Public speaking is one of the most dreaded tasks we all encounter at one point in our life. Regardless if you are in school, college or work, Public Speaking is a task we all have to undergo. Fear of speaking in public ranks second among the most common phobias (spiders is number one). To put things in perspective, people are more scared of speaking in public than death, marriage or bankruptcy. This feeling is common among most of us. Everyone shares the anxious feeling when there is a perception of being evaluated.
People always experience the feeling of fear or being troubled before facing something that is challenging such as an examination, interview, test, and recital. Actually, these feelings are normal and can be easily justified. Anxiety is normal. It will become a problem if it interferes in your normal and regular daily activities. One of the most common symptoms of ineffective anxiety is the inability to sleep. If you can't continue life dealing with the public, you might suffer from a public speaking anxiety.Public speaking anxiety is commonly termed as stage fright or speech anxiety. Public speaking anxiety involves the feeling of fear to be evaluated or scrutinized by other people. The feeling of fear is always coming with several emotional and physical reactions that usually hinder the person's capability to deliver his presentation or speech successfully. Additional symptoms include an extreme feeling of anxiety, sweating, worry, shaking or trembling, nervousness, dizziness and fainting.
In medical terminologies, public speaking anxiety is referred to as "glossophobia." It is a very common reported type of social fears. It is actually normal that you will experience nervousness during your presentation or speech. However, in the case of a person with a Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), your feeling of anxiety during public speaking will take out and control your life. You will worry too much a few weeks to months before the date of your speech or presentation. On the day of the presentation, you will suffer from intense physical symptoms of anxiety such as pounding heart, blushing, inability to breathe, and quivering voice. These symptoms result from the flight or fight response of your body. There is a sudden release of adrenaline that prepares you for a sudden threat of danger. At this moment, you will experience loss of body control.
Let me also say this up-front - The information I present here will help those with a moderate to serious fear of speaking in public, as well as give "an edge" to those who do not really fear public speaking, but just want to improve their performance . Those that have used this information successfully have included many in business who must routinely give presentations , show business folks who want to be able to deliver the best performance possible and those who just join an organization and must participate in large meetings once in a while. The symptoms of fear that I will explain how to control are identical to all of us. The only thing that separates us in terms of public speaking is the severity of those symptoms and how we're able to control them.
One more thing - you do not have to take the medication I will recommend here forever. It is only necessary during the period of time that you are re-training your brain to understand that speaking in public is not a threatening situation and therefore it doesn't have to create an over-abundance of adrenaline in order to survive THEREFORE, THE MEDICATION IS REALLY A "TRAINING AID", NOT A "CRUTCH".Speaking in public is the No. 1 fear of Americans. It surpasses our fear of losing our jobs, losing our relationships and, believe it or not, people write in surveys they fear public speaking even more than death (although I suspect that given a true life and death situation, they could muster the courage to give a little speech).Because speaking in public opens the opportunity for us to be judged by others in a very personal way more so than any other activity we do in life. And it is this fear of being judged that creates anxiety that can be paralyzing at times. Simply put, many of us have a fear of looking foolish, of being laughed at, of making a mistake, of being vulnerable.
The point is, the final job will not look half as good if the preparation work is not done well.It's the same with a good speech. If you don't collect together the material about which you are going to speak, sort it all into a sensible well thought out order so that all the points you want to cover are included and then arrange that material in an understandable way, your speech will be a disaster. Without that preparation, your task on the day will be immeasurably more difficult.But with all that preparation behind you, your confidence in your own ability with regard to the accuracy of the information should be OK.Your next task, of course, is the delivery of the speech and your preparation for your delivery should be just as thorough as your preparation of the content of the speech.So, what are the ways in which you can prepare yourself for delivery of your speech?During your preparation, find time to practise the speech. Read it through several times and you'll get a feel for how it sounds. If you can, record the speech as you hope to deliver it and listen to the playback carefully. Note down anything which didn't sound quite right so that you can change it at the end.
I should admit to you now that I have a serious, and at times, excessive fear of public speaking and am therefore in the "gray" zone between the 80% and 5% categories. Therefore, I know from experience what I am going to teach you will help the vast majority of everyone who has a fear of standing up and speaking in public. In addition, this information will also help those who do not really fear public speaking, but just want to give a better performance.This, of course, is a hard question to answer. For many of us the cause of a moderate to serious fear of speaking in public cannot be associated with anything in particular in our childhood. However for others, it can be traced back to a particular incident that has triggered the symptoms felt when faced with the necessity to speak in public. Some of us can vividly remember a particular incident in our lives where we became very self-conscious and embarrassed for some reason in front of a crowd of people. Often this incident occurred as far back as elementary school when our self-worth and self esteem were just beginning to develop and may not relate to actually speaking in public at all.
For instance, if we were in a situation where we stood embarrassed in front of our schoolmates without saying a word,--- that could be it. Even though we were not speaking in public, our brains perceived our fear just standing there in front of other people as we thought that we looked foolish and/or scared. In a nutshell - what happens to some of us during this type of incident is our brain links our intense negative feelings with merely standing in front of other people as they look at us. It almost sounds silly that deep fears that control us as adults often have such trivial moments of creation in childhood. Often they last only a minute, but it is a minute that can last a lifetime. I'm sure the people who initiated these terrible incidents in our lives so many years ago never think back to them or to us for that matter. They have no idea what they said or did during that incident had such a profound and lasting effect on us.Our fears may only be "in our head" but that's enough to make us react as we do to speaking in public and other anxiety-prone situations. I'm sure you already realize - it's pretty difficult to change what's "in our head" even if we can figure out why it's "in our head" to begin with and why we react as we do to perceived "threatening situations" such as speaking in public.
Once you have your game plan prepared, imagine yourself giving the speech. Visualization is a technique that helps you become familiar with the event. Imagine you are giving the speech in front of a big group. The more you practice the material and the more you see yourself doing it, the less anxious you will be. It is alright to have an error or two. Many people, as mentioned before, think that every word or every sentence must be perfect. Keep in mind that your audience does not know what you have planned for them. If you omit a word or sentence, they will not notice it.
It doesn't matter why we react as we do to speaking in public and it doesn't matter if we remember a particular incident that triggered our anxiety or not. Since our fear is not based on an actual threat to us, we need only eliminate the symptoms of that fear to gain back our self-confidence and function as if we don't have fear. Intellectually, we know there is nothing really to fear when we speak in public, but our bodies act as if there is and it's completely out of our control.Without the symptoms of fear we can speak in public in a more thoughtful and relaxed manner than we ever thought possible. And if we can speak in public in a relaxed manner, guess what - WE CAN SPEAK IN PUBLIC!! PERIOD Really, it's just that simple.The symptoms of fear of speaking in public are curable specifically at the time you're put in a position to speak in public by taking a doctor-prescribed, safe, inexpensive and non-addictive medication. As I will explain, this medication allows us to control the cause of our symptoms exactly at the time when they are getting out of control. Therefore, what I am going to teach you will help those of us who have to routinely give presentations for our careers, those who need to only give several speeches a lifetime for wedding toasts, funerals, and the like, as well as those in show business who must be relaxed and confident enough to focus on their performance.
Finally, have a conversation with the audience. When presenters tend to read from visual aids or cards, they are disengaged from the audience. Remember that your speech is not about you, it is about the audience. You are giving them something, a message. Engage them with a conversation. This approach will be and feel more natural. More importantly, it will help you reduce anxiety.Public Speaking is something we all have to do at some point. The more we do it, the easier it will be for you. Remember that it won't be perfect every time, but with practice you will become much better. The goal is not to get rid of the anxiety, but to learn to control it.
[Speaking Anxiety]
People always experience the feeling of fear or being troubled before facing something that is challenging such as an examination, interview, test, and recital. Actually, these feelings are normal and can be easily justified. Anxiety is normal. It will become a problem if it interferes in your normal and regular daily activities. One of the most common symptoms of ineffective anxiety is the inability to sleep. If you can't continue life dealing with the public, you might suffer from a public speaking anxiety.Public speaking anxiety is commonly termed as stage fright or speech anxiety. Public speaking anxiety involves the feeling of fear to be evaluated or scrutinized by other people. The feeling of fear is always coming with several emotional and physical reactions that usually hinder the person's capability to deliver his presentation or speech successfully. Additional symptoms include an extreme feeling of anxiety, sweating, worry, shaking or trembling, nervousness, dizziness and fainting.
In medical terminologies, public speaking anxiety is referred to as "glossophobia." It is a very common reported type of social fears. It is actually normal that you will experience nervousness during your presentation or speech. However, in the case of a person with a Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), your feeling of anxiety during public speaking will take out and control your life. You will worry too much a few weeks to months before the date of your speech or presentation. On the day of the presentation, you will suffer from intense physical symptoms of anxiety such as pounding heart, blushing, inability to breathe, and quivering voice. These symptoms result from the flight or fight response of your body. There is a sudden release of adrenaline that prepares you for a sudden threat of danger. At this moment, you will experience loss of body control.
Let me also say this up-front - The information I present here will help those with a moderate to serious fear of speaking in public, as well as give "an edge" to those who do not really fear public speaking, but just want to improve their performance . Those that have used this information successfully have included many in business who must routinely give presentations , show business folks who want to be able to deliver the best performance possible and those who just join an organization and must participate in large meetings once in a while. The symptoms of fear that I will explain how to control are identical to all of us. The only thing that separates us in terms of public speaking is the severity of those symptoms and how we're able to control them.
One more thing - you do not have to take the medication I will recommend here forever. It is only necessary during the period of time that you are re-training your brain to understand that speaking in public is not a threatening situation and therefore it doesn't have to create an over-abundance of adrenaline in order to survive THEREFORE, THE MEDICATION IS REALLY A "TRAINING AID", NOT A "CRUTCH".Speaking in public is the No. 1 fear of Americans. It surpasses our fear of losing our jobs, losing our relationships and, believe it or not, people write in surveys they fear public speaking even more than death (although I suspect that given a true life and death situation, they could muster the courage to give a little speech).Because speaking in public opens the opportunity for us to be judged by others in a very personal way more so than any other activity we do in life. And it is this fear of being judged that creates anxiety that can be paralyzing at times. Simply put, many of us have a fear of looking foolish, of being laughed at, of making a mistake, of being vulnerable.
The point is, the final job will not look half as good if the preparation work is not done well.It's the same with a good speech. If you don't collect together the material about which you are going to speak, sort it all into a sensible well thought out order so that all the points you want to cover are included and then arrange that material in an understandable way, your speech will be a disaster. Without that preparation, your task on the day will be immeasurably more difficult.But with all that preparation behind you, your confidence in your own ability with regard to the accuracy of the information should be OK.Your next task, of course, is the delivery of the speech and your preparation for your delivery should be just as thorough as your preparation of the content of the speech.So, what are the ways in which you can prepare yourself for delivery of your speech?During your preparation, find time to practise the speech. Read it through several times and you'll get a feel for how it sounds. If you can, record the speech as you hope to deliver it and listen to the playback carefully. Note down anything which didn't sound quite right so that you can change it at the end.
I should admit to you now that I have a serious, and at times, excessive fear of public speaking and am therefore in the "gray" zone between the 80% and 5% categories. Therefore, I know from experience what I am going to teach you will help the vast majority of everyone who has a fear of standing up and speaking in public. In addition, this information will also help those who do not really fear public speaking, but just want to give a better performance.This, of course, is a hard question to answer. For many of us the cause of a moderate to serious fear of speaking in public cannot be associated with anything in particular in our childhood. However for others, it can be traced back to a particular incident that has triggered the symptoms felt when faced with the necessity to speak in public. Some of us can vividly remember a particular incident in our lives where we became very self-conscious and embarrassed for some reason in front of a crowd of people. Often this incident occurred as far back as elementary school when our self-worth and self esteem were just beginning to develop and may not relate to actually speaking in public at all.
For instance, if we were in a situation where we stood embarrassed in front of our schoolmates without saying a word,--- that could be it. Even though we were not speaking in public, our brains perceived our fear just standing there in front of other people as we thought that we looked foolish and/or scared. In a nutshell - what happens to some of us during this type of incident is our brain links our intense negative feelings with merely standing in front of other people as they look at us. It almost sounds silly that deep fears that control us as adults often have such trivial moments of creation in childhood. Often they last only a minute, but it is a minute that can last a lifetime. I'm sure the people who initiated these terrible incidents in our lives so many years ago never think back to them or to us for that matter. They have no idea what they said or did during that incident had such a profound and lasting effect on us.Our fears may only be "in our head" but that's enough to make us react as we do to speaking in public and other anxiety-prone situations. I'm sure you already realize - it's pretty difficult to change what's "in our head" even if we can figure out why it's "in our head" to begin with and why we react as we do to perceived "threatening situations" such as speaking in public.
Once you have your game plan prepared, imagine yourself giving the speech. Visualization is a technique that helps you become familiar with the event. Imagine you are giving the speech in front of a big group. The more you practice the material and the more you see yourself doing it, the less anxious you will be. It is alright to have an error or two. Many people, as mentioned before, think that every word or every sentence must be perfect. Keep in mind that your audience does not know what you have planned for them. If you omit a word or sentence, they will not notice it.
It doesn't matter why we react as we do to speaking in public and it doesn't matter if we remember a particular incident that triggered our anxiety or not. Since our fear is not based on an actual threat to us, we need only eliminate the symptoms of that fear to gain back our self-confidence and function as if we don't have fear. Intellectually, we know there is nothing really to fear when we speak in public, but our bodies act as if there is and it's completely out of our control.Without the symptoms of fear we can speak in public in a more thoughtful and relaxed manner than we ever thought possible. And if we can speak in public in a relaxed manner, guess what - WE CAN SPEAK IN PUBLIC!! PERIOD Really, it's just that simple.The symptoms of fear of speaking in public are curable specifically at the time you're put in a position to speak in public by taking a doctor-prescribed, safe, inexpensive and non-addictive medication. As I will explain, this medication allows us to control the cause of our symptoms exactly at the time when they are getting out of control. Therefore, what I am going to teach you will help those of us who have to routinely give presentations for our careers, those who need to only give several speeches a lifetime for wedding toasts, funerals, and the like, as well as those in show business who must be relaxed and confident enough to focus on their performance.
Finally, have a conversation with the audience. When presenters tend to read from visual aids or cards, they are disengaged from the audience. Remember that your speech is not about you, it is about the audience. You are giving them something, a message. Engage them with a conversation. This approach will be and feel more natural. More importantly, it will help you reduce anxiety.Public Speaking is something we all have to do at some point. The more we do it, the easier it will be for you. Remember that it won't be perfect every time, but with practice you will become much better. The goal is not to get rid of the anxiety, but to learn to control it.
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