercises are also really useful as they can help you to control your stress level. When we stress we tend to freeze and we block our respiration. Being aware of that is really important as it can affects our performance and anxiety. If you only have two minutes before a speech, you can also read some of those meditation quotes to inspire inner peace and happiness within you.
EXERCISE TO ELIMINATE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
• Think about ideas of positive loops and energizers you can do for your next session
• Start a meditation session, imagining yourself on the stage, people listening to you. Pay attention to how you feel. Live again and again the situations where you feel uncomfortable and visualize them until you feel more comfortable with them.
Pay also attention to your breathing.
NOTES FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING
Many people are successful when they choose to look at the notes that they have prepared when they speak in public.
However, this might not be a very good idea for people who are starters in public speaking.
Public speaking always has a part of improvisation. You can forget to say something, someone in the public can make a joke, a question or a weird comment and whatever happen everyone will wait for your reaction.
As we can not plan everything that can happens during a presentation, you should train little by little your improvisation skills.
One of the way to do that is to reduce the amount of notes you have.
If you really need them because they give you a sense of comfort, keep them. Times to times try to reduce them from 2 pages to one. Or bring them with you but use them only if you really need them.
This way you will build little by little a new flow much more confident and blooming .
EXERCISE TO ELIMINATE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
• Take your notes and find some moments that could be much better without reading them. Repeat those moments in front of a mirror to get the best effect possible
• Prepare a short presentation and present it to some friends or coworkers ans ask them to challenge your improvisation with random, difficult & embarrassing questions.
ENJOY YOURSELF AND BE STYLISH
It is important to enjoy yourself when you speak in public and people who are beginning to speak in public can at the least look like they are enjoying themselves while they speak. This ends up showing that you are confident about what you are trying to convey. Adding a little style to your speech can always keep your audience engaged which is an added advantage to you when you speak in public. Fear of public speaking will progressively disappear and let space for fun and confidence.
EXERCISE TO ELIMINATE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
• Write a list of all the beautiful moments that you had during the speech of your life. Write also 5 reasons why you want to continue public speaking.
You can read them again before going on stage so you get a shot of motivation and positivity.
OVERCOME FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING: TAKE AWAY
Apart from this you can ensure that you are dressed well for the occasion which would make yourself appear confident as well. Implementing these things in public speaking would make you a successful public speaker. There would come a time when people start to wait for you to start speaking in public when you are able to learn and develop these attributes.
