Many people fear public speaking, just the idea causes increased heart rate, sweating and nausea. It also effects our mental state: we lose focus, become nervous and stressed.
But we can change, these 11 tips will help calm your nerves and increase your confidence when public speaking.
Public speaking could include speaking to an auditorium of people, making a wedding toast or leading a work meeting. It takes many forms and will likely be something all of us have to do at some point in our lives.
The ability to speak well in front of people has many benefits, including:
A boost in confidence – overcoming a fear and achieving something challenging.
Career progression – public speaking helps us succeed in job interviews. It’s a required skill in management roles and it opens up job opportunities.
Your communication skills improve – you learn skills that make you a better communicator, successful public speaking requires you to be a good communicator, and is a learnt skill set.
11 Tips to calm nerves and build confidence
Use these to help reduce your nervousness before public speaking:
#1. Focus on being calm and relaxed
There are techniques to bring down your stress levels and make you feel calmer. Use and blend the following to achieve this:
Breathing – use breathing to calm your nerves, a simple method is to inhale until you fill your lungs, hold for a comfortable amount of time, then exhale to empty your lungs. There are plenty of techniques to seek out.
Visualisation – combine this with breathing techniques to reduce nerves and stress. Visualise yourself in a location you find relaxing, picture the scene in your mind. You could be on a beach at sunset, hear the waves, feel the warm breeze and smell the ocean.
Muscle relaxation – simply tense your muscles and then let them relax, do this from head to toe – until you’ve removed the tension in your body.
Mindfulness and mediation – these use the above techniques and a conscious focus to create a calm mind and relaxed body.
#2. Visualisation for success
Spend time imagining the presentation going well. Visualise it from start to finish going as planned.
Imagine a captivated audience, who clap and show appreciation for your efforts.
Identify how this makes you feel, your reduction in nervousness and increase in confidence. Positive visualisation is a useful tool for preparing your body and mind for something potentially stressful.
Also mentally prepare for things going wrong, what could go wrong? Rather than being devastated and upset, imagine mistakes or problems being overcome, leading to a connection with the audience.
#3. Practice speaking
Talk in front of people
Take every opportunity to speak in front of people, friends and family. This can be taking the opportunity of speaking in from of small groups of people for example during a work or family meal.
Use this as an opportunity to tell an anecdote or story, getting used to speaking in front of a groups of people will normalise public speaking.
Video yourself
Record yourself speaking, then critique yourself, identify positives and negatives, do you find your voice monotone, material boring? Tweak and change your performance until it’s more interesting and engaging.
Talk out loud
When rehearing your material talk out loud, this will get you used to using your voice, try different ways to use your voice, have a play and find your confident voice.
#4. Check your technology
Modern day presentations involve the use of technology, people are no longer engaged by simply hearing people speak. Visual aids are a must, we use them to put our ideas across in an interesting engaging way.
Check the technology you’re using is working and will do the job you require, for example make sure all your software updates are complete, have a good idea of what technologies issues you could have.
It’s a great idea to have a contingency for any technology failures. What if Wi-Fi is down? Having a plan ‘B’ will reduce your worry of things going wrong.
Knowing that your equipment is going to function as planned will help those pre presentation nerves.
#5. Know your material
Make sure you know the material thoroughly and be prepared for questions. You’re putting across an idea to people and they’ll assume you’re the subject expert.
The more you know your material the less nerves you’ll have. Also knowing your subject will be evident to the audience.
If your time’s limited practice the first few minutes of your talk, this will give you a prompt for the rest of the presentation. The most important parts of a presentation are the beginning and end, start strong and finish strong.
#6. Reinterpret your nerves
How we feel when we’re nervous is similar to when we’re excited, reinterpret your feelings of nervousness as excitement. There could be a good chance that you are excited but have interpreted how you feel wrongly.
Being nervous has a negative association, whereas being excited is positive, reinterpret how you feel. You’re exhilarated and excited, instead of feeling doom and dread.
#7. Have perspective
Ask yourself: what’s the worst that can happen if things go wrong? We tend to catastrophise, for example if we make a mistake during public speaking – ‘I’ll look a fool’, ‘people will think I’m stupid’, ‘I’ll lose my job’.
Do you remember all the embarrassing things you’ve done? They’ll be many, they hang around for a while then dissipate and are forgotten.
Identify what the consequences would be if it things went wrong. You may look silly, but people forget, they don’t really care, or they’ll have sympathy for you. Sympathy because they know how hard it is to talk in public – they will likely respect your effort.
#8. Body language
We’re able to control how we move and hold ourselves; body language can be used to give off the right impression to your audience. Also, maintaining confident body language fools your brain into thinking you’re confident and comfortable with the situation.
When practising public speaking maintain positive body language, stand or sit up straight, don’t fiddle, fidget or fold your arms. Remember to smile, be expressive with your body language and practice maintaining eye contact when you practice in front of people.
#9. Mistakes are normal
Human beings make mistakes, we are us because of our mistakes. Without them we wouldn’t be able to speak, drive, walk or any of the things we take for granted.
Perfection is impossible, if you listen to the best public speakers in the world you’ll notice all the words and errors they make. The difference is they make them and move on, they don’t draw attention to them, unless as an ice breaker or to add comedy value
Expect mistakes to happen, be prepared for them, mistakes are a powerful tool for personal growth.
#10. Hydrate and eat
Before public speaking make sure you’re hydrated, and you’ve had a snack. Make sure you have a bottle of water with you during the talk.
Feeling hungry and thirsty before a presentation will be interpreted by your brain in a negative way and you won’t feel at your best.
Do try to minimise coffee, excessive sugar and other stimulants before you speak publicly.
#11. Positive self-talk
Be good to yourself, your inner voice will be critical, if you’re speaking in public it’s likely because you’re competent and able.
When you have that negative inner voice nagging away, question the validity of what it’s saying. Another method to reduce its impact is to reverse the negative thoughts and turn them into positive ones.
Conclusion…
These 11 tips to calm your nerves will provide you with the tools to speak publicly in a better physical and mental place than before. You may also find ‘How to reduce you fear of public speaking‘ helpful.
It’s important that you use and practise them to benefit. Make a note of them, have them to hand and use them until they’re second nature.
Being able to speak publicly has many benefits, it’s well worth working on and conquering – if you don’t you’ll just regret.
You’ll always have some nerves when public speaking, this is normal, but the nerves will be different, it’ll be less about nervousness and more about anticipation and excitement.
There’ll come a day when you look forward to speaking in public, the buzz, excitement and exhilaration. Good luck.