The no.1 fear of the majority of people is PUBLIC SPEAKING, be it for a school presentation, a meeting, a report, or even a protest, most of us just hate standing in front of a crowd, imagining them just leaving the event, grumbling, booing, and worse! throwing stuff at you!
I remember when I used to have that fear, I was part of a sales company that required me to do the presentation in front of a crowd, about 20-60 people per presentation, and to be honest “I LOVE SPEAKING!”, I absolutely enjoy public speaking, however I was never this enthusiastic about Public speaking, in fact I used to despise it, Now here it goes! my personal tested and approved guide to getting rid of the fear of the dreaded PUBLIC SPEAKING.
first of all we must define what we are really afraid of, which is surprisingly not the actual speaking itself! everyone admires fame, everyone wants to be able to do what great presenters do, now if you admire something or want to be something, you really don’t fear being able to do it.
what we do fear however is “FAILING” , there I’ve said it! we do not fear the act of speaking what we do fear is, getting up on stage and your legs start wiggling out of fear, you senses start to increase at an alarming rate, you start to notice all the eyes staring at you, your hands get clammy, you start to sweat, and once you get to actually speaking, your mind draws into a blank, or if you do get to speak your voice lacks volume and conviction, Now all this happens in your mind, before you even walk up on the stage!
so how do we counter this mental virus of Fear in terms of speaking or presenting?
#1 PRACTICE
the first step is practice, and I don’t want to sound like a cliche, but really if you want to lose your fear, start practicing! what I did when I was still very much afraid, is that I made sure I had a “SCRIPT“, word by word I would read it to myself alone, when I got the hang of simply reading it aloud, I would move on to the storytelling phase, I would then read it with emotion, rising to build conviction, stopping for a few seconds to let it sink in, then I would do this for over 3 times or more, then when I got the hang of the emotion, I would go to the bathroom lock the door, and speak in front of the mirror, trust me this helps a lot, it helped me get comfortable with my face, as I practice I get to discover what I need to change and how I need to do it.
And really though if you just keep practicing not only in your head but verbally to yourself if you’re too shy to do it in front of friends, you will feel less afraid, Heck! I used to practice my walk towards the podium several times just to make sure I was doing it right.
#2 GET THAT FIRST WORD OUT!
now the first step I introduced is what I like to call the PRE-LAUNCH, Now we get to the actual act of speaking, let’s say you got rid of the temporary “before you speak” fear now come the actual act of speaking, one thing I know is that once you are in the actual act of speaking, the moment the words are actually going out of your mouth, this is the time it gets more interesting, however most of us fear a bad reaction from the crowd, what I like to do is, and this has helped me tremendously, is in any presentation I try to surprise the crowd through volume and conviction.
Before you get on the stage, try to think of the very first word! that you will use as an opening word, it may be, HI, Hello, good evening, greetings, etc. and try to say it with as much volume as you can, Now I did not tell you to shout, but with Volume comes Power and with Power come Attention, and really attention is all you really need in speaking, try to master your opening first word, and once you’ve caught the attention of your listeners or audience, and you start to see those smiles and focus you get from them, speaking after that first word becomes smooth sailing.
#3 LAUGH AT YOUR MISTAKES
Now this third tip is just a bonus, whenever you make a mistake during your presentation don’t ponder on it during, don’t think of how the audience and your team will react, instead try to make a joke out of your mistake by repeating it in a smug kind of way, for example; I have this weird tendency to pronounce words with the letter “P” and replace it with the letter “F” as a PINOY this was a bit of a curse HA-HA! words like Place, Perfect, Power etc.came out as Flace, Ferfect, Fower, yet instead of thinking about my mistake I would laugh and repeat it, and I would do this in such a way that the audience would laugh with me, if not, I could still see smiles in the crowd, so the next time you make an obvious mistake, if you could, try to pass it off as a joke instead.
The Ten Fold Mentality 