A Practical Guide for Overcoming Your Fear of Public Speaking
Does this happen ever happen to you:
You spent precious hours preparing for your big presentation.
You felt totally relaxed…until a couple hours before the scheduled time.
Your shoulders started to tense up. You notice the same in your neck.
Now, just a few minutes before your presentation, you feel your heart racing. Your hands sweat.
Didn’t you have this under control? How can it be happening?
During your presentation, you practically fall flat on your face. Your mind races. You stutter your way through. Awkward silences abound as you try to remember what to say.
Embarrassed, you quietly slip out of the room, feeling ashamed of yourself for messing things up again.
No matter what you try, your fear always comes back.
Here’s some tips for conquering that fear and becoming the superstar salesperson you dream of:
1. Visualize Success
During the hours and minutes before your public speaking engagement, what goes through your mind?
If you analyze your thoughts, I’ll bet they’re almost 100% negative. You see yourself tensing up. You notice other people giving disapproving or disinterested looks. You notice yourself stammering.
Let all of that useless thinking go!
Instead, focus on positive thoughts – of you totally nailing your speech, people nodding their heads in agreement, and you looking confident and focused.
Hard to do…but I guarantee if you continue to work at it, you’ll give better speeches.
2. Let Stuff Go…Don’t Fight It
Most people afraid of public speaking do things like this:
- End the speaking as soon as possible
- Avoid pausing at all during the speech
- Filling silence with talking
- Hiding any indications of their nervousness
- Staying away from any real interaction with their audience
Those techniques all “fight” your fear. And fighting just makes your fear worse! It’s kind of like beating your head against the wall to stop a headache.
What sense does that make?
What you should do, says this anxiety coach, is be AWARE:
- Acknowledge & Accept your anxiety. This just means accepting your presently anxious state. You’re anxious – that’s all. You’re not in danger. Don’t fight the feeling, try to get rid of it, or blame yourself or anyone else for the anxiety. It’s your feeling – that’s it.
- Wait & Watch – You’ll get a powerful urge to take action. Instead don’t – and just stand there. It’s like counting to 10 when you’re angry so you don’t blow up on someone else. Simply observe how your fear works, and write it down if you can.
- Actions – You can do a couple things. One is to talk to yourself. Answer your “What-ifs” with “So what, this anxiety will end.” Tell yourself it’s okay to be afraid. With the breathing, you can see a helpful process in this video:
- Repeat – It’s okay if the anxiety and panic comes back again. Just repeat the above process to calm down.
- End – All anxiety ends at some point. And it always ends, whether you do something about it or not. If you do take action, however, it ends faster.
I can’t promise you amazing results overnight. But I can say you will show dramatic improvement if you commit to these techniques.
