TJ Walker says fear of public speaking comes from not practicing enough. Record yourself giving speeches, watch them back until you're happy with it, and the nervousness disappears. He offers a free presentation course at mediatrainingworldwide.com.
Chapters
Do you have some level of fear? Maybe it's down here, maybe it's up here, but any level of fear before you give a speech or presentation, Forgive me for repeating myself, those of you who are regulars here have heard me say this many times. But if you are having any sort of fear, nervousness, anxiety before a speech, yeah, it's normal, but it's a problem. It means you haven't prepared, you haven't done your due diligence. The number one way, the easiest way to get over your fear of any speech is to actually practice it out loud. Record it on your cell phone, watch it, figure out what you like, what you don't like, keep doing it until you love what you see. You do that, I promise you, you aren't going to be nervous before your speech. And there's this whole school of thought out there from some of my colleagues in the speech coaching business of, oh, it's good to be fearful. It means you're not complacent and get those butterflies in your stomach, flying in formation and blah, blah, blah. Let me ask you, if you had to send an important memo to a boss or a colleague or all your clients tomorrow, would you be fearful about hitting that send button? Or would you just write and rewrite the memo, have others look at it, proof it, get a third opinion, get comfortable with, this is the best memo I can write on this topic. And then by the time you hit send, be fairly relaxed about it? I think it's probably the latter. You would only be nervous if you didn't have time to edit it, spell check and review it. Well, when it comes to your speech, when it comes to your presentation, you do have time. It's very rare that you're at a convention. You're just sitting there with a thousand people and about to have lunch and somebody grabs you, pulls you up to the stage and demands that you give a 60 minute keynote speech. I can understand that making you nervous, but that's not how most of us are asked to give speeches. We're given notice, we're given time to prepare, but most of us don't do it. Now, you may write and rewrite the script a thousand times, you May Futz with PowerPoint slides for 30 hours. You are not prepared to give a speech until you've spoken it out loud on video and you like what you see. That will eliminate your fear. Sorry if I'm sounding annoyed by this, but it just, I find it bizarre that people keep talking, oh, I'm afraid of speaking. I'm afraid of speaking. I'm afraid it's the number one fear people have. Get over it. It's really easy to solve. Just do your speech on video until you like it. What do you think? Am I being too harsh? Post your comments right here. I'd love to hear from you. If you have other questions about not only fear of public speaking, but but any aspect of speaking, post your comments right here. Whether you're watching this on Facebook or YouTube or any other forum. Happy to answer your questions. Also, if you would like a free course on how to be a public speaker that will help you get over your fear of public speaking too, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and just click the button for a free online presentation training course. You can see the click below in the description as well. I'll send you the course at no obligation. Thanks.
