T. Harv Eker advises that fear of public speaking stems from self-focus (repetitive "I" thinking) and can be overcome by redirecting attention to the audience and how to help them. He supports this with a personal anecdote about avoiding presentations as a child and emphasizes that focusing on service changes the emotional experience of speaking, whether to five or 5,000 people.
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, do what if I fumble, what if I screw up, etc. Etc. Etc. What's the common word here in all this? Here it is, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. The minute you say I, you're gonna 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, why 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 about. So if you turn your attention from yourself, how do I look? How do I sound? And 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.
