Let’s introduce the topic of this site, which is all about one of the most common fears that we all share: the fear of speaking in public.
What happens when we need to speak in public? It makes you feel like you’re going to explode, you start shaking, you start sweating, your throat hurts. You can't breathe. You go through a lot of emotions, and you start telling yourself “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Right?
Well, yes, you can. You can. You absolutely can! Yes, yes. Not only can you, but in fact, we’re pretty sure that everyone who speaks in public does so because they have overcome that fear.
If you want to put a number to it, we would say that 100% of public speakers are afraid of it. We’ve not met a single person who isn’t afraid. We think that public speaking is essentially an artificial situation that human beings are still getting used to.
So, we are in it, and we are working on it. Everyone is afraid to speak in public at first, andvlittle by little we overcome the fear. Even we still have it sometimes. But the fact is that sometimes the motivation to speak in front of a certain group of people, the motivation to tell them certain things, is superior to our fear, so we soldier on. And that's when we start to overcome it.
But if you still have it and find it tough to overcome, it's normal, especially at the beginning. It’s normal, there’s nothing wrong with you, and you’re not weird.
A friend of ours used to love public speaking, but now it's difficult for her. She has a hard time because she thinks everyone realises how bad it is. And for her it’s become an endless loop, a vicious cycle that she’s trapped in. Can you resonate?
Our advice in this case is that you are not your audience. That is to say, sometimes when you are speaking in public, you get the feeling that the audience knows the ins and outs of your talk and that they’re analysing you based on that. That simply isn’t true.
If you're going to do a presentation, the people in front of you often don't know exactly what ideas you want to convey. If you're reading and you make a mistake because a word escapes you, for example, well, it's a human mistake. We all get stuck. You’re not going to get punished for it, and there’s no need to get frustrated by it.
You get this feeling because when you're about to speak in public, your anxiety is high, which leaves you in a state of continuous fear and makes you believe you’re making serious mistakes.
And this simply isn’t true! It’s crucial we mention that. For example, when we speak in public and we make a mistake, we get stuck or we say the wrong word, it seems very serious to us. But the audience doesn’t even notice. In fact, all the great speakers make lots of mistakes.
There are studies, for example, on President Kennedy that show that he used to make a lot of mistakes while he was speaking. So mistakes are the least of your concerns. The least of them.
You might also believe you’re speaking fast. Well, that's not a bad thing when you speak in public.
You might believe you have used too many examples to express the idea, but there’s no such thing as too many examples.
All these fears and insecurities come down to this state of alertness, which makes you give too much importance to the few mistakes you make. You must remember this as you continue on your public speaking journey.