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How to Conquering Your Fear of Public Speaking

How to Conquer Your Fear of Public Speaking?

Public Speaking is the most effective form of speaking in front of an audience to influence, guide and motivate people. It involves communicating information to a live audience. It is one of the effective skills that are important for everyone to master to feel comfortable and confident while speaking.

However, many people face glossophobia, the fear of public speaking.

Glossophobia is a common type of social phobia or anxiety that almost everyone faces. Even confident speakers get nervous at times. It is a stressful situation for some that trigger the fight-or-flight response.

We often avoid eye contact due to fear or anxiety, and that’s where everything goes wrong. Avoiding eye contact does not help in coping with the anxiety, instead worsens the situation and makes us even more nervous.

When people speak in a group for a large audience, the number of eyes watching makes people anxious, and they fear judgment.

Why is Public Speaking Important?

Undoubtedly, public speaking classes are important for each individual in their education, career, workplace, or in general.

The advantage of mastering public speaking is boosting self-confidence. It is the key to forming powerful connections and influencing people’s decisions. That is what an effective public speaker can do.

Without good verbal communication skills, your progress is at a disadvantage. You should have the courage to speak confidently in front of people to succeed in life.

It is not restricted to professional growth but also helps your personal growth. It helps to win friends and influence, communicate your ideas with your friends and family, and motivate others.

How to Conquer Public Speaking?

Though conquering or overcoming the fear of public speaking takes a little time, it is not unachievable. Here we have presented these nine ways that public speaking classes suggest to help you conquer and improve Public Speaking:

1. Practice is the key:

We often hear Practice is the Key to Success. It’s time to follow this quote to overcome your fear. Start by practicing in front of the mirror. Pick a topic, prepare a short speech, rehearse it in front of the mirror, and make eye contact with yourself. It will encourage you to do better every time.

Then start to practice in front of people you are comfortable with, maybe your friends or family. Consider recording yourself to check where the loopholes are and how you can improve that. By this, you can also focus on your facial expressions, gestures, body movements, and how welcoming you appear.

2. Focus on Eye Contact:

It is a very effective way to conquer fear. People often fear making direct eye contact due to anxiety and speaking to the group as a whole. It might end up making no connection at all.

Try connecting individually with people by making sustained eye contact with each individual at a time. While you focus on one person while delivering a thought, you make a connection. And doing this way, you can make connections with every person in the room.

3. Read More and More:

Your knowledge is never enough. The world has so much to offer that you always miss a lot of information. Honestly, it is impossible to know it all. But practice reading more and more as it will enhance your subject knowledge.

What we read helps to shape what we share and how we share information. Reading helps you to develop good speaking skills, have a proficient vocabulary, and create cohesive messages. Invest a minimum of ten minutes daily into reading either newspaper, inspirational quotes, or any material that boosts your knowledge.

4. Know Your Audience

You must focus on what type of audience you have, their level of understanding and maturity, and that’s how you deliver effective public speaking. Ask yourself questions like Who will be in the room? Why are they here today? What do they expect from this speech? The answer to these questions will automatically help you frame a structure you need to deliver.

5. Organize well in Advance

Prepare your topic by filtering out the information you need to deliver and what to avoid. You can use power point presentations where you can outline the key information you will be discussing.

Arrange your props, audio, video, or visual aids in case you need them. Also, to ensure everything is perfect, reach the place of your content delivery to check whether everything is in order or not.

6. Practice Breathing Exercises, Meditation, and Positive Affirmations

Breathing exercises can be calming and make you relax before the big speech. Practice 2-4 breathing exercises like deep breathing and belly breathing, and meditate before your public speaking.

Public Speaking Classes help you channelize all your negative energy into positive one and gain confidence through a relaxed mind. It will help to release stress and improve clarity in your sentences. Also, recite positive affirmations as you can do it, and more to keep your mind positive. 

7. Ask for honest feedback after your Public Speaking:

No matter how good your speech went, there is always a scope for improvement. So ask your audience to give you a review and suggestions. Feedback is a great way to know about your loopholes and what you can do to improve them. Ask specific questions to the audience about your rhythm, pace, content delivery, use of gestures and postures, and voice modulation.

8. Open with a puzzle, question, or a story

You should start your speech or presentation with a puzzle, a question, or a story. A puzzle diverts people’s minds from the speaker to the idea or content of the speaker, a question gets the audience into thinking instead of judging the speaker, and a story gets people involved in the plot and the characters.

In short, they are great engagement drivers to attract the audience to your content and reduce stress. Public Speaking Classes help you to learn about different opening tactics that includes various puzzles and type of questions to ask that improve your speech delivering pattern.

9. Outline your key points on a small paper

People have public speaking anxiety due to the fear of forgetting everything by seeing a crowd in front of them. Even proficient speakers forget. Therefore, it is quite common for you to go through the same.

However, to avoid such a situation, you can prepare a small piece of paper, highlight and outline all your key points, and refer to them during the speech. Of course, do not write down the entire presentation as you do not want to sound unprepared.

Conclusion

Public Speaking is a strong personality skill you should possess to create a lasting impression on others. Avoiding your fear will never allow you to take advantage of opportunities in your way. Therefore start practicing soon and improve your communication skills.

However, if you struggle to practice alone, seek professional help by joining public speaking classes. Oratory Academy is a professional academy that helps people overcome stage fright and fear of public speaking by providing public speaking courses.

Their course offers you interactive live sessions to communicate with the experts, learn from them and become a better speaker within a short period.

Contact them today to enroll in their public speaking classes and experience the change in your communication skills.

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How To Conquering Your Fear Of Public Speaking

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