Want to show up as your best self for a presentation? A meeting? A keynote speech? A mentorship session? Or you want to speak confidently, but something seems to hold you back. Perhaps, it’s your self-doubt. Perhaps your fear of making a mistake.
Let’s learn how to overcome the fear of public speaking through the best practices, frameworks, and techniques to captivate and influence your audience.
In this blog, our mentor Sakshi Shukla, a Copywriter and Content Marketer, shares effective tips to overcome your fear and conquer the stage!
The content of this blog will cover the tips and tricks to increase your confidence level and ways for you to tell effective stories to your audience.
The Science of Confidence
According to ExcellenceXL, confidence helps to improve performance. It makes it easier to connect with people and allows us to grow, because we believe in ourselves.
Positive Self-Talk Be in your own corner and uplift yourself whenever you are anxious. Motivate and empower yourself with positive words. For example, “I can do this.”, “Be Brave.” or “Come on, let’s get yourself together.”
Find Your Power Pose Practice what pose makes you feel the most confident while sitting or standing.
Learn from Self-doubt What do you really doubt about yourself? Can it be a learning moment?
Mirror Work Speak for 10 mins/day in front of the mirror. Understand your body language and feel more connected to yourself.
Practice Visualization Visualize your best self and decide to act like that.
In order to overcome your fear of public speaking, these are some of the mindset shifts you need to be practicing.
Storytelling demands vulnerability. If you don’t really feel it, your audience won’t either.
Storytelling Best Practices
Mock TED Speech Pick up a random topic and start an impromptu TED speech on it. Tell personal incidents related to the topic.
Express Emotions Describe your feelings as much as you can.
Intentional Speaking What do you want people to feel and take away? Start with your purpose and work your way up. This helps to develop clarity in presenting your content.
Journal Daily Write descriptively about different things that happened in your day. You can send voice notes to yourself if you do not want to write. The more you do these practices, the more you’ll get better at expressing yourself and telling stories that stick with people for years.
Bonus: Never forget
To make people laugh (leverage humor to maintain your audience’s attention)
Brevity is a speaker’s best friend (you don’t want people to be sleeping while you speak)
More tricks of the trade!
Everything that you read, try reading them out loud and with a lot of expressions
Read fiction as much as you can. This helps you to understand the structure and flow of emotions in writing and speaking
Record yourself while speaking, share it with your friends and ask for feedback.
Watch good speeches and try emulating them (there are already great speakers out there, why not learn from them?)
Always give 10 minutes to preparation-deep breaths and dance a little bit
Speaking is about practicing. Giving a talk to hundreds of people is overwhelming at times. You may find yourself lost for words in the beginning, or things do not run smoothly as you planned. But, you will improve and gain confidence through past experiences.
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