Discuss your topic with them and get their guidance. It helps you gain confidence. Have positive thoughts. Tell yourself that you are going to make a successful presentation. Know your audience. This means, reduce your script to a key-word outline, constantly practicing reducing the notes to keywords. Eventually you might not even need notes. Dress for focus.
Wear comfortable and appropriate clothes. Remember that you can learn from others. Watch your classmates and learn, but do not compare yourself to them and put yourself down. Nothing is more frightening than facing the unknown. You can do this by gaining as much knowledge as possible about whom you will be addressing, what you will say, how you will say it, and where the speech will take place.
The audience that we imagine in our minds is almost always more threatening than the reality of the people sitting in front of us. The more information you have about the characteristics of your audience, the more you will be able to craft an effective message.
Since your stage fright is likely to be at its highest in the beginning of your speech, it is helpful to open the speech with a technique to prompt an audience response. When you see the audience responding to you by nodding, smiling, or answering questions, you will have directed the focus of attention from yourself to the audience. Such responses indicate success; they are positively reinforcing, and thus reduce your nervousness. Being prepared as a speaker means knowing the main points of your message so well that you can remember them even when you are feeling highly anxious, and the best way to learn those points is to create an outline for your speech.
With a clear outline to follow, you will find it much easier to move from one point to the next without stumbling or getting lost. A note of caution is in order: you do not want to react to the stress of speaking by writing and memorizing a manuscript. Your audience will usually be able to tell that you wrote your speech out verbatim, and they will tune out very quickly.
You are setting yourself up for disaster if you try to memorize a written text because the pressure of having to remember all those particulars will be tremendous. Moreover, if you have a momentary memory lapse during a memorized speech, you may have a lot of trouble continuing without starting over at the beginning. What you do want to prepare is a simple outline that reminds you of the progression of ideas in your speech.
What is important is the order of your points, not the specifics of each sentence. It is perfectly fine if your speech varies in terms of specific language or examples each time you practice it. It may be a good idea to reinforce this organization through visual aids. When it comes to managing anxiety, visual aids have the added benefit of taking attention off the speaker. Another reason not to write out your speech as a manuscript is that to speak effectively you want your language to be adapted to the oral, not the written, mode.
You will find your speaking anxiety more manageable if you speak in the oral mode because it will help you to feel like you are having a conversation with friends rather than delivering a formal proclamation.
Appropriate oral style is more concrete and vivid than written style. Effective speaking relies on verbs rather than nouns, and the language is less complex. Long sentences may work well for novelists such as William Faulkner or James Joyce, where readers can go back and reread passages two, three, or even seven or eight times. Another oral technique is to build audience questions into your speech.
Rhetorical questions, questions that do not require a verbal answer, invite the audience to participate with your material by thinking about the implications of the question and how it might be answered. If you are graphic and concrete in your language selection, your audience is more likely to listen attentively. You will be able to see the audience listening, and this feedback will help to reduce your anxiety.
It is not enough to practice your speech silently in your head. To reduce anxiety and increase the likelihood of a successful performance, you need to practice out loud in a situation similar to the one you will face when actually performing your speech. Practice delivering your speech out loud while standing on your feet. If you make a mistake, do not stop to correct it but continue all the way through your speech; that is what you will have to do when you are in front of the audience.
If possible, practice in the actual room where you will be giving your speech. Not only will you have a better sense of what it will feel like to actually speak, but you may also have the chance to practice using presentation aids and potentially avoid distractions and glitches like incompatible computers, blown projector bulbs, or sunlight glaring in your eyes.
Two very useful tools for anxiety-reducing practice are a clock and a mirror. Use the clock to time your speech, being aware that most novice speakers speak too fast, not too slowly.
Use the mirror to gauge how well you are maintaining eye contact with your audience; it will allow you to check that you are looking up from your notes. It will also help you build the habit of using appropriate facial expressions to convey the emotions in your speech.
While you might feel a little absurd practicing your speech out loud in front of a mirror, the practice that you do before your speech can make you much less anxious when it comes time to face the audience. A final tip about preparation is to watch what you eat immediately before speaking. The butterflies in your stomach are likely to be more noticeable if you skip normal meals. While you should eat normally, you should avoid caffeinated drinks because they can make your shaking hands worse.
Carbohydrates operate as natural sedatives, so you may want to eat carbohydrates to help slow down your metabolism and to avoid fried or very spicy foods that may upset your stomach.
Especially if you are speaking in the morning, be sure to have breakfast. There are a number of steps you can take to counteract the negative physiological effects of stress on the body. Deep breathing A relaxation technique that involves expanding the diaphragm to increase air flow. It is also a good idea to pause a moment before you get started to set an appropriate pace from the onset.
Look at your audience and smile. It is a reflex for some of your audience members to smile back. Those smiles will reassure you that your audience members are friendly. Physical movement helps to channel some of the excess energy that your body produces in response to anxiety.
If at all possible, move around the front of the room rather than remaining imprisoned behind the lectern or gripping it for dear life avoid pacing nervously from side to side, however. Move closer to the audience and then stop for a moment. If you are afraid that moving away from the lectern will reveal your shaking hands, use note cards rather than a sheet of paper for your outline.
The best way to work with fear in this area is to practice your remarks in advance. Rehearse in the space, if possible, or at least in a setting which simulates where you will speak. If you can practice with a few supportive friends who will do nothing but give you good eye contact, smile at your jokes, and build you up: all the better.
When you are actually delivering the speech you can recall the warm regard this audience had for your talk if the actual audience is less engaged. One-on-One Conversations Often our fear of having a conversation with somebody about a sensitive subject can be worse than having the conversation itself.
We simply have to cause the conversation to happen. In these instances I suggest you use a less threatening media e. One friend of mine knew he had to fess up about a substance abuse problem that he needed help with. Had he waited until work hours to place the call, he might never have admitted he desperately needed help.
This is particularly true when we need to reply to an email which demands some time, thought, and consideration, yet we know that an immediate response is probably expected. In these situations I suggest a two-part response. I will get back to you by insert reasonable time frame with my thoughts. Take the time to draft a reply, set aside for a few hours, and then review it again before hitting send.
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