How to overcome the fear of public speaking

People have a fear of speaking for various reasons: some have been taught to speak quietly and not to make noise in public places since childhood, others have specifically avoided a wide audience, afraid to look ridiculous. Statistics show that such a phobia is in second place after the fear of death in the world classification.

Stage number 1. Full-scale training

1. Write a speech and rehearse carefully, chiseling every word. Practice by the mirror so that you can see the face and control facial expressions. The fear of uncertainty is closely related to the fear of speaking, so it is important to know in advance where the meeting will take place.
2. Study the audience, take an interest in the hobby and attitude of the public. Find out what the audience is waiting for the performance.In this way, you can correct the speech for their interests, forcing you to listen to yourself. Information is power, be strong! Eliminate the unknown, it absorbs 9 out of 10 speakers.
3. Evaluated the audience? Great, now you need to build a speech, following a certain style. It is not necessary to express an abstruse scientific language, if the listeners are ordinary people. Such a lecture is extremely boring, I want to sleep from it. Express yourself in simple words that will be understood by those present. Do not use complex terms, if you are not going to give them explanations, avoid slang words and complex logical chains. Completely exclude words whose meaning you do not understand, so as not to blunder.
4. Repeat from your own fear - the stronger it is, the more thorough the preparation should be. Be sure to go through the text and make an approximate list of questions that students can ask. Prepare preliminary answers. In cases with graphs and tables, check the text for consistency with the numbers drawn on the paper, correct the discrepancies.
5. When everything is ready, take a comfortable position and close your eyes.Scroll through the difficult life situations in which you feel confident. Remember this state and try to transfer it to a public appearance. Stand up straight, take a deep breath and exhale, make a speech in a distinct voice.
6. Invite a relative or friend to visit as a listener, you can call a few people. Choose people who understand the topics so that they can objectively evaluate your oratory and speech in general. Friends will point out shortcomings, ask appropriate questions.
7. Examine the premise of your future performance, go to the podium, walk around the stage and determine the place where the audience clearly looks. Find out about the presence of the projector, aimed at you, in its absence, the faces of the listeners will be clearly visible. Having stayed in the audience for even 10 minutes, you will ease your task, you will be able to think in advance about your body position and the specific location on the stage.

Stage number 2. Meditation

1. For 15 minutes, focus on your own breathing. Take a deep breath, feel the air go into the lungs, hold your breath for 7 seconds.Exhale slowly and freeze again. Such exercises are used by the guru of oratory, they help to relax and calm the raging nerves.
2. Excellent stress relieving exercise. Sitting on the couch, strain the upper thigh muscle of the right leg, focus on it, stay at the end point for 5 seconds, do the same with the left leg. You can also go jogging, wring out from the floor or shake the press.

Important!
Do not resort to tranquilizers and stimulants. With increased dosage, the drugs will begin to act aggressively on the brain, leading you to a lethargic state.

Stage number 3. Comprehensive support

Agree with friends or relatives to provide full support. Pats on the shoulder, words of calm or strong hugs will do. Ask them to buy tickets to different points of the hall, so that wherever you look, you will see a familiar face everywhere.

Do not begin to speak until you find with your friends' eyes, otherwise you risk getting into a little more nervous. In cases where relatives can not attend the speech, look for the most interested listener with a kind face.

Stage # 4. Non-verbal component of the speech

The non-verbal part includes facial expressions, gestures, intonation and timbre of the speaker’s voice, his manner of speaking, the syllable and the distance from the speaker to the listener. Your audience will draw information from all these components, so prepare your wardrobe in advance. Do not dress too pretentiously or expensively, if it is designed for average citizens.

Since you have already studied the audience, try to pick up clothes like ordinary people. Let them recognize in you a “person” who is listened to, valued, respected. With regard to facial expressions, gestures and intonation, they must be worked out in detail.

Stage number 5. Being on stage

You can calm down before the performance, study the audience and memorize the speech, but you need to be able to behave on the stage. It is important to determine the growing panic and suppress it in time. A number of recommendations will help you with this.

1. Scroll through the encouraging phrases in your head: “I always dreamed of speaking in public, hurray, it happened!” Or “I love to speak in front of a large crowd of people.” I will also come up with standard expressions: “I will succeed”, “I will be able to perform at the highest level”.
2. Accept fear, you are entitled to excitement. Do not overdo it, so as not to come the oppressed state, which will cloud the mind. Tell the public that you are worried. In this way, you will take responsibility off your shoulders if the situation does not go according to plan. It is impossible to overly trust the listeners too often, the method is effective only during the initial performance, when other methods have been unsuccessful.
3. Avoid improvisation, do not put yourself in an awkward position. Answer tricky questions as trivially as possible to merge with the general background. Until you yourself want to talk people, do not get into difficult situations. Everything comes with experience, now you do not need to answer an endless stream of questions.
4. When the hall is full of businessmen who are well versed in the subject, the tension can go off scale. Do not look into the eyes, focus on the eyebrow zone. Imagine sitting men and women white rabbits or fairy-tale characters. Think positive things, do not pay attention to serious faces, if you are sure that the performance is going well.

The event is just around the corner, are you still afraid? Calm down, resort to meditation, increase physical activity.Examine the audience carefully, visit the performance venue, climb the stage. Rehearse the speech in front of the mirror in advance, invite your friends to preview it. Give up the impromptu, do not get into tricky situations.

Video: methods to overcome excitement during a speech