How to Overcome Public Speaking Fear – Tips From Professional Speakers

From a psychologist’s point of view, the fear of public speaking is universal. Mark Twain also believed this and he often said there are two types of speakers: those who get anxious and those who lie about their nervousness. If we take a look at statistics, many people rate fear of public speaking as the top fear, before death, heights and even in-laws. But it is also the easier fear to overcome, especially when you have the advice from the professionals.

Be imperfect and happy about it

Humans are not perfect and this is good news, as perfection would make us boring. When education speakers enter a stage they know they are not perfect and they do fear the audience’s rejection, but there is one thing they do differently from you: they never emphasize their mistakes and they never confess their fears to the audience. They embrace the fact people are going to judge each and every step they make and word they say, so they go ahead with the presentation. Confidence can be acted and after a couple of minutes of being confident and speaking to the audience, you will be able to go with the flow and nail the presentation right to the end. Before you ask, professional speakers do make mistakes, and then they take a deep breath and carry on, like nothing happened. The takeaway: don’t expect to be perfect, just go there and do your best.

Public speaking is not your only skill

Way too many people judge their overall performances by their ability to speak in front of an audience. This is very, very wrong and dangerous to do. If you need to present something to an audience you are already a performer in your field, as only great professionals are asked to hold presentations. Apart from having great presentation skills, speakers are intelligent, have lots of work and life experience and many of them are leaders in innovation when it comes to their job. These are the skills one must judge himself or herself by, not the anxiety which comes around when you need to speak to an audience, so never look down at you because you can’t hold a presentation. Yet! This leads us to the next point…

Practice, practice and practice some more

The more you practice your public speaking, the better you will become at it, so you have to work on holding more presentations. You can also spend time looking at how education speakers structure their presentations and how they act on the stage. If you look good, you will discover a couple of usef

Courtesy: Deloris Davis

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