Tips To Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking

The fear of public speaking is the most common type of phobia. Over 70 percent of the population is affected by what people call Glossophobia. It is a form of social anxiety disorder that varies in terms of severity. Regardless of whether you get nervous before speaking on the stage or find excuses to avoid giving presentations, glossophobia has a massive impact on the way you deliver a speech or a message.

What triggers anxiety is not the act of being in the spotlight. Instead, it is born in our deeply rooted fear of how others will perceive us once we take the stage. No one wants to look uncertain and nervous when taking the center stage. The audience will fear our credibility and competence on the subject we are presenting if we appear nervous in front of them.

To exude credibility and confidence in speaking in public or giving speeches, you must change your method. Start by improving your communications skills in each channel and interaction. Here are some of the powerful tips to do this. You DO NOT have to live with the fear of public speaking forever.

1.  Be Prepared To Offset Fear of Public Speaking

The first important step to silence your fears, while it may sound simple and very easy, is you should be prepared at all times. In other words, you know the material by heart that you do not worry or think about it. Additionally, this means that you have already made sure that all the logistics were set ahead of time. When you speak you should be focused and relaxed. To ensure that you have covered all the details, make a checklist.

Ask your friends to help you practice your speech. They can assist you by asking for difficult follow-up questions or play the role of an indifferent audience. To avoid surprises during the actual show, try to play out the most difficult scenarios. There is a wide range of relaxation and meditation techniques to minimize the psychological activity that the body does physiologically when in a stressful situation. In public speaking, the factors that cause stress could range from even just a thought of speaking in public to speaking in the event.

2. Challenge Your Belief About Public Speaking

Another effective way to overcome the fear of speaking in public is to challenge your perception and your capability to deliver a meaningful speech. Various cognitive reframing techniques aim to eliminate self-statements that are negative. These statements include irrational and unfounded beliefs about speaking in public. Reframing the cognitive challenges negative statements and replaces them with supportive, proactive, and positive statements. While these techniques are effective, they are designed to simply replace the negative way of thinking.

The hard part is to change the way you think intentionally and pragmatically. In other words, you are programming your brain to think that speaking in public is not a threatening event.

3. Change Your Attention From Performance to Communication

You can use another approach to overcome your fear of speaking in public. Try changing your perspective from being the subject of evaluation to being the subject of value. In other words, you train your mind to recognize speaking in public as an event where you get to communicate with people. A situation that they would benefit from instead of perceiving it as an event where people will test and judge the speaker. Through this, you will avoid worrying on how you will do the task and concentrate on ways to communicate the message to the audience.

4. Find More Ways To Speak

Regardless of whether you are dealing with your body’s responses to anxiety or fear, your overall response to speaking in public or your self-perception, the experience that you gain will slowly build your self-confidence. Creating and looking for opportunities to speak provides you the opportunity to practice your proficiency and be the best at it. Additionally, it facilitates learning on utilizing experiences to continuously enhance your speaking and presentation skills. More importantly, you learn from your flaws and mistakes. Also, the more frequent you speak the more you learn what comprises a good speaker. Remember this, you are a great speaker with a noble intention to inspire and inform the audience. To be a great public speaker, you should have a positive mindset.

5. Seek Help

Although you can do a lot of things to conquer the fear of speaking in public, there are other alternatives that can help you get a little assistance. Seeking and receiving help is very effective in getting results compared to doing it alone. Several proven and tested interventions are available and administered by certified and specialized professionals. Additionally, various social organizations could also help overcome the fear of speaking in public. You can even try using virtual reality tools to help you get more comfortable.