Conquering Your Fears of Public Speaking

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Many people would rather die than speak in public, I’m here to save you. But can I really save you from death? Better to consult the health experts about that. What I can save you from is preferring death over speaking.

What is fear? Did you ever think about that? What truly is fear? We are going to be discussing the fear of public speaking but before we even get into the art of public speaking, we should address fear; that is the elephant in the room. It is not speaking in public; not standing in front of the room, not coming up with content, it is not doing anything like that. Where does that fear truly come from? My guess, it is that fear of failure. FOF or fear of failure can permeate all of our goals and that holds true with anything.

When was the last time you tried to quit smoking? Did you do it or put it off? Why? Maybe because you might have failed at quitting smoking before and you don’t want to fail again. We don’t want to fail. Losing weight, same thing, can’t start now with all of the holiday parties. But what about January, maybe that is a good month, but it is so cold. February, well more holidays, have to eat, Valentines Day and it is all about the chocolate.

But why, why do we come up with those excuses? Why don’t we just give that presentation? Because most are afraid of failure, but what is the downside of failure? NOTHING. NOTHING, we are not risking life and limb, we are risking our ego a little bit. We may think we are perfect, we are not. And if we are not failing we are not growing. We need to be OK with failing. We have to be Ok with the fact that every once in a while we drop the ball. It is not our fault, other times it is. Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew. I have gotten on the comedy stage a number of times. Sometimes I stay within my comfort zone. When I do I am not really worried about that too much. Other times you just need to let it fly and see what happens. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. My first time on a comedy stage it didn’t work, the second time it did. I have done stand up in front of other comedians and I didn’t get a smile or even a snicker. I was afraid to fail in front of my peers and I did. But what if I got on that stage and forgot about that fear of failure.

Let me leave you with the most important piece of information I can give you about how to be a more effective speaker, how to manage your fears and how to come up with the proper content. Think about the audience first and always. If you are constantly in tune with them, they will know you are sincere and that will be remembered most.

I look forward to sharing ideas with you that will help you improve your presentation skills and manage your Fear of Failure.

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