Achieving Public Speaking Calm
The Guaranteed Strategy to Conquer Your Fear When Speaking in Public
Even top professionals feel mild anxiety before public speaking. That helps them to perform at their optimum. If you dread public speaking, that fear must be conquered.
Your real fear is not about public speaking
Public speaking is one of our greatest fears because it involves exposing our egos to possible ridicule. In essence, public speaking fear is really the terror of making an idiot of ourselves while under public scrutiny. Many people are extremely nervous about the audience being able to see that they’re nervous via their shaking hands, quivery mouth. We don’t like people thinking we’re less competent than others. Actors with performance anxiety say their fear is about forgetting their lines. Again, they're really afraid of looking like a fool because ....they forgot their lines.
The guaranteed way to conquer public speaking fears
The quickest and most effective way to conquer any fear is to examine it. Really look at it so that you understand what makes you afraid and then face these simple facts about all unhelpful fears.
1. They’re only feelings
2. Those feelings were created by you. By your thoughts, your memories. And…
3. Your thoughts, hence your feelings, are under your control.
Let’s see how.
Think about your next public presentation. You immediately feel that all-too-familiar fear. Just the thought, the memory of your previous public speaking event is enough. Standing in your own lounge room, without an audience and you can generate all your public speaking fears. Your mouth goes dry, you can even feel quite queasy. Tune in to the different ways that you feel public speaking fear. Now do this – please.
· Write each separate fear symptom on a list.
· Read it aloud.
· Say this: “I produced those fears just by remembering the last time I spoke, or just by thinking about how afraid I’ll be. I’m now going to replace those thoughts with empowering ones.”
Bravo. You’ve just experienced the first step out of public speaking fear. You’ve realised that those fear-filled symptoms have been triggered by you, by your thoughts, your memories.
Now you’ll replace your fear-filled thoughts with alternative reactions. See your brain as similar to a computer. Your public speaking software program needs to be replaced with a public speaking program minus the disabling fears. Although our human brain is far more complex than any computer, the part of the human brain in which emotions are stored is the least sophisticated.
Let’s rewrite your public speaking software
Many people write about the 'act as if ' approach to overcoming fear generally and performance anxiety in particular. They don’t explain that to use that strategy effectively you must:
· Rehearse ‘acting as if’ you’re calm. Only by rehearsing or practising can you replace your fear-filled public speaking software program with a program guaranteed to have you feeling calm and confident.
Your rehearsals of confident public speaking are, in fact, the writing of your brain’s new calm public speaking software program.
To Create Your New Public Speaking Software
1. Open your mouth just a little bit, and let your tongue go very limp.
2. It’s impossible for you to feel tense and anxious while your tongue is limp and relaxed.
3. Next,, try saying "I'm feeling really terrified about that talk next ______."
Impossible. You can't feel fear when you're relaxed. So keep going.
I assume you have an outline of your talk distilled into useful speaking notes, or cues. With those brief notes, rehearse in this way:
1. Stand in front of a mirror.
2. With your very relaxed mouth, say your speech.
3. Listen to how strong and confident your voice sounds.
4. Smile at the little joke you’ll tell, or look suitably worried when you give that statistic about illiteracy.
The 'act as if' strategy can only work if you’ve rehearsed being genuinely calm and confident. During that rehearsal, you were calm and confident. You’d replace your usual public speaking fear with calm confidence. And you’ll feel that very same way in front of an audience.
Public Speaking Fear: Your Mind’s Obsolete Software
Like anything, the more you rehearse your new calm and confident public speaking technique, the more that program is embedded in your memory. Your mind can only believe your new calm and confident message if you send that message to it. If your old software butts in with little flurries of fear, let those feelings come. Then, let them go. You can do that by creating the ‘confident public speaking’ software program to replace those fear-filled memories.
On the day itself, deliberately open your mouth a little. Let your tongue feel limp. Recall your rehearsals vividly. The human mind is a marvellous thing. Just triggering that memory will re-produce that relaxed and confident feeling.
Your memories of fear produce those feelings. Your memories of public speaking confidence will produce feelings of being confident and relaxed.
