Positive thinking really can change the way you deal with your fear of public speaking. Often public speakers are nervous because they have had so much negative thought going round their head.

For instance they think it will go wrong, the are sure they will forget their words and they are certain that no-one will laugh when they are supposed to. Such negative thinking means that it is inevitable that the speech will fail.

Positive thinking, however, ensures success. For instance, if you spend your time in the run up to the speech thinking that you will forget your words, you are making it likely that will happen. But what if you turn around your thinking and say to yourself that in the even you forget your words no-one will know because they have no idea what you were going to say anyway. This is dealing with the same issue in a positive way.

For all the negative thoughts you have that are leading you to have some public speaking fear, try to work out the positive alternative. The more positive thoughts you generate, the less nervous you will be about speaking in public.

Labels: confidence

Many people experience a fear of failure in public speaking. They are not fearful of public speaking itself; instead they are scared of looking foolish or appearing to fail in some way. It is this that prevents them from speaking in public.

The fear of failure is an anxiety brought on often by the way the person was treated as a child. They may have been chastised for failing to achieve certain results at school, for instance. Or they may have been told they do not live up to parental expectations. Whenever such individuals are placed in any kind of situation where they feel they are being "tested" these memories of the past trigger the anxiety.

If you suffer from a fear of failure in public speaking you need to address any issues from your past which could be affecting your performance and making you more anxious than necessary. Therapists can help you resolve issues of parental or school expectations which may be limiting what you can achieve. Alternatively, self hypnosis can assist you as well. But whatever you do, make sure you deal with the underlying cause of the fear of failure, otherwise you will never be able to confidently speak in public.

Labels: confidence, fear

The fear of public speaking can be brought on by trying to be too clever. Only recently I was at a meeting where someone had to speak for 20 minutes. He had clearly prepared his material to try and "make a speech". He had several props that he thought connected his message to his audience. The problem was that these props were difficult to manage easily, plus the speaker spent a great deal of time organising them, fussing with them throughout the talk and trying to get the audience to pay attention to them.

The speaker clearly thought his props were a great idea. His audience, however, had different ideas and thought his fumbling efforts were rather weak. Indeed, talking to people afterwards I discovered that the analogy the chap was trying to make with his props was seen as rather weak and "childish".

No doubt the speaker prepared well; no doubt he thought his ideas were excellent. The problem was the audience disagreed. Trying to hard to be different or original can take your "eye off the ball" for your talk. What the audience wants is to be able to listen to you and understand you. That means simply chatting to them.

If you try to inject "cleverness" of any kind into your talk you will end up being more nervous as you attempt to manage the props, the jokes and the other devices you have used to connect everything together. By being straightforward you will avoid such nonsense and will be more confident as a result.

Labels: causes, confidence

Self confidence is a general and realistic belief in one's own abilities. Self confident people trust in their own ability to achieve goals that they plan and set out to achieve. This belief needs to be realistic. Self confidence does not mean that an individual can achieve anything and everything, even absurd goals. It simply means that the person will have a sense of control over their own destiny, a positive frame of mind and is likely to make the best use of talents and skills in achieving positive outcomes.

Achieving self confidence and removing the fear of public speaking is a fine balance. Lack of self confidence or under-confidence will result in an individual doubting his abilities. Such people seek the approval of others for reassurance. They believe they have to conform to the expectations of others to fit in and be accepted. They will tend to avoid taking risks for fear of failure. They expect to fail and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy! Under-confident people tend to under-achieve since they have a low estimation of their abilities and therefore will not push their boundaries to achieve their best. They also tend to play down their abilities in public speaking and are often uncomfortable dealing with compliments - usually discounting them.

On the other hand over confidence is not desirable either, as such individuals may tend to have unrealistically high expectations and beliefs in their abilities and therefore take unwarranted risks.

Self confidence is not necessarily all-pervasive. An individual who is completely comfortable and confident in one area of activity, say his work or profession may lack confidence in other areas such as social situations.

What factors contribute to lack of confidence?
Lack of confidence is often the result of unrealistic expectations. Constantly aiming for perfection is a certain recipe for failure which reinforces feelings of inadequacy. Children who grow up in excessively protective environments and are not allowed to develop their independence may tend to be less confident than others who are allowed to develop their own abilities and self reliance. Similarly over critical and demanding parents may undermine a child's self confidence and cause them to continually doubt their abilities even in adult life.

What steps can be taken to improve self confidence?
Low self esteem and low self confidence are perpetuated by unhelpful and often destructive thought patterns. Self confidence may be improved by identifying the offending thinking habits and taking steps to correct them. For instance seeking acceptance and approval from everyone may be an unrealistic expectation. The fact is that in day to day life one will encounter people that will never approve of every aspect of your life. It is far more beneficial to set personal standards which are not dependent on the approval of others.

Under confident people are quite often their own worst critics. They are quick to brand themselves failures at the slightest obstacle. It is important to remember that even the most successful people encounter setbacks. What sets them apart is how they deal with that setback and venture into the future. A setback or failure in the past need not dictate the course of your entire future. However, if at the first sign of failure you label yourself a total failure, chances are that's exactly what you will be! Evaluate your expectations - Are they realistic? Don't be overly critical of yourself. Refuse to accept the criticisms of others where it is unrealistic.
Give yourself credit for what you do achieve rather than focussing solely on the negatives. Resist the temptation to magnify negative outcomes out of proportion while minimizing positives.

Persons with low self esteem avoid risks and may therefore never truly find out what they are capable of. Taking calculated risks can broaden one's horizons and help to gain greater self awareness and acceptance.

Evaluate your standards - substitute more reasonable expectations for perfectionist targets that are bound for failure. Build up to more challenging targets as your confidence grows.

Self consciousness is a major hurdle to self confidence especially when public speaking. Diverting attention away from yourself can help to diffuse this situation. This can be achieved by keeping yourself occupied with other activities or focussing on the purpose of the speech and engaging your mind on furthering that. Not having enough to keep your mind occupied is guaranteed to produce feelings of self consciousness leading to feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and lack of confidence.

These are just a few steps that may be taken to improve levels of self confidence. Clearly it is just the tip of a very large iceberg and the most appropriate measures would of course need to be determined by individual circumstances.

Labels: confidence

Many people appear to believe that they are unusual in that they have a fear of public speaking. They look at other speakers and see them exuding confidence and wish they could be just like them. They are envious of their apparent lack of public speaking fear.

However, almost everyone has some degree of fear of public speaking. It is a quite natural phenomenon. That's because we don't normally conduct any kind of conversation on a "one to many" approach. Almost all our conversations are "one to one"; even at dinner parties where you may have several guests you tend to only talk to one person at a time.

As a result our life experience tends to be talking to people "one to one", so as soon as we are plunged into a situation that is "one to many" - as in public speaking - we tend to be rather worried and concerned. Fear of public speaking is therefore a natural occurrence.

What the confident speakers have done is change the attitude they have to speaking. Instead of seeing the situation as "one to many" they still treat this as a "one to one" situation. They imagine they are talking to members of the audience on an individual basis, rather than imagining they are talking to the whole group. If you treat public speaking as a "one to one" rather than a "one to many" situation, you will find you lose your fear of public speaking more quickly.

Labels: confidence, fear

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.

Labels: confidence

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.

Labels: confidence

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.

Labels: causes, confidence

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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Labels: confidence