Have you ever experienced stage fear when you speak in front of the public? Have you ever forgotten everything you have to deliver in a class presentation? All of them might be uncomfortable experiences that you don't want to encounter ever again. Well, don't worry! All of them can be overcome by boosting your confidence in public speaking.
Dealing with Nervousness to Boost Confidence in Public Speaking
Public speaking is an important skill most people need in their life. Starting from the class presentation, business presentation, and finally being a speaker for a huge audience, this skill is surely essential in our life.
However, not everyone is confident in their public speaking. Many factors can influence our confidence. One of them is nervousness. When being hit with nervousness, we might even forget what we need to speak about. Thus, we have to deal with nervousness to gain more confidence in public speaking. Here are some ways to deal with nervousness.
1. Do Effective Preparation
Preparation is surely essential for public speaking, especially if you are going to speak to a large audience. However, you must not do any careless preparation. Effective and thoughtful preparation is needed in order to deliver good public speaking.
If you have prepared your speech so thoroughly, you will have the best understanding of what you are going to deliver. You will not worry about being judged for false materials because you have done enough research about that. As a result, you will gain more confidence when you are delivering your speech.
One of the things you will need to prepare is choosing topics you have a huge interest in. You will get more excited and motivated to deliver topics you care about. Besides, there are many other things you should prepare, and I believe that you can do maximum preparation for your next speech after reading this article.
2. Think Positively
Have you ever thought that you wouldn't do well in your class presentation even though you hadn't done it yet? If yes, it means that you had negative thoughts about your own self. This is one of the things that can decrease your self-confidence.
Thus, to defeat your negative thoughts, you need to think positively. Usually, one negative thought can be defeated by five positive thoughts. For example:
Negative Thought
"I will do badly in this speech."
Positive Thoughts
"I have prepared my speech thoroughly in the past few weeks, so I have a good understanding of my speech."
"I have practiced my speech countlessly, and have received some feedback from my friends."
"I will do my speech as planned, and I will take the feedback from my friends into account."
"No one is perfect, and I have my own target of improvement."
"Even if I don't meet my own expectation, there are still rooms available for my improvement."
You can try this not only for public speaking but also for any other things in your life. If you have overcome your negative thoughts, you will be able to decrease your nervousness. As a result, you will have a higher chance of success and improvement in your public speaking.
Again, you can think positively if you have prepared the things you need for your public speaking. Thus, you should also know the important things you need to master public speaking.
3. Visualize Your Success
Using positive visualization is closely related to positive thinking. Before giving your speech, it would be best if you picture yourself doing your speech as planned. Research showed that visualizing our success will help decrease our nervousness. Take this as an example:
"Start imagining yourself walking into the room, meeting the audience. Then, you start opening the speech as planned. You manage to grab the attention of the audience, and they are responding to your little questions.
Then, you start delivering the body of your speech. The audience are so engaged with your speech, and you started feeling comfortable throwing jokes as planned. After that, they started clapping whenever you give your punchline.
When giving the conclusion, you can feel the audience attentively listening to you. After giving your closing statement, all of them give a loud applause for your speech."
How was it? Does that help you? Thus, it will be more beneficial for you to visualize your success instead of imagining the worst things that could happen in your speech.
4. Remember, Nervousness Is Not Visible!
The next thing you should keep in mind is that it is completely okay to be nervous. Nervousness is normal, even for a great public speaker.
Most importantly, nervousness is hardly visible. If you don't believe it, try recording your first speech! You will find yourself nervous when delivering your speech, but I bet that when you try watching the recording, you will seem calmer than you thought you would be.
Therefore, do not be afraid to be nervous. It is completely normal, and being nervous doesn't mean you are failing your speech.
5. Do Not Expect Perfection
There is no such thing as perfect in public speaking. When delivering your speech, something beyond what has been planned must happen. However, remember that you are the only one who will know all these flaws. The audience, on the other hand, will not notice anything because they don't know what has been planned.
Even though the audience does notice your flaws, they will most likely forget or ignore them after a while if the content of your speech is meaningful. Thus, don't regret any imperfection.
Besides, you should also remember that the purpose of public speaking is to deliver ideas, not to perform. People often think too much about their performance instead of their delivery. It makes them too focused on how they are judged instead of whether or not they manage to deliver their idea to the audience.
Remember that your speech is considered successful if there are people who get your point. Even a few of them are fine. The larger the number, the better your speech will become. However, it is nearly impossible to deliver your idea to all people in the room. So, hold your heads high, and start preparing your speech!
6. Practice by Experiences
You might be thinking that we must be good from the very first time in our public speaking. However, it is completely wrong. It is almost impossible to be good at the beginning of our public speaking journey. Instead, we can practice our speech through our experience.
The more experience you have, the better your public speaking will be. You may experience bad things the first time you try doing public speaking, or maybe you are still encountering many difficulties in your fifth speech. Don't worry! All of them are normal. Remember that each experience equals a chance for improvement.
You can analyze your last speech, and compare it to your first. Do you find any improvement? I bet that there must be an improvement, even just a little. Seeing your own improvements can also help you boost your confidence.
Remember that you don't have to compare your speech with other people's. You have your own pace and space for your improvement. Keep practicing, and you will definitely be able to boost your confidence in public speaking and improve your fluency.
Now, what are you waiting for? Take opportunities to speak in front of the public, and I will be waiting for your improvement!
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