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How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking
Guest articles > How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking
by: Payman Taei
At one time in my life, like most people, I was terrified of public speaking. I remember one moment particularly clearly. My classmates were waiting for me to read a paper I’d written—an experience, I’m sure, many remember from high school and college. While a part of me was concerned about the views of my peers—I wouldn’t like to embarrass myself in front of them, after all—I was more concerned with what my professor would think. He was pretty strict, and I knew if I’d written something subpar he’d be the first to point it out. Having dealt with anxiety for most of my life, I recognized the symptoms: pounding heart, cold sweat, this weird tingling down my arms and wrist, and the immense desire to run and hide back in my dorm. I think it might’ve been good the clock was behind me, or I would’ve been checking that constantly, rather than focusing on my audience. Happily, however, one of my high school teachers gave me some helpful advice on overcoming a fear of public speaking—focus above people’s heads, rather than looking at their eyes. Needless to say, I survived the experience. Public speaking terrifies a lot of people; in fact, for a long time it topped the list of personal fears, and is still rather high in the present day. If you’re scared of speaking in front of crowds, you’re in good company—even people like Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln tried to avoid public speaking for a long time. If you want to overcome these fears, then there are a lot of options you can use. Here are some useful tips and tricks that helped me, as well as many others. 1. Practice, Practice, PracticeFeeling like you don’t know your material is a major reason that people are afraid of public speaking. Naturally, the easiest method to fix this is to practice constantly. Take the time to create your presentation on PowerPoint, sites like Visme, or on paper well in advance so you have time to tweak the information. Go over the work several times and get a feel for how it’ll flow when given to an audience. Creating questions you think the audience might ask—and then researching the answers—can help you further prepare. If you’ve researched and studied your topic well, you’re more likely to feel at ease once you start talking about your work. On YouTube, Dr. Ivan Joseph illustrates how this method helped him. He stood in front of his mirror and practiced his speech to himself first, then to his family and peers. While he was nervous practicing in front of a crowd, the informal setting allowed him to hammer out his familiarity with his work in a safer setting. His nerves were gone by the time he had to speak to much larger crowds, since he’d already given the speech so many times. For myself, I found making flashcards to practice from helped. I’d include small key notes, and then forced myself to try and remember and fill in the blanks. I kept them with me when it came time to speak, just in case I needed something to trigger a memory, but I’d already practiced the speech enough that I hardly used them. 2. Find Something More Powerful Than FearFear can be a terrifying, all-consuming emotion—but so can many others. Speaking about something you’re passionate about can help drive the fear into a corner where it’s manageable. Gandhi's fear was so severe that he struggled to even get out a few sentences in his younger years. What finally motivated him to overcome his fears of public speaking was the fact that he found something greater than himself that he felt he had to advocate—seeing India as an independent nation. When you’re passionate about something, you’ve likely got a lot of facts down already, since you’ve probably done a lot of research on your own. Moreover, finding a topic you’re passionate about will make you more comfortable speaking on it. Personally, I’ve found some of my best presentations involve something that I enjoy talking about. It makes the topic easier to research and present, and I feel less like I have to prove myself and more like I can focus on what I love. It helps build confidence in your topic. Starting with a topic you’re comfortable with can help you prepare to deal with topics you might not know as well in the future. 3. Think About How You Present
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