You are expected to give a presentation, but your voice regularly gets muffled, you feel disoriented, and you feel like hiding?
Yes, it is definitely the stage fright. Don’t worry, it is a natural reaction. Everyone goes through it, even professional performers. It’s okay if you get a little nervous when you have to speak in front of people…
Fear is a learned response
The main goal is to be confident, positive and empowered during the performance. Ideally, you should be as enthusiastic and cheerful as you would be with your friends. The question is how you can achieve the same calmness and clarity of thought while standing in front of an audience.
Just a few people know that the fear we feel in adulthood is most often the result of hurtful criticisms we received in our childhood. That is why we fear failure and rejection. According to psychologists, almost all emotional disorders can be traced back to early “love deprivation”.
A related quote from Eddie Rickenbacker:
“Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in experience and achievement.”
Eddie Rickenbacker
Good news that confidence can be developed. Young children are not afraid, adult fear is based on negative feedback from childhood. And since any kind of fear, including fear of public speaking is a learned reaction, we are able to neutralize it.
Sensitive children, hypersensitive adults
A child subjected to a lot of negative criticism can become an adult who is more concerned than necessary with the judgement and opinion of others. In extreme cases, they may become so paralyzed by their fears and so unsure that they dare to act only with permission of key players in their lives.
In certain cases, it can even go so far that some people dare not speak in public. This is due to fear of rejection. But this can be replaced by confidence, calm and self-discipline.
Start with the message
It can help to boost your confidence if you stand out knowing exactly the message you want to convey. In other words: before standing in front of an audience, a confident speaker has got the specific message he wants to share with the world.
Be clear about your goals! Ask yourself, why do you want to share this message with others? Those who are motivated only by money or simply complete a task rarely strive to understand their audience and deliver an above average performance. However, those who are passionate about keeping the interest of their audience and changing their minds will do their best to make the performance successful. Are you one of them?
Speak from your heart
You’ve probably already heard a lecture by someone who is not an experienced speaker, after all it was obvious that he spoke passionately about the topic you were curious about also. In other cases, when the speaker presented the lecture several times, in vain the presentation was perfectly constructed, the lack of passion killed the delivery.
Whenever you can, speak from your heart and talk about a topic you know, and feel is important. Trust me, your presentation will be met with rapt attention and loud applause.
The audience is on your side
Many people see the performance as a kind of exam. However, an important difference is that the audience expects a successful performance from you from the very beginning. They do not want to test you, but simply would like to learn about the subject in more detail – it means that they are for you, and they want your success. We could say that “the speaker starts with an A” and has nothing to do but to keep that good mark.
You remember the pledging method, don’t you? You won’t be nervous anymore after your umpteenth speech. Repetition is the most effective way to boost your confidence.
