Three Absolute Fundamental Skills To Overcome Your Public Speaking Anxiety

Stage Fright. The word themselves make me nervous. According to the book of lists, the fear of speaking in public is the #1 fear of all fears. The fear of dying is #7!

People who have this glossophobia or public speaking anxiety can experience all kinds of symptoms such as heart pound, shaky hands, sweaty forehead, mouth goes dry and the stomach feels like a blender on a high speed.

Celebrities alleged to suffer from this apprehension include Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain and Laurence Olivier.

All you need is to accept that you have this problem and learn how to control it.

By creating the right mindset and follows the tips below, in no time you’ll be develop your talk, persuade your audience and ready to accept any invitation that requires you to be in the spotlight.

Write down your commitment

Like most endeavors, you need to have a commitment. You need to vow to yourself that you’ll do your best to overcome this apprehension.

Take a paper and pen, write down your goals and promises.

Your goal is to find the solution for your fear, commit to make slow and steady improvement and perform necessary action which will help you to progress to another level.

You need to tell to yourself; “I’ve had it! Today will be one of the most important days in my life. I will do whatever it takes to overcome my public speaking anxiety, I will face, learn and practice to be a great speaker.”

Do this whole-heartedly.

Share this commitment with two of your most trusted and supportive friends.

Tell them that from time to time, you’ll be updating them of your progress.

Develop a compassion toward yourself

There are people who tend to hate themselves because of having this deficit.

They get angry, frustrated and even hurt themselves.

Why?

Because they got tired of creating thousands of excuses and running away from doing a public speaking.

Instead of hurting yourself and your feeling, what you need is to develop a compassion toward yourself.

Do a self-talk. Tell yourself that this problem that you have is a common one and you do have the ability to comprehend with this fear.

Accept your disadvantage and speak positively.

In other words, don’t fight the wave but be friendly with it.

Relax and Shift Your focus

You may want to imagine this, if you resist the wave, frantically try to get away from it, you will be panic, loose confidence and energy in the process.

The more you try to fight it, the more power it will have over you.

But, if you relax, float on your back and get your mind straight, you be riding the wave naturally until it fade.

The key to have this situation is to feel relax, breath naturally and focus to your mind to a beautiful thing.

If you trap in this panic situation:

1) Sit down or lie down.
2) Take a deep breath with your mouth and nose. Push the air deep into your belly. Hold it for few seconds.
3) Slowly exhale through your mouth, and count from 100 to 1, backwardly.
4) Do this five to ten times.
5) Start to shift your focus to other beautiful things such as pictures on the wall or trees outside your window.
6) Get you mind to work on the details from your view such as, what is type of the tree, how old is the tree or some other questions you might ask.

The idea is, you need to shift your focus from having to worries about the presentation that you going to do, to a beautiful and happy thought that make you feel safe.

With this three absolute fundamental practice, it should not be a problem for you to start doing it.

Write down your commitment, develop compassion toward yourself, relax and shift your focus will help you to be on the right foot in overcoming your public speaking anxiety.

About the Author:
Faizarul Madznan is a CEO and Founder of http://www.BestProfessionalSpeaking.com, a public speaking and presentation skills website. Here, you’ll get tips, analysis, insights, and strategies which helps you become a more effective speaker and a more effective communicator. Need to improve your presentation? Subscribe with us and grab yourself a public speaking ebook and video access.

Further Reading:

1. Public Speaking Fear – How to Overcome Nerves When Public Speaking
2. How to Improve Your English Speaking Skills
3. 5 Ways for How to Calm Down When Anxiety Strikes
4. Improving Communication Skills: Easiest Way to Quadruple your Business
5. Presentation Skills: Techniques to Avoid

Tagged as: how to conquer public speaking apprehension, How to overcome public speaking anxiety