Check Your Ego At The Podium
When you explore the source of peoples speaking anxiety, it often comes down to the fear of making mistakes or looking dumb in front of colleagues or other people they need to impress.
And some are self-conscious about their appearance or the sound of their voice.
For this group, I would say, Get over it!
Yes, get over it. Thats your ego talking. Your presentation is not about you, its about them your audience.
Your only job is to provide useful information that will help them in some way, large or small information that will lead them to change their thinking or even their behavior on a particular issue.
So set aside the notion of dazzling or impressing them. Turn the tables on your anxiety. Ask yourself, How can I help today? Show up to serve.
Rehearse To Increase Confidence
Practice but dont memorize. Theres no disputing that preparation will build confidence. Memorizing speeches will mislead us into thinking there is only one way to deliver an idea. Forgetting a phrase or sentence throw us off and hastens the brain freeze. Memorizing provides a false sense of security.
Practice with written notes. Writing out the speech may help formulate ideas. Practice speaking extemporaneously using bullet points to keep us on track.
Practice the flow of the presentation. Practice focusing on the message thats delivered instead of the precise words to use. We want to internalize the flow of the speech and remember the key points.
Practice recovering from a brain freeze. Practice recovery strategies by purposely stopping the talk and shifting attention to elsewhere. Then, refer to notes to find where we left off. Look ahead to the next point and decide what wed like to say next. Finally, well find someone in the audience to start talking to and begin speaking.
Be prepared for the worst. If we know what to do in the worst-case scenario , well have confidence in our ability to handle it. We do that by preparing what to say to the audience if our mind goes blank. Visualizing successful recovery of the worst will help us figure out what needs to be done to get back on track.
How To Get Over Public Speaking Anxiety With Ifeel
Ifeel has created an emotional well-being program for companies, designed by its team of leading psychologists to help companies help their employees manage their mental health and self-esteem.
Thanks to this partnership, HR managers can receive personalized, data-driven advice on helping employees learn how to get over public speaking anxiety through different tips and online therapy to help them overcome their fears.
In addition, ifeels emotional well-being program for companies offers employees a mental health care service structured at different levels depending on individual needs. This way, employees can access various mental health care tools with ifeels app. On level two, they can receive emotional support through a chat with one of our platforms licensed psychologists. If additional support is needed, they can access the third level of the program: online psychological therapy with a psychologist specialized in cases such as yours.
We hope you found this post about how to get over public speaking anxiety interesting. If you want more information about our emotional well-being program for companies, simply request it and we will contact your team as soon as possible. You may also be interested in this post about the advantages of using ifeels workplace mental health platform.
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To Overcome Your Fear Of Public Speaking Stop Thinking About Yourself
Even the most confident speakers find ways to distance themselves from their audience. Its how our brains are programmed, so how can we overcome it? Human generosity. The key to calming the amygdala and disarming our panic button is to turn the focus away from ourselves away from whether we will mess up or whether the audience will like us and toward helping the audience. Showing kindness and generosity to others has been shown to activate the vagus nerve, which has the power to calm the fight-or-flight response. When we are kind to others, we tend to feel calmer and less stressed. The same principle applies in speaking. When we approach speaking with a spirit of generosity, we counteract the sensation of being under attack and we feel less nervous.
Most of us even those at the top struggle with public-speaking anxiety. When I ask my clients what makes them nervous, invariably they respond with the same answers:
I dont like being watched.
I dont like the eyes on me.
I dont like being in the spotlight.
And it follows that when they get up to speak, nearly all of them initially avoid making eye contact with members of the audience. Therein lies the problem: While avoiding direct eye contact may seem like an effective strategy for coping with speaking anxiety, it actually makes you even more nervous.
Talk With People Before The Presentation
Doing a meet-and-greet with the audience before the presentation begins gives you the opportunity to make connections with your audience so you don’t feel as if you’re presenting to a group of strangers. This will also allow your audience to get to know you a little bit and encourage more support from them during your presentation.
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What Causes Speaking Anxiety
There are a number of reasons that a person may experience anxiety about public speaking. Before you learn how to manage it, it is important to realize exactly what causes this type of anxiety.
These are just a few examples of course. Anxiety about bullying or mocking can cause embarrassment that is strong enough to affect public speaking. Also being in situations like having to speak to a crowd of people who are of a higher status than you , having to present new ideas, or when you know you are being evaluated based on your performance, can all impact the degree of anxiety you have about public speaking.
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Record Yourself And Learn
Think about how top athletes go back and watch tape of their gameplay to see how to improve. To overcome your fear of public speaking, you would be essentially doing the same thing by recording your speech.
Set up your phone or a video camera to record your speech. Record yourself giving the talk from beginning to end. If you stumble over your words, forget something, or mess up, just keep recording.
Then listen to it or watch it, and make notes on how you could make it better. Some people do not like listening to the sound of their voice on tape, so it is important that you get used to your own voice and speaking style.
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I stood at the side of a large stage, unseen by the audience and waiting for my cue. The event emcee was introducing me in Spanish at the podium. Across the stage, hidden in the wings, I could see a translator getting ready. The auditorium was crowded far more than I was used to. It was an atypical moment in many ways, yet one thing felt familiar: I was experiencing all of the usual physical and mental symptoms of acute stage fright.
The fidgety movements, the sweaty palms, the racing heart, the thoughts spiraling around my brain. I pleaded silently to the announcer: Please stop talking, and just let me get up there and start.
Part of what provokes anxiety about a high-stakes presentation is envisioning that you will have to be speaking for the next 30 or 40 minutes, with nothing to rescue you if something goes wrong. Its just you, a stage, a waiting audience, and a long block of time.
Are You Ready To Overcome Your Presentation Fear
There is nothing wrong with having a fear of public speaking. Its a natural and understandable fear. But, as with any other fear, you cant let it run your life. You have to take action to overcome it. It wont be easy, and it might take some time, but the rewards of having overcome that fear will certainly be worth all the hard work you put into it.
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Free Google Slides Theme And Powerpoint Template
Anxiety is an illness that affects many people, and one of those people may be someone close to us or even ourselves. Sometimes, it can seem complicated to help someone with anxiety to make them feel good and at ease with us. So, in this template especially for giving workshops, we bring you some tips on how to help someone with anxiety, so that you can use them too if you need to or to share with others who want to help their loved ones.
Pick An Interesting Topic
If you pick an interesting topic, you are more likely to focus on what you are communicating rather than on others perception of you. Fear of public speaking is often caused by a fear of unfavorable evaluation by others, so the more strategies you use to deflect that imaginary evaluation, the better.
If youre enthusiastic about the topic, the audience will pick up on that and you may even find yourself enjoying the presentation! If its not possible to pick just any subject that interests you, see how you can find your own angle within the topic assigned.
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Nine Ways To Help Reduce Presentation Anxiety
Some people rank the fear of public speaking higher than the fear of death! It is very real and can be debilitating. Even billionaire Warren Buffett admits that he was “terrified” of public speaking early in his career. He decided that to reach his full potential, he had to overcome his fear of it. If you are faced with a similar challenge, there are several techniques to help you overcome your fears.
David Greenberg, president and CEO of Simply Speaking and author of the bestseller Simply Speaking! The No-Sweat Way to Prepare and Deliver Presentations, is a foremost expert on this topic. He has been coaching and training leaders from top companies to transform their presentations since 1988.
Greenberg offers nine helpful strategies to eliminate presentation or “speech” anxiety.
Focus On Your Content
One way to learn how to overcome a fear of speaking in meetings is to learn how to focus on your content and not on the audience. Most people focus on the audience and end up being nervous and forgetting what they were presenting, and they end up doing an awful job. Put all your energy on the content you are presenting and be confident in doing so.
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Express One Idea In Each Slide
It is so easy to try to fit as much information as you can into one presentation. Keep your presentation concise and easy to follow along with you as you present. Overloading it with a ton of bullet points may get the information in your presentation, but you risk losing your audience along the way. Figure out the most important information that your audience needs to know and outline it by slide.
Strategies To Reduce Speaking Anxiety
Whether youre about to lead a big presentation at work or youre simply about to go out with friends and youll need to socialize with others, there are several strategies you can implement before the engagement that may help you with your speaking anxiety. These include:
There is an anxiety disorder known as social phobia that can make it harder to speak in public, and may make these strategies a bit more difficult. However, utilizing these strategies can lead to more self-confidence and comfort with the idea of speaking publicly.
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How To Reduce Public Speaking Anxiety
A little bit of anxiety as you prepare for a big speech or presentation is common. Even the best speakers in the world get a small amount of anxiety before they get on stage or speak in front of a large group. You should never expect yourself to be completely anxiety free. What you need is for that anxiety to fuel you into giving a great speech, not hold you back from speaking.
When your fear of public speaking overwhelms you, you need help. The problem is that we have a tendency to focus on the mistakes, so it’s not always easy to overcome that anxiety right away. One mistake , and you may accidentally convince yourself that your fears were justified.
In order to cure your public speaking anxiety, you need to make smart decisions before, during, and after you speak. Some people get public speaking anxiety just by talking in front of their friends when their friends are in large groups.
In this case, we’re talking about learning to speak in front of a group. It may be planned or unplanned , but you still need to make the right choices and deal with your anxiety directly.
Below are strategies that will help you overcome your public speaking anxiety.
Help For Fear Of Public Speaking
For those with phobias, its difficult to turn their focus away from the physical symptoms of their anxieties. The fear of public speaking can cause sufferers to be overwhelmed by their physical state, unable to think about anything except their trembling hands or shaky voice. Learning to recognize and take control of negative thoughts, and how to change ones focus, can often be accomplished through CBT. Rather than mentally or physically running away from the fear, people can learn new ways to confront their anxiety and challenge their own thinking, while gaining mechanisms that can help them cope in effective, healthy, and sustainable ways.
Under the guidance of a licensed mental health professional, CBT can be the key for many people to unlock their fears and be on their way to successful public speaking. If you would like to learn more about how Dr. Andrew Rosen and the staff at The Center for Treatment of Anxiety and Mood Disorders can help you with your fear of public speaking, please contact us for a confidential assessment at .
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Turn Your Nervous Energy Into Enthusiasm
Nervousness and excitement often feel the same in the body. So, if you’re feeling especially nervous before a presentation, turn this into enthusiasm by using that nervousness to pump yourself up. Focus on being excited to make the presentation and tell yourself that the anxiousness you’re feeling is actually positive energy in anticipation of sharing your knowledge with others.
How To Deal With Speaking Anxiety During Your Presentation
In my previous post, I talked about what you can do before a presentation to help you feel less nervous about speaking.
This week, I want to focus on things you can do to reduce anxiety while youre delivering a presentation. And, I also want to offer an important tip at the end of this post on something you can do if none of this works for you!
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Take Notes During Other Presentations
A great way to boost your confidence when it comes to giving presentations is to attend other presentations and take notes. Notice what the speaker does with their hands, how long they speak for and how often they pause during their speech. Making notes of these details will give you ideas as to what to do during your own presentation.
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Don’t Try To Be Perfect
Greenberg explains that the fear of public speaking often stems from a fear of imperfection. He urges us to “accept the fact that no one ever gets it perfect and neither will you.” Rather than striving to become a “super-speaker,” Greenberg’s simple advice is to just be yourself. “Your audience will appreciate it,” he says.
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How You Can Overcome Public Speaking And Anxiety
The reality is that you can recover from your fear of public speaking. Using the above tips can be a big help. If you’re also someone that suffers from anxiety regularly, you’ll also benefit greatly from controlling your overall anxiety. Anxiety tends to be cumulative, and those with anxiety are far more likely to develop public speaking fears.
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Dont Try To Be Perfect
Greenberg explains that the fear of public speaking often stems from a fear of imperfection. He urges us to accept the fact that no one ever gets it perfect and neither will you. Rather than striving to become a super-speaker, Greenbergs simple advice is to just be yourself. Your audience will appreciate it, he says.
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On The Day Of The Speech
Exercise. Exercising on the day of a speech can help reduce anxiety and stress.
Use relaxation techniques. Simple relaxation techniques lessen anxiety and allow them to focus on the task at hand. Some of the most common relaxation techniques are: taking deep breaths, tightening and then relaxing your muscles, and visualizing a peaceful scene.
Accept fear and use it. Accept the fact that you are nervous and use that nervous energy to enhance your delivery. Use the extra adrenaline that you get from fear to invigorate your gestures and enthusiasm about your topic. Remember, even the best speakers get nervous, but they use it to their benefit.
Wear clothes that you feel confident in. Most of us have a few outfits that we feel particularly comfortable and confident in. These are good things to wear when you present a speech. If you feel good about how you look standing in front of your audience, you can put all of your focus on your message. You do not want to distract your audience or yourself by adjusting your clothes or hair during your speech.
Find friendly faces in the crowd. While you are speaking find one or two people in the audience that are giving you positive feedback . When you feel nervous make eye contact with those people. Their friendly faces will give you encouragement.