Having fear of public speaking is the most common problem among many of us. Apart from some people, most of us have experienced this problem.
When we face this problem, it seems very tough to stand in front of a large audience and speak about something. There is a feeling of nervousness, anxiety, etc.
In my opinion, somewhere if you work on yourself, you can improve a lot and can deliver amazing results. But first, you need to understand your personality and you need to note down all those points that stop you from being a public speaker.
Here is a list of some most common reasons behind Fear of Public Speaking:
- You feel fear of rejection and failure.
- Fear of being wrong. Most of them hesitate to speak in public because they think, they might be wrong.
- Self-consciousness in front of a big audience.
- No preparation or poor preparation of content.
- Discomfort with own personality and or dress sense.
- Fear of public judgment.
- Nervousness.
- Low level of confidence.
- Low level of knowledge.
- If It is the first time.
- Poor communication skills.
Find out your own reasons why are you feeling fear of public speaking. What are the core reasons for it? Might be you are not confident because of no preparation of content or you do not feel comfortable with your own personality. It might be anything.
In this article, I am discussing 9 tips that may help you a lot to change your public speaking journey and can do a lot of improvement.
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1- Prepare Your Content
Do you remember your exam time in your school or college? You used to be very confident when you have good preparation on the subject.
And when you didn’t have good preparation on the subject, you had some nervousness and anxiety kind of feeling. Am I right?
See, your public speaking journey starts with your preparation and knowledge. If you have a good command of your topic and sufficient knowledge, you will have a different level of confidence.
And there is a high chance that you deliver a good speech in front of your audience. Yes, you need to be organized in terms of your content also.
You should know how much content you should deliver within a time limit. It is also important that from where you begin your topic and where you end up the session.
2- Practice Multiple Time
Practice, practice, and more practice can make you an awesome public speaker. I have listened to many speakers like Sonu Sharma, and Harshavardhan Jain, and they believe that if you do regular practice on any particular thing, you can be an expert.
Whenever you have your public speaking session, you should do some good practice. You should practice your content and your speaking style as well.
During your practice session, you should note your mistake and improve them. There are many ways to practice. You can stand in front of the mirror and deliver your complete content.
If you know that you would have a session of 2 hours in front of the original audience, you should do your practice session like you are taking the original session.
There is another way also. You can take your practice session in front of a small group of people. These people may be your family members, friends, and even relatives also.
Assume that they are your real audience and take their comments and feedback also. So that you can improve before going into actual live speech and remove your fear of public speaking.
After doing content preparation and multiple practices, you will automatically feel a lot of positivity and confidence. And you will also have a lot of command over your topic.
3- Be Confident and Positive
Your confidence and positive approach are two basic and important tools for public speaking. You must ensure that you are confident enough.
Your confidence will give you the power of positivity to stand in front of a large audience and deliver a speech to them. There are some points that you may consider to maintain your confidence level.
- Do meditation and yoga every day.
- Do exercise at least 4 to 5 days a week and make yourself physically fit and healthy.
- Dress well and maintain good hygiene.
- Prepare your content.
- Practice your content and presentation.
- Improve your communication skills.
- Eat healthy and sufficient diets.
Confidence comes from many things. You should identify and work on those points that make you more confident. Having a good level of confidence is very important to delivering a good speech.
If you are not enough confident, you might be nervous and or feel anxiety in front of your audience. And it is not good at all. Your confidence and positivity can play a big role to remove your fear of public speaking.
4- Include PPT and Videos
There are multiple ways to remove your fear of public speaking step by step. When you have a public speaking session, add some visuals like PPT and Videos, etc. Now there will be two things for your audience to interact with.
Now your audience will interact with you and they will have their eyes on those visuals also. In that case, your session will be more interactive and informative.
Just imagine that you have a public speaking session where you have nothing to show to your audience. And there is another public speaking session where you have a good PPT, images, and or videos to show to your audience.
Now tell me, where you are more confident and comfortable delivering your best. I guess, like me, you will also choose the second option. Right?
You can experience this difference as an audience also. Just attend two different public speaking sessions. One which is without any visuals like PPT, videos, etc. And attend another session which is with visuals.
Now find out the difference. You would know which one is a more interactive session for you. If I exclude some exceptional types of public speaking, in most cases, these visuals play a big role to deliver the best and remove your fear of public speaking.
5- Add Stories and Humor
Everyone wants to laugh and want to be happy. If you are taking a corporate session, training, or motivational kind of public speaking session, you can start your session with some humor or with a story.
If you have mastery of storytelling, it is awesome. You can give a fantastic start to your public speaking session.
You can also add humor and stories in between your session as well. In this way, you can make a good and positive environment even more interactive.
But I would like to add an important point here. Whenever you add a story to your speech, there should be some meaning to it. And there should be some correlation with your topic.
So that you can give a good massage and or information from your story to your audience. You crack some jokes during the session so that people can feel happy and when they will be happy, your confidence level will be up.
Adding stories and humor can be one of the best methods to make you comfortable and handle your fear of public speaking.
6- Imagine Success and Positive Results
Most of the time we get negative results because of the negative programming of our minds. Most of the time we have continuous negative thinking and negative self-talk like What will happen? How it will happen? What if I get failed? I am not good enough, etc.
This is very important that you turn your negative thinking and negative self-talk into positive thinking and positive self-talk.
Feel and talk like you are a champion and you can deliver an awesome speech and presentation. Just imagine your success and see yourself that you are giving an amazing speech and people are enjoying it.
One thing is very true, you get what you think most. If you think negatively most of the time, you would get negative results and if you think positively most of the time, then you will get positive results.
Yes, of course, actions and your inputs are very much important to achieve anything. In this way, you can improve a lot and avoid the fear of public speaking.
7- Work on Your Communication Skills
If you have a fear of public speaking, you should work on your communication skills. If your communication skills are not good enough, it might be one of the reasons for your fear to speak in front of an audience.
If you are giving any speech or taking any kind of training or seminar, your communication plays the main role. It is all about, how you speak, what you speak and how you interact with your audience.
You should work on both, your verbal and non-verbal, communication skills. Non-Verbal communication includes your body language, your expression, etc.
And in verbal communication, your words and voice tone play very important roles. Here are some tips to improve your communication skills:
- Read more and more.
- Be a good listener.
- Listen to podcasts, audiobooks, etc.
- Improve your body language.
- Observe your communication and improve.
- Know your audience.
- Have self-control.
- Choice of words and sentences.
Your communication should be your primary focus to remove your fear of public speaking.
8- Dress Sense and Personality Improvement
Have you ever experienced that you feel more comfortable and confident in some dresses that you wear? I guess You have gone through this experience. Right?
If you are in public speaking, you must work on your dress sense and personality development. Here, personality development means, I am talking about your physique and personality.
Sometimes, people do not feel confident and comfortable because of their physique and dress sense. And they have a fear of public speaking.
You should work on your physique and personality on regular basis. It is not a kind of one-time process that you do it once a year and you are free.
You need to work out regularly and eat sufficient healthy food to make your body in shape and improve your personality. Simultaneously you should work on your dress sense as well.
If you are in shape and fit and wear a good dress, you will have a kind of confidence and positivity in your mind. You will feel like, “yes I can do it”.
See, every little thing matters a lot and you must work on every point that you can cover to remove your fear of public speaking.
9- Engage and Connect with the Audience
Your public speaking should not be like you are speaking and your audience is listening. You should make your session interactive and engaging.
If your session is more interactive and engaging, you will also feel a kind of boost and motivation that your audience is liking your session.
Add some motivation and inspiration to your speech or presentation. If your audience is inspired and motivated in your session, they will give you positive vibes. And this will work in your favor.
Here are some points to make your public speaking interactive and engaging. You can use them according to your training and or public speaking program:
- Add questions and answers.
- Include short and useful stories.
- Use PPT, Images, and Videos.
- Add motivation and inspiration.
- Play the useful game.
- Add some demos and practicals.
This will help you so much to remove your fear of public speaking and deliver a good speech or session to your audience.
Conclusions
Make your own style but observe others for learning. If you want to improve your public speaking, you should also listen to other public speakers.
Make a list of a few of your favorite public speakers and start listening to them. Observe them, how do they speak? How do they start and end the session? How do they spend their complete time with their audience?
In my opinion, if you are not a good speaker, but you want to be, you should follow some good speakers and learn from them. And it is not necessary that you go and take training from them.
You can learn a lot of things without meeting them. It is possible by listening and observing them also. And simultaneously you should work on the other important point of public speaking like communication skills, content preparation, confidence, personality development, etc.
I hope these tips will help you to remove your fear of public speaking. Fear of public speaking is common but if you work on certain areas, you can do better.
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