How To Overcome Fear Of Public Speaking

Hello, my name is Michael Ronayne, I am a director of the college of public speaking, and I am going to talk to you about different aspects of public speaking. To overcome the fear of public speaking, I think the first thing you have to realise is that if you are nervous, it's completely natural, everybody is. In fact, I would go far as to say, if you are not nervous and if you haven't got a little bit of fear when you are standing out in front of people, there's something wrong.

Either you have no commitment to your subject matter, what you are going to be talking about or probably even more worryingly, you don't have enough respect for your audience because your audience is taking time out of their lives to come and listen to you. You need to be doing a good job. So you need to be a little bit nervous.

And to be frank, most of us would say if you are a bit nervous like a sports person, it actually sharpens you up a little bit, you'd probably perform a little bit better. However, let's say the nerves are getting too much and it seems to be causing problems with your actual delivery. Now, there's two areas to look out and we can approach it from two different directions.

You can approach it from the negative side, basically think to yourself what's the worst that can happen. You see you are not going to get a physical injury, you are probably not going to die, by delivering a bad presentation. The worst that can happen in most cases is you might look a little bit stupid.

And there's the point. Because, most people when they get nervous, is because their eyes are totally figured on themselves. Poor little old me, what am I going to look at? So, one of the things that you should try and do if you are trying to overcome your nerves is take your eyes off yourself and focus on your audience.

What are they going to get out of this? What's my message to them? How can I help them best in the way I am speaking and you take the eyes off from yourself. From the other side, from the more positive side, prepare properly. You do your presentation make sure you are prepared, make sure it's simple, and don't confuse yourself by getting overcomplicated with it, have a nice simple structure, one simple point and as they say in the adverts in the end, it's just a question of get out and just do it. .