How to conquer the fear of Public speaking?
Advise on how to conquer fear of public speaking is plenty and easily available. But the problem is that most of these recommendations aggravate the issue and not solve it. One of the oft-repeated ones is to be “well prepared and rehearse”. Perfectly valid but this is not the primary solution. By practicing and training one can improve knowledge base but not conquer fear. The problem is lack of faith in oneself, which you need to take control if you don’t want to make a fool of yourself on stage.
Remember that the solution lies in the content of your presentation and not in training or how you talk.
1. Talk about your life:
One of the easiest ways of conquering fear of public speaking is by talking about your own life and experiences. This helps because you know yourself intimately well and have an authority to speak, this makes you feel assured. Prepare a listing of your achievements, the things you have learnt, work, profession, college life, your pastimes, vocations, family, etc and deliver talks on them. You will see a great change in the way you perceive yourself on stage.
2. Tell a story:
Don’t preach, tell a story, convert your life incidents into stories and tell them to peers, co-workers etc socially and at breaks during work. The key to public speaking success is by peppering talks with stories and incidents liberally. They are easy to remember and also to capture listener’s attention. Use books of fables, short stories and folk tales if necessary.
3. Talk with intent:
Before you start preparing your speech, ascertain your intention behind the talk. Ask yourself these questions: Why do you want to speak? What do you hope to accomplish? What do your listeners’ want to hear? Human retention is low and your listeners wont remember every word of your talk. Give them one strong point and focus your speech around it. Announce this in the beginning so the listeners know what they are getting into and cap it up with a clear action plan for the audience. All memorable talks have had a definite purpose.
4. Write down and adhere to three or four points to build your talk around:
One of the greatest errors most of us commit is to talk too much and bore the audience. The speech should have one main theme with a few reference topics and liberally peppered with numerical data, anecdotes and humor will get you accolades for your talk. This will be light and have high recall value. Audience will be thankful for giving an interesting and intelligible speech. The positive result on you will be conquering of your scare of public speaking.
