There are seven ways in which you can gain confidence and remove the fear of public speaking. These are:

1. Practice correct posture. This might not sound like it's obviously related to the fear of public speaking, but how you sit and how you stand sends a message out to those around you. If that message radiates confidence out from you, you will get positive vibes back which will bolster your confidence. So, learn to stand like you have confidence and sit like you have confidence.

2. Surround yourself with confident and positive people. It may seem self-evident, but if you are consistently mixing with people of low self-esteem, this is going to rub off on you. Conversely, if the people around you are upbeat and assured, this will tend to create a positive atmosphere that you will benefit from. When preparing to speak in public make sure you surround yourself with confident people.

3. Remember a time when you felt confident. Confidence is a feeling, and if you've felt it once, you can feel it again. Remembering back to a time when you felt confident and in control will enable you to re-experience that feeling and help to put you in a confident frame of mind before you start public speaking.

4. Practice. To gain confidence and remove the fear of public speaking, practice as often as you can. When you work on something until you could do it in your sleep, you can't fail to be confident in your ability to perform when it matters.

5. Think about all of the things you like about yourself and all of the things you know you do well. If you have any trouble doing this, think about the compliments you get from people - what are they telling you - you do well? It's a good idea to write these things down so you'll have them to refer to when your confidence is flagging and you need some inspiration. Get feedback from each of your public speaking engagements and look at those positive comments to remind yourself.

6. Don't give yourself a hard time. Don't be your own worst critic, be your own best friend. After all, if a friend of yours was going through a tough time, you wouldn't get on their case, would you? No, of course you wouldn't. Positive self-talk can be one of your best weapons for confidence-boosting, so make sure you cultivate the habit.

7. Don't be afraid to take risks. If you become a regular risk-taker you'll find that it's inevitable that you'll grow in confidence as a result. There really is nothing like forcing yourself out of your comfort zone to increase your confidence. It will also serve to reduce your fear of the unknown, which can be a great confidence-sapper when speaking in public.

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Practice makes perfect, or so the saying goes. But often public speakers do not practice enough and this is why they are frightened of speaking in public. One of the key ways to boost your confidence is to practice. But how much practice is enough? And can you do too much practice? These are questions which people often ask - both of which are answered in How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking.

Suffice it to say you cannot over practice. Polished public speakers are those who have done loads of practice sessions. It's rather like actors - they rehearse for weeks just to get one scene right. To the audience it appears natural, but to the actor it is a repetitive action that comes automatically to them. And that's precisely what you need to boost your confidence as a public speaker; you need it to come naturally to you and lots of practice is essential in that.

But how much practice should you do? You keep practising until the speech you are going to make comes so naturally to you that you do not even have to think about your performance. If you find that you are having to try to remember things, that the words do not come out the same each time, then you have not done enough practice to help remove your fear of public speaking.

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Some people appear to believe that the fear of public speaking is something they have to manage, rather than get rid of. They end up only partly dealing with their public speaking fear because they make the assumption that they will always have to "put up with it".

However, the fear of public speaking can be cured. You do not have to manage it, you can get rid of it completely. One of the steps to take is to find out the cause of your fear; is it that you are worried you will forget what to say, or is it that you don't like being "in the spotlight"? These are the two prime reasons for public speaking fear.

Once you have worked out your principal worry, you can then decide how to deal with it. If it is a memory issue you can build you confidence by taking memory enhancing lessons and activities. If it's the "spotlight" issue you need to think why this is the case. Did someone criticise you, for instance, when you were a child, therefore putting you off being on the platform? Find out what the root cause is, and you can definitely eradicate the fear of public speaking.

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Are there any remedies for public speaking fears? That's a question I often get asked. It seems that people would like to pop a pill, or take a medicine that miraculously gets rid of fear. There is no such thing. Sometimes, actors and musicians are prescribed "beta-blockers" - drugs that affect the cardiovascular system - for severe cases of stage fright. However, when they stop taking the tablets, the symptoms reappear. So these remedies do not attack the main cause of fear. The best remedy you can find is to discover the real, deep seated cause of your fear of public speaking. When you have discovered that you can then deal with rectifying it. I find with the people that I deal with that the main cause of fear is rooted in childhood, being told by parents and teachers to "keep quiet". This tends to make you feel you shouldn't talk out loud; so when you are asked to speak in public it goes against everything you learned as a child. Dealing with this can be time consuming, but largely it is attitude change that is the only thing that is needed. If that isn't easy for you, sometimes you may find that cognitive behavioural therapy is helpful.

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Having worked with thousands of people trying to overcome their fear of public speaking, one of the most common questions I'm asked is are there any cures for public speaking nerves. People seem to want to find a pill that will just get rid of the nerves completely, once and for all. But there is no magic bill that will rid you of your fears. However, that doesn't mean your fear of public speaking cannot be cured. Indeed, I'm convinced that everyone who suffers from nervousness when speaking in public, or glossophobia as it is called by psychologists, can be treated and that their fears can be eradicated. There are two steps needed to achieve this. The first one is a change in attitude (which is covered in detail in the first part of How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking). The second step is to deal with any personal issues or unresolved matters which are causing the fear in the first place. Once these steps have been taken, practical matters such as preparing the presentation or speech so that it flows well and is easy to remember, can help. But a change in attitude accompanied by some work on personal issues cures people every time.

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I often get asked if there are any remedies for public speaking fears. What kind of pills or medications are available? What herbs or foods can help reduce the fear of public speaking? However, such questions are really clutching at straws. Yes, certain foods and drinks can make you feel more relaxed. True, there is some evidence that aromatherapy with lavender oil, for instance, can help you feel better. But they don't get rid of the fear completely. Herbs, foods, and alternative therapies may help, but in my experience they have limited impact. The thing that has the most impact (explained in detail in How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking) is physical activity, which is one of the natural remedies for public speaking fears. All you need to do is get plenty of physical activity prior to your speech and make sure you move around a lot during the speech. Podiums, fixed microphones, standing next to computers to click the slides on - these are all things which will make you more nervous, not less, because they reduce physical activity. Thousands of people who have followed my programme for abolishing the fear of public speaking report that the single most important natural remedy they followed was physical activity.

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Yesterday I was at a seminar where a member of the audience told me he could never do what the speaker that morning had done - to stand up confidently in front of a group of business people and simply chat to them. He said it all stemmed from the fact that his father was a perfectionist and every time he had to speak as a child, his father would correct him to make sure he was "perfect". As a result he had been wary of public speaking ever since. However, he realised that for his business he really needed to speak in public. So he asked me what were the steps to get over a fear of public speaking. The first step, I told him, was to deal with his attitude. That's often the main problem for people. They consider public speaking to be a problem, so it is a problem. Think of public speaking as something positive and guess what - it is positive. Some psychologists call this "framing"; if we put things into a negative frame, they become negative. So changing that framing is often the most important thing to do and it is the essential first step in just a few steps to get over a fear of public speaking. The next step is careful preparation of your speech or presentation so that it is easy to do and remember. The third step is proper practice - not just going over it in your head. There are several other things you can do to rid yourself of the fear of public speaking and these are all explained in How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking.

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One of the links between the ability to handle public speaking is the self confidence someone has in general. The more confident you are generally in life, the easier you find public speaking. Public speaking and self confidence are linked. This means that you can improve your ability to speak in public if you improve your general self confidence. That means doing a range of things that help confidence levels. One of these is ensuring you socialise with people who are positive in their outlook and also confident. We tend to match our confidence to the level of those around us. So look at your network of friends and work colleagues and make sure you spend most of your time with confident people. Equally, you should be sure to deal with any issues that dent your self confidence. For instance, some people who are overweight lack confidence because of poor body image issues. Getting to your ideal weight will help you raise your self confidence. Furthermore, your self confidence will be boosted if you keep a journal of all the good things that happen to you. Write them down, keep copies of letters or emails of praise and review them every week. That will certainly boost your confidence. There are several ways you can gain self confidence and that in turn will help you in public speaking. You'llf ind further hints and tips on boosting self confidence in How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking.
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Whenever I work with people to help them overcome anxieties associated with public speaking it's obvious that one of the main difficulties they have is the fear of rejection in public speaking. This usually goes back to childhood. Children are fantastic public speakers: once they have learned to speak at around the age of two, they love showing off their new found skill. Any parent will know that children are chatterboxes. However, once they get to school this is not such a useful skill. Teachers can't do their job if the class is chattering away. So at around the age of four or five children start to get the message that speaking is not a good thing. This is one of the fundamental reasons why most people perceive public speaking to be a problem. Our fear of rejection in public speaking stems from the fact that in order to be accepted by our teachers at a very young age we had to stop speaking in public and learn to be quiet. Then if a teacher did ask you to speak in public, it was often only to answer a question. Since at five years old your knowledge is pretty slim, many children get the answers wrong. This further compounds the problem. Not only is speaking in public perceived by children as a difficulty, of they do say something they are likely to get criticism for being wrong. The result is that the education system makes us afraid of speaking in public and gives us a deep seated fear of rejection in public speaking. In my manual How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking I go into more detail about how to get rid of deep seated anxieties and how to ensure they don't lead to a fear of rejection in public speaking.

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I often get asked "what are the causes of fear of public speaking?". There are two answers to that question. One is "it depends", the other is, "there is only one cause". The real cause of all the symptoms associated with the fear of public speaking is a rise in a hormone called adrenalin. This hormone gets pumped out from glands next to your kidneys, in your back, when you are under some kind of threat. The rise in adrenalin helps your body to become prepared to deal with the threat by diverting your blood supply away from the central part of your body, to where it is needed most - your muscles. The hormone also triggers a release in energy supplies from the liver and gets your heart and lungs pumping to get the oxygen around your body. Thanks to the rise in adrenaline your body can cope with anything - well almost. Your body cannot cope that well with constant adrenalin - so once you have started to deal with the threat, adrenalin is switched off and you can deal with whatever the problem is. The difficulty for most people with a fear of public speaking is the fact that the threat - the audience - never goes away. Hence adrenalin continues to be pumped around the speaker's body, putting them in an every-ready state. But in order to cope, they need the adrenalin switched off - and with the ever present "threat" of the audience, that never happens. This then leads to excess adrenalin circulating in the bloodstream, which is then responsible for all those nasty symptoms. (If you want more details about the mechanism of adrenalin and some specific measures you can take to deal with it see How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking.)

What can sometimes take time to discover is why an audience is perceived as a threat. For some people it is embarrassment triggered by memories of school-days having to stand in front of the class. For others it is fear of criticism. In fact there are several possible reasons why the adrenalin rise is triggered. But they all point back to one thing - someone frightened of speaking in public sees the situation as personally threatening. Once you have located that specific threat you no longer have to worry what are the causes of fear of public speaking - you just deal with the threat.

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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..! In my manual, How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking I cover several ways in which you can be sure of remembering what to say when speaking in public.

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Every time I see someone speak in public who is clearly nervous, I notice that they haven't even undertaken any of the basic steps to get over a fear of public speaking. For instance, they seem unprepared, often needing to refer to notes to remind them of what to say. Equally, they may also be doing the talk for the first time having never taken the opportunity to practice. These are actually the two most important steps to take in getting over a fear of public speaking - preparation and practice. Almost always when I'm dealing with people who are frightened of speaking in public I discover they do little preparation and almost no practice. You need to prepare very well - not just dash off a few lines to remind yourself of what to say. Also, you need plenty of practice - never less than six full "dress rehearsals" of what you want to say.

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