Facing the Fear

All of us have things in our lives that make us nervous. For some, it is heights. (How come, by the way, no one is ever afraid of widths?) For others, it may involve being inside close quarters. Public speaking, of course, is an act that makes many folks weak in the knees. Without doubt, speaking in front of a room full of mostly if not all strangers and risk not sounding coherent is tough. The fact is everyone at some point struggles with it, particularly when they are first learning how to do it. Public speaking, as scholars Joseph Valenzano, Stephen Braden and Melissa Broeckelman-Post report, is a skill, not a talent.

Practice is the key to overcoming or at least downsizing the fear or nervousness that comes with public speaking. Sadly, no silver bullet exists that makes someone - any one - an effective and captivating public speaker. There are, according to Valenzano, Braden and Broeckelman-Post, several suggested strategies to help keep speech anxiety in its place. One is visual success. See yourself giving the speech from beginning to end. In doing that, visualize doing it with confidence and spot-on delivery. Let such an image be your self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, why project failure when you can project success instead?

Another suggested strategy is to not think of one's audience as a speech before many. Instead, view it as multiple simultaneous conversations or dialogues. Most of us are a lot more relaxed conversing with another person than we are speaking to a room full of folks. Therefore, approaching a public speech from the perspective as multiple one-on-one conversations might help reduce whatever nervousness one feels. While such suggestions might not work for everyone, any thing that helps enhance the act of communication is worth considering. The great thing about effective communication is that it touches all of us.