Haritosh SrivastavFounder & Head Coach, Confident Storytelling Hub

Why you should never practice in front of the mirror 🪞 😒

28 Feb 2023 · 1 min

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0:58

In this concise instructional video, the speaker argues against the common habit of rehearsing speeches in front of a mirror. He outlines three key drawbacks: (1) it redirects the speaker’s attention from the audience to themselves, undermining audience‑centric delivery; (2) it fuels excessive self‑criticism over superficial details like shirt color, facial expression, or gestures, distracting from overall performance; and (3) it offers no replay capability, preventing objective review unless the rehearsal is repeated. As a superior alternative, he recommends recording the talk as if addressing a live audience, allowing the speaker to revisit, analyze, and improve the delivery with concrete feedback.

Chapters

Never practice your speech in front of a mirror. Now I'm pretty sure you must have heard this suggestion from a lot of people that practice in front of mirror, get more confidence from that. Let me tell you 3 reasons why you should not practice in front of mirror. Number 1, when you practice in front of a mirror, the focus goes from the audience to yourself, which is not a great thing if you want to become a public speaker. Number 2, if you practice in front of a mirror, you become too self-critical. You like Is this shirt color right? Am I having the right expression, right gesture? So instead of focusing on delivery, you focus on self-criticism. And number 3 reason is that when you practice in front of mirror, there is no replay. There is no way you can go back and check unless you practice again. So what is a better way? A better alternative is record your talk as if you are speaking in front of audience. When you record, you can always go back and analyze and learn more things.