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Conquer Your Fear of Public Speaking

March 13th, 2010 Bob B Taylor No comments

Overcome your fear of public speaking. Useful techniques on how to conquer fear in public speaking.

The fear of speaking in public isn’t an unusual one. According to global surveys and statistics, public speaking fears ranks top above the fear of spiders, fear of flying, fear of heights and even the fear of death itself.

It’s no wonder why most people would do anything to avoid giving a speech in public.

For many people, especially new speakers, the fear of public speaking generally stems from the idea that something terrible will happen or because of the fear of looking bad and sounding foolish in public. It is a common problem, and for most people, the most typical approach to overcome this particular fear is simply to avoid speaking in public completely.

With such an overwhelming fear, how can one overcome this public speech phobia successfully?

Here are some pointers and suggestions that you can try to overcome that fear which cripples you! At the very least these methods will help you reduce your anxiety and help make that public speech something you can easily handle without falling over from fear.

1. Be Prepare

The best way to beat anxiety and gain self confidence is to come well prepared for a speech. Practice makes perfect and knowing your topic well is the key to gaining confidence. Good communications begins with an understanding of the audience. For example, if your audience is mostly young school children, it is advisable to keep your speech fun and your language simple.

2. Focus on the Presentation Itself

Exactly what is that you think that audience came to see? You? Unless you’re high profile politician or celebrity, the audience did not come to see you specifically. They came to listen to what you have to say. In other words, it is not you that’s being scrutinized. Focus on what they came to hear, and stop being concerned about what they might think about you individually.

3. A Little Humor Goes a Long Way

One simple way to put your audience, as well as yourself, relaxed is simply to make use of a little humor. In the face of an audience that’s chuckling at your joke, you’ll find it hard to worry by what else they may be thinking.

4. Engage Your Audience

Another common fear for most speakers is that they will bore their audience. An effective way to overcome this is simply to engage them right off the beginning. Open your presentation with a question, and encourage them to shout out their answers. If nobody answers right away, gently make fun of them to chide them into the discussion.

5. Visualize and Affirm

One simple way to conquer your public speaking fear in advance is with simple visualizations and affirmations. Picture yourself giving that successful speech, affirm that picture together with thoughts like “I will make a great speech” or “I will succeed”. If you repeat this enough times, when the time comes for you to step out to speak in front of a crowd, you will find that you will be able to control this fear a lot better.

6. Self Hypnosis

Do you know many great speakers use self hypnosis to help them overcome their nervousness and fears when speaking in public? A fun and very effective technique for overcoming the fear of public speaking, self hypnosis can also be utilized both to work to rid yourself of your speech anxieties, speech stuttering as well as as a relaxation technique prior to your speech.

Conquer your fear of public speaking with public speaking hypnosis and become a more confident and effective public speaker!

The world is in need of great communicators. Be fearless!