Fear of failure in public speaking

One of the main reasons for fear of failure in public speaking is the potential for forgetting what to say. If you stand up in front of an audience and forget your words you fear you will look a failure when public speaking. However, the audience doesn't know what you came to say. Even if you forgot the details of your talk, the audience would never know - providing you just chat about the same subject as they were expecting. So, many public speakers put themselves under unnecessary pressure to try and recall their "script", when in fact the audience simply doesn't know what their script is, so if the speaker goes off track no one will see the problem. In my work with people who are suffering from public speaking anxiety, I find that many people still have to get to grips with the fact that the audience doesn't know what was intended to be said, so if the speaker forgets their words no-one will know. Once the people I work with get to understand this, they feel much more comfortable when speaking in public. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to remember your talk at all..!

Labels: memory