You do not have to be scared of public speaking. You can overcome your fear of public speaking.
Repeat the line above a few times. Then scroll down and I’ll show you exactly how to do it.
I started by pretending that people were rubber chickens in their underwear. Yes, even for church events such as narrating Easter plays and scripture readings.
Now, I regularly speak to groups as small as six or seven during my live course on improving your public speaking which, you should think about joining if you’re in or can get to the D.C. Metro area.
Or as large as 300 people, people who wouldn’t be listening if we hadn’t fed them or made them get their professional credits. Or been super excited about how to make their cities better. Either way, I’ve made people laugh and learn and not because I fell face first off the stage or puked on top of the conference table.
Either way, I’ve made people laugh and not because I fell face first off the stage.
So other than the rubber chickens, here are six ways that I’ve overcome being afraid of speaking in public
Pretend you’re having a one-on-one conversation. Yes, I’m giving you permission to talk to yourself.
Once I made this audio “show” called the Snooper. I was a huge Where in The World is Carmen Sandiego fan as a kid and I wanted to create my own homage to the mystery genre. My parents also encouraged me to write things and be creative and they just so happened to have one of those handheld tape recorders around and a few extra tapes. Hence, the Snooper.
Now I hated the sound of my natural voice, so I made up a very nasally “mystery detective” voice, that had a lot in common with McGruff the Crime Dog. I made a couple episodes and I’m not even sure those cassette tapes still exist. (The audio recorder does and it still works!)
Speaking of audio recorders, your phone has one. Get it out, talk to it, and yes, talk to yourself. Play back the sound of your voice, so you know what you really sound like.
(This has helped me determine that I don’t sound as Southern in my head as I do in real life).
Do note that this is hard and I still struggle with this, but knowing what I sound like takes one of the big fears out of the way and helps me to start getting better at controlling my voice and making better speeches.
Talk to yourself out loud facing a full body mirror.
It can be just as hard, if not harder, to look at yourself than it is to listen to yourself.
I am better with this one, in fact, I’ve probably always been a bit vain. My parents had a
My parents had a full-length mirror at the end of the hall or our house, between our two bedrooms. I feel like I crawled out of my crib for the first time, shuffled out of the door, turned to the left and boom, my face! My body! It feels so smooth! And it seems to be touching me back! Awesome!
However, I have worn glasses from the age of 4.5 and this was in the era before they were cool. Literally, the new frames I picked out have been giving me flashbacks of elementary school, yet I get so many compliments on them.
I say this to say that how you perceive your body and how others perceive it, is not the same. Plus, when it comes to speaking, you want to know when you are doing weird things with your hands, feet and even your eyes, ears and nose (S/O to my nose and ear wigglers out there).
While I can wiggle my nostrils, I can’t wiggle my ears. What I can do is spin the hand I’m not using to hold my speaking notes in a really weird, motorboaty type way. I only learned this because in my undergraduate public speaking class (which I needed to pass to graduate, no pressure, right), we videotaped (with an actual video recorder and on VHS tapes), our speeches. Speech one was the propellor speech. Watching that and getting that B propelled me to look at myself talking more, talk more and ace the remaining four of my speeches and get control of my hands.
I think you can too.
Practice your speech the same way.
This is not to become a robot when you recite your speech. This is to remind yourself that you know what you are talking about and that you know what you are doing. As you continue to master the craft of public speaking, you will begin to master the art of being able to change your speech on a dime based on time constraints, your audience or both. However, for now, you just need to know you can recite something you prepared, in a coherent, interesting, informative and hopefully funny and entertaining way.
So get to reciting! Or do a TED talk, because you’ll be more than ready to do a speech without notes.
Focus on the back of the room, and pick a few different people, with whom you will make eye contact.
This is not a staring contest. You do not want to make your audience nervous, but you yourself don’t need to look or stay nervous. Use the back wall or the wall behind the person you are speaking to stare at as you get your speech started, Once you get a few sentences in, think back to that conversation you had with yourself a few tips ago and start having it, only this time you’re talking to a few other people in the room. It’s also ok, especially when the people you are talking about are in the room and the speech you are making compliments them (or roasts, if that’s what they expect), to look directly at them and have the conversation with you.
I did this at my dad’s funeral. I gave a mini-eulogy and I mentioned my mom, our family and several of his co-workers. If those people were also in the room, I looked at them and acknowledged them with eye contact. Those parts of the address felt like a conversation and less like me barking out all the ways my dad is awesome and how all of us are going to miss him.
Which he was and we do.
Breathe, eat and drink normally. If you don’t do these things normally, consider doing them on the day of your speech.
Eating and drinking that is. If you’re not breathing, you’re probably where my dad is right now.
That same day of my dad’s funeral, I’d only eaten a bowl of oatmeal prior to the service and after the service and my speech, I’d started the process of eating two chicken drumsticks when the migraine monster hit me. Mine always come with the temporary blindness coupled with nausea. While the sensations passed, I was in bed the rest of the day and I still was dealing with lots of family in and out making the noise your head absolutely hates when you’ve got that kind of a headache and nervous system craziness going on.
Had my mom and I thought a bit better, we would have asked our family to make sure I ate a bigger breakfast before going to the church and that I was one of the first people to eat. Actually, I was one of the first people to eat and nobody told me I was supposed to be the first person to eat and I held up the food line. Not for very long, though…
Moral of this story, stuff your face, more than you normally would. Make sure your nostrils are clear and you’re not hyperventilating. Drink plenty of water and lay off other beverages, as they can sometimes induce nausea or make you more anxious or nervous than you already are.
Use index cards, post-it notes or another notebook to help you keep your place.
Ok, I know you’ve been memorizing your speech. However, in many cases, it’s ok to have it in front of you. Or at least have a few index cards or some other method of note-keeping, so you can remember your place. Also, making notes will help when it’s time to make your handout, which by the way is one of six things I suggest when you present your work!
Yay! You’re now ready to stand tall and make that speech!
Let me know how these tips are working for you, by dropping me a line or commenting below. And if you’re ready to dig a bit deeper into speech and presentation making, sign up for my free email course, Six Days to a Better Presentation of Your Work. You’ll get all these steps in a nice PDF poster, that you can hang on your wall for motivation. You’ll also get notes from me when I’m doing other cool things, like live public speaking courses, one-on-one coaching and virtual and in-person happy hours wher you can bring your speeches for critique for your peers.
I’m Kristen. I do a lot of public speeches, especially about urban planning and development. I also dabble in designing print patterns and there’s an urban planning blog and a communications consultancy in there somewhere. Learn more about me. Follow my PlantoSpeak board on Pinterest and send me public speaking questions on Twitter via the hashtag #PlantoSpeakQ&A.