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Here are 3 articles on how to overcome the fear
of public speaking. You are welcome to reprint
these articles in their entirety including the
complete bylines at the bottom of each.
The Fear
of Public Speaking: Top Myths Exposed and Truths
Revealed
Improve Your Presentation Skills and Beat the
Fear of Public Speaking
6 Steps to Speaking without Social Anxiety: How
to Become a Confident Public Speaker
There are tons of myths and misconceptions about
public speaking. Unfortunately these untruths
serve to reinforce and increase speaking
anxiety. I’d like to share with you here three
of the twelve myths that my coauthor and I
expose in our New York Times bestselling book
The Confident Speaker.
Myth #1: Anxiety will continue to increase
over time
Many people fear that if they do not do
something to control their distress, it will
continue to spiral out of control forever or
until something bad happens. This is not true.
When you’re agitated, the sympathetic part of
your nervous system kicks in and you experience
the adrenaline rush that leads to your heart
racing, sweating, and trembling. This response
will naturally decrease because the
parasympathetic component of your nervous system
will kick in and reduces the anxiety. This is
called “habituation.” Your body and mind get
used to the anxiety and it fades away.
Habituation or getting used to anxiety always
occurs and makes the fear decrease over time. It
is a biological response system. Your anxiety
will decrease. Every living organism habituates.
One of my colleagues from the University of
Pennsylvania is fond of saying, “even sea slugs
habituate.”
Sometimes when we are particularly nervous, it
may take longer for habituation to occur. In
general, the length of time for habituation is
correlated with the severity of the fear. In
other words, the more serious your anxiety is,
the longer it will take for your nervous system
to get used to it.
Myth #2: Anxiety worsens performance
It is very common to think that we performed
worse because we were feeling anxious. In fact,
this belief is a major cause and maintainer of
anxiety. Overcome this belief and you are likely
to overcome much of your nervousness.
With fear, it is very common to judge how the
situation went based on how you felt. Do you
think this is an accurate way to assess the
effectiveness or quality of the performance? If
you said no, you are starting to understand how
fear works! There are a number of reasons why it
is not accurate to judge performance based on
how we feel:
-
Many of our
feelings are not visible to others. People
think that things are observable to others
that truly are not.
-
Our thinking
is distorted when we worry. Since thinking
becomes less logical and coherent during
periods of high anxiety, many conclusions we
make are not valid.
-
We are our own
worst critics. While we sit around dwelling
on the one thing we forgot to say, our
audience is actually excited about the four
great points we did make.
I often have my clients with performance anxiety
speak in front of others and ask the observers
to rate the performances. Time and time again we
find that high anxiety was not related to poor
performance. Someone could be rated as a 9 on
anxiety (with 10 being the highest anxiety) and
a 9 on performance (with 10 being the best).
Raters almost always also rated visible anxiety
as lower than the speakers rated their anxiety.
A speaker would give himself an 8 and the
observer would give him a 3. This reinforces the
idea that how we feel is not the same as how we
look.
Myth #3: You should practice and rehearse so
much that you will know everything and not be
anxious
While it is true that you should practice any
presentation so you are very comfortable not
only with your material but also with talking
about it, over-preparation can be too much of a
good thing. You learn to attribute your speech
success to practicing over and over and you may
not think that you can speak will without such
extensive rehearsal. This actually takes away
from any confidence you have when you have to
give spontaneous or last-minute talks.
One client, Maria, said that she practiced her
speech about 100 times and it went very well
until the question and answer phase. People
asked her about things she was not ready for and
all she could think was, “Oh no, I didn’t
prepare for this!” In reality she knew her
material very well but when it came to saying
things that were not rehearsed, she panicked.
Another problem that comes from practicing too
much is that you can sound like you practiced
too much. When a talk is over practiced, it can
become stiff and mechanical sounding. You may
sound like you are reading off a teleprompter
rather than speaking naturally.
Keep yourself from falling prey to these myths,
get practice, and you will overcome your fear of
public speaking and become a confident and
compelling speaker.
Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA is a business
psychologist and peak performance consultant.
This article was adapted from her New York Times
bestselling coauthored book The Confident
Speaker. Get more articles on overcoming the
fear of public speaking at
www.TheConfidentSpeaker.com
KEYWORDS:
The fear of public speaking, speaking anxiety,
performance anxiety, overcoming the fear of
public speaking, speech success, and peak
performance.
You might think that getting better at public
speaking is all up to you. After all, you’re the
one who needs to get up there and talk. In
reality, however, if you don’t get assistance,
it will be difficult to gain confidence in your
public speaking abilities and hone your
presentation skills.
Others can offer you a great deal of valuable
guidance and support as a speaker. I always say,
“Why do alone what you can do with more fun and
less effort with others?” I believe this idea
holds true for professional speaking.
Preparing and practicing are typically not much
fun, but with the right support they can be
enjoyable and productive. Performing can be
highly nerve-wracking. Relying on others can
take away some of the anxiety and stress. And
finally if you’re prone to post-presentation
self-criticism, look to the feedback of others
to evaluate your performance, rather than
relying on your harsh self analysis.
Here are some more specific tips for how to
get help with the three P’s of power
presentations:
Preparation
-
Ask the
meeting planner or whoever coordinates your
presentation about the set-up of the room,
and who will support you with technology so
you don’t need to worry about those things.
-
Rehearse in
front of some colleagues and friends and ask
them for feedback, including what you did
well.
-
If you feel do
better with two people presenting, ask if
you can get a co-presenter.
-
Collect
information about your audience. The more
that you know and can help them, the more
they will help you during your talk by
giving you supportive, positive energy
-
Let the
key people in your life know that you are
embarking on something challenging, and let
them know how they can help you reduce
stress in other areas of life.
Performance
Make sure your
audience is with you by asking questions and
getting them involved.
Assign someone in
the audience to help out in case of technical
failure or to let you know when you need to wrap
up.
Use other people’s
humor. If you’re not great at telling jokes and
using humor, tell stories or use cartoons or
images that other people have developed. Just
make sure it fits your style.
Post-Presentation
-
Collect
detailed feedback, and build your confidence
by focusing on what you did well.
-
Meet your
audience members by announcing that you will
stay around after your presentation.
-
If you start
doing a post-mortem (telling yourself
everything you did wrong- this is not
helpful) get engaged in a conversation.
-
Go out to
celebrate with someone you enjoy spending
time with. You did something difficult and
you deserve a reward!
Getting support can be challenging. It’s
often hard to ask for help and rely on others.
When, however, you do, you’ll see that it’s
definitely worth it. With the right support from
friends, coaches, colleagues, or others, you
will find a dramatic increase in your speaking
abilities and confidence. Enjoy!
Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA is a business
psychologist expert in peak performance and the
coauthor of The New York Times bestselling book
The Confident Speaker. Get articles and take a
charisma quotient quiz at
www.TheConfidentSpeaker.com
KEYWORDS:
presentation skills, the fear of public
speaking, public speaking, self-criticism, power
presentations, speaking abilities
By Dr. Larina Kase
Would you rather scrub your bathroom floor than
get up and speak in front of people?
If so, you’re not alone. The fear of public
speaking is the #1 fear in Americans, and
affects people across the globe.
I’ve helped hundreds of people build
presentation skills and I’d like to help you
too. Here are six crucial steps to take the
stress out of public speaking.
Step #1: Know Your Audience
When you know your audience you can tailor the
presentation to benefit them. Learn about your
audience by conducting a brief email survey,
interviewing audience members beforehand, and
asking the meeting planner questions.
Knowing your audience will reduce performance
anxiety because you’ll feel a connection with
them. You’ll know that you are talking about
interesting topics, which eliminates the fear of
boring them. They will participate and become
more engaged.
Step #2: Select the Right Topic
You also need to choose the right topic for YOU.
Research shows that the top three professional
speaker characteristics are the topic, speaker's
enthusiasm, and knowledge. You’ll achieve all
three when you discuss something you know, love,
and can easily talk about.
If you’re assigned a topic, you can:
-
Tie the
assigned topic to what you want to discuss.
-
Engage your
curiosity and become interested. If you are
not interested in the topic, no one else
will be.
-
Smile and
gesture during your talk to convey interest.
-
Partner up
with someone and discuss only the parts you
enjoy.
Step #3: Become Less Self-Conscious
Have you noticed yourself mentally
inventorying your hair, posture, voice, outfit,
and word choices?
These things make you more self conscious and
cause social anxiety. Instead focus on something
external and get your attention off of yourself.
Some ways to focus externally include: Pay
attention to what others are saying; Observe how
the room looks; Get into the feeling and passion
behind what you’re saying.
Practice focusing externally in other
conversations and situations so you can get good
at it before your presentation.
Step #4: Get Physically and Mentally Ready
Beforehand
If you are someone who gets anxiety symptoms
such as racing heart, sweating, or shaking, get
your body relaxed through exercise.
To burn off nervous energy and release muscle
tension, get 30-45 minutes of cardiovascular
exercise three hours before your talk. Do some
calming exercises like stretching, deep
breathing, and muscle relaxation 20-30 minutes
beforehand.
Get mentally ready by imagining yourself
delivering the presentation exactly as you want.
Picture yourself feeling great and the audience
reacting very well. A few minutes before you
start, focus your energy on the powerful image
you’ve created.
Step #5: Conquer Your Fearful Thoughts
Figure out exactly what you’re afraid of and
then evaluate the likelihood of the fear
happening. If you’re afraid of tripping,
calculate how many times you’ve tripped in the
past or consider how you handled it if you did.
It’s probably not nearly as bad as you think.
A common mistake is thinking that because you
felt nervous, the performance was horrible. How
you felt is not the best measure of how things
actually went. Most people say their talk went
worse than audience members report.
Step #6: Connect with Your Audience
We all know what it is like to have someone
speak at us. Think of yourself as having a
conversation with the audience, just as you
would during a one on one conversation. Allow
your personality to shine through.
Remember to look at individuals for at least
three seconds but not longer than five or ten
seconds or they’ll feel stared down. Use
animated facial expressions and do not hide
behind a lectern or other prop.
Practice Your Way to Success
Now you have the 6 steps: knowing your audience,
picking your topic, reducing self-consciousness,
preparing effectively, handling fearful
thoughts, and connecting with the audience. Put
them to practice with as much public speaking as
possible and you’ll gain poise, polish, and
confidence.
Larina Kase, PsyD, MBA is a business
psychologist, peak performance expert and
coauthor of The New York Times bestselling book,
The Confident Speaker (McGraw-Hill, 2007). Get
free resources including a charisma quiz at
www.TheConfidentSpeaker.com
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