“OK, everyone will introduce himself and describe his project a little.“ That’s what the speaker said at the beginning of two-weeks entrepreneurship training.
“How am I going to present mine?” I thought.
My heart beat started to accelerate. I crossed and uncrossed my legs to get a better posture. Nothing changed.
I started belly breathing but It didn’t help.
“Maybe I can go to the toilets. No, it would be too evident that I am running away from the pressure”
“Ok, I am trapped”. I remembered I had thought about exercising my pitch a few weeks ago, but I had postponed it over and over.
“Why couldn’t I stop procrastination despite being fully aware how important it would be”?
I realized it was because I didn’t know where to start.
Does it sound familiar to you?
What is the problem?
When you don’t practice regularly, you lose confidence in your ability to showcase your expertise in front of other people. You end up-with an internal excuse to avoid performing, ” I am not good at public speaking.”
And If you can’t articulate your vision correctly, you won’t be able to convince any audience.
So what can you do to overcome your fear of public speaking quickly? Where could you start if you have to speak in front of a crowd in few days without plenty of time to prepare?
Solution: Learn to detach from others’ reaction
Behind your resistance to practice, three primary emotions are interlinked:
- your doubts about which framework to follow to deliver a message with clarity
- your fear that the audience might detect weaknesses in your ideas criticize it
- Your fear of being perceived as an imposter/charlatan because you are just beginning and you can’t showcase your expertise.
(1) is general and is not specific to you. However,(2) and (3) are intimately linked to yourself. Therefore, start addressing (1) first.
Step 1: Diminish your mental resistance
If I told you right now, ” tomorrow we are going to run 10 km”. I am sure you would be tired just thinking about it. And you will shift your mind to something else. It is due to the invisible inner resistance to running.
This inner resistance exists for any skill you are going to learn. That is why you better take care of it first before you take action, otherwise you will struggle later.
TO reduce this mental resistance, Listen to Podcast about public speaking, read blogs, see YouTube video. The idea isn’t to acquire knowledge, but to program your unconscious mind to acknowledge speaking in public as something less frightened.
Step 2: practice pitching someone’s else projects.
Find a colleague, a friend, ask many questions as you can about a personal project he or she has. Take 1 minute to digest the pieces of information, then present their ideas in front of others in less than 3 minutes.
You will be amazed at how confident you are when it comes down to pitching someone’s else project. You don’t fear being criticized. You won’t take it personally. You know it won’t be about you, but about the project. .
This will make you realize the key to confidence is detachment. learn to detach from the reaction of the audience.
Step 3: Accept the possibility you are going to fail and focus on the value you add
To avoid being perceived as an imposter, we want our output to be of a high standard. We want to make sure others will appreciate us. It isn’t wrong to have a high standard, but it becomes a massive problem if it holds you back from getting started.
SO the idea is to narrow down our focus on things that matters : Providing value.
For more I suggest you read or listen to the POWER OF THE NOW.
HEUDOU TCHIHIKOU Aubin
A Master chronic procrastinator who chose to execute on its dreams because of frustration and self-criticism.
Patrick
For Stage 2, there are many ways to speak and practice in front of an audience. One of them is theatrical improvisation. You will learn techniques to free yourself from emotions before entering the stage and many other techniques used by some theater actors and others.
AubindesBois
Thank you . I will take a look at some theatrical improvisation techniques.
SIDYA
having a partener with who i share thinks helps a lot
Thanks