We made it to hump day, wooohooo! Hopefully you all are having a fantastic week so far. Today I am going to be talking about one of the skills I have actually learned to love, but most people think of this as one of their biggest fears: Public Speaking….ooooooooohhhh!
In reality, I don’t think public speaking is that bad anymore, and it truly is a great skill to have. With my major, I took a couple of classes about presentations and public speaking so I had to face my fears eventually. If you can speak in front of a crowd, you can basically do anything in my opinion. You have all those people watching you and waiting for you to mess up, but you just need to start confidently to succeed!
The main problem when it comes to public speaking is sounding professional and confident. If you are not believable, why would anyone want to listen to you? If you dont’t practice multiple times then you will make a fool of yourself. Knowing what you’re talking about is key because if you just try to memorize a speech, you’ll lose it and then look bad when you can’t improvise on the spot. Be proud of what you’re talking about, it’ll pay off in the long run and you’ll gain rapport.
There are many ways to prepare yourself for a presentation or speech, but there are a few in particular that are key to success. Some obstacles you have to overcome are being prepared to mess up a time or two, sound confident with what you’re saying so that you don’t set yourself up for a loss, and to study your topic well enough to do an improvisation if you miss a point in your speech.
Overcoming these obstacles can be tough, but the more time you put into it, the better your speech will be and the less nervous you will be (hopefully). If you know in advance that not everything is perfect and that you will most likely stumble your words and mess up, you’ll be more relaxed when it happens and you can continue on without losing your train of thought. Practice going off topic when preparing for your speech to better yourself for this obstacle! Being confident with what your saying is very important, one good way to do this is to check your sources so you know that you’re only speaking the truth and you don’t sound clueless if you get asked questions! The more research and preparation you do, the better your speech will be.
I can’t repeat it enough, the solution to public speaking is to prepare yourself to the point where you could talk about your topic backwards you know so much. Don’t try to memorize a monologue because that will only stress you out and not prepare you. You’ll sound like a robot and if someone asks you anything, odds are you’ll freeze and not know the answer because you didn’t research the topic, you just memorized it.
I truly want to know, why are YOU afraid of public speaking? If you aren’t afraid, why do you think others are so terrified of it? Leave your comments below! That’s the cup o’ Joe for today, until tomorrow!
-Joe