Five Tips to Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking - T. Harv Eker

Hi, everybody. It's T. Harv Ecker here. You know, a recent article came out that showed 75% have a fear of public speaking and presentation and that some people are actually more fearful, more worried about speaking in public than dying. I know it's. It's crazy. It's a little extreme, but the research actually shows that. So today I'm going to give you five. How many? Five specific tips as to how to overcome the fear of speaking and talking in public and do so with confidence. If you're ready, here we go. All right, number one, stop focusing on yourself. Now, the only reason that you would have a fear about speaking to people in public or a group or whatever is because you are, what, Thinking about yourself. You're thinking about, oh, my God, how am I going to do? Are they going to like me? Does my hair look good? You know, what if I fumble? What if I screw up? And et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What's the common word here in all of this? Here it is I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. The minute you say I, you're going to start worrying about yourself, which brings up the fear. What do you do instead? You simply focus instead on yourself. You focus on your audience, you focus on them. You focus on why you are there, the fact that you are there to help them learn and grow or present this information or whatever you're doing. You focus on them instead of you. That is the number one way, like I used to be petrified of getting on a stage. I was the kind of person that never even wanted to, you know, put my hand up in. In school, when the teacher came by, I would throw my pencil down, as many of you did, and go try to pick it up so she wouldn't see me. Of course, she always caught me. But I remember, I'm not kidding you. In grade three, I actually missed the morning I told my mother I was sick so that I wouldn't have to present the show and tell stuff. And here I am training what people get. How can you train in front of five, 10,000 people? I say, I don't care if it's five people or 5,000 people, because I'm not thinking about me when I go out there. I'm thinking about one thing. Who can I help? How can I help some people? What can I say that can. That can impact their lives and help them? From my experience, that's all I'm thinking, thinking about. So if you turn your attention from yourself, how do I look? How Do I sound. Am I going to do this right? Are people going to like it to. How can I help these people? Everything will change, I promise. Step number two. Are you ready? Here it is. Speak about something you're passionate about, something that you know about. Don't try to fake it. Don't. Don't try to talk about things that you know you just read in a book, because you don't know that. And what's the best way to do that? It's got to be a topic that's near and dear to you. And people. You know what? People are very, very smart. They have an inner sense, a resonance, a vibration, and your vibration matches their vibration or it doesn't. Right? And so they'll know if you're enthusiastic and if it's real. They'll know if you're passionate about something. So you've got to find something to talk about and teach about something that you are passionate about, something that resonates with you, something that you would normally just want to help people with in any way you could, anytime, just in a conversation, if you could. Right? So that's critical. And you got to know about it. And the way you know about it mostly is it had an impact on your life. So if you're the skinny mini, and you always were then talking about how to lose weight, weight, well, you know, what do you, you never lost weight, you didn't have to, so what's the big deal, etc. Etc. On the other hand, if you were 50 pounds overweight and you were, you know, embarrassed and, and you were always tired and had low energy and it was really hampering your life, and you were able to find a methodology and a strategy that really worked for you and help you lose the weight and keep it off. You know what, it's your duty to share that with people. Just talk about yourself. This is what happened for me. And be honest and be real. Okay, now, number three. Practice. Practice. Get some experience. Just practice. And the simplest way to do it is go to your biggest critic. Who's that? You go to the mirror. Go. Go to the mirror and practice. I remember one of my mentors in this arena, he was staying over at my house when I was in California, and he was going to do a presentation that was pretty new to him, but he knew the topic very, very well. He just hadn't presented it like this before. And I remember going downstairs where he was staying and he had the flip charts up all over the room and he was doing his full presentation, you know, with the flip charts in the mirror, pointing here, going here, doing a step back and. Okay, I think I need to slow that down. So practice in front of the mirror. Number four, test your material in the real world before you go out there in front of thousands. Do you know how many people were in my very first seminar? The number is eight. Eight people on my living room couch. And the only way they would come is if my wife promised to make them this fabulous lunch. And you know what? All they cared about was what was for lunch. But it didn't matter. I had eight human beings and I was testing the material out and seeing what worked and what didn't work. And to this day I want to tell you that I consistently enhance and then try to improve the presentation in my courses. Every single time out, you're always asking me, what are all those notes in your binder? Every time I come out on stage for a three day program, the binder is clean. And every time I leave after three days, it's full of pencil marks and post it notes and everything. Why? Okay, so everyone, you have two minutes to share, share with your partner, xyz, blah, blah blah. And then I notice after two minutes I'm about to say stop and people haven't gotten halfway and going, oh my God, that's too short. I need to Change it to 3 minutes or 4 minutes each by then so I make those adjustments. But you got to understand, you got to do that in front of live people and test it out in front of live people. But a small group is great. And even better, here's the last tip I want to give you. You don't need to memorize your whole talk. It's in fact the more you memorize it, the worse you're going to do. Because now it's all about you again, right? Am I going to remember this? Et cetera, et cetera. It's not about that. You do need to prepare. But there is one part of your talk or presentation or whatever you're doing that you need to memorize. And that is your introduction. That is your first two or three or four minutes. You've got to have that locked down in your memory. You got to have it word for word for word so you're not all fumbling around wondering where you are, etc. Etc. Why is that? Here's a question. When are you the most nervous? Duh. In the first couple of minutes, right? You're like brand new, your mind's freaking out, right? So you're most nervous if you haven't done this much before in the first couple of minutes. But if you know your stuff, you won't be nervous. You've done it a hundred times in front of the mirror, in front of people. You'll, you've got it word for word. You can say it with their while you're eating, while you're doing anything. Okay, you've got it memorized. Now here's the second question. When is the audience the most nervous? When are they most like, oh, did I do the right thing by being here? Is this person going to be any good? Is this going to be worth my time? The first few minutes? Right. That's why you've got to lock it down. And this is the biggest critical thing I teach in our train the trainer program. And when people do this, they are so much more what guess what the word is. It starts with a C O. What? N F. You got confident. Because they, they've rolled through the first few minutes perfectly, elegantly, incredibly, they've got to lock down every move, everything. And now, right, momentum takes over. A body in motion will tend to remain in motion. Whatever you're doing, you did in the first, you get a good start, you, you're going to have a good middle, you're going to have a great end because you're going to be comfortable. Yes or yes. So those are five critical steps, tips to releasing and not having any fear of presentation or fear of public speaking. Hope you enjoyed this video.