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Public speaking is tough

speaking.io

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Re: Public speaking is tough

#61

Post by re_todd »

I went to a doctor, and he gave me beta blockers, which helped a lot.

Another thing that helped is reading forums like this where many people admit how nervous they are. In speech class, everyone seemed to do relatively well, so I was under the impression that I was the only person in the world that gets nervous during a speech. Just knowing that other people get nervous has helped me handle it better.

You can also take your contacts out or glasses off so you cannot see people clearly, which also helps a little.

I've also noticed that my anxiety attacks usually happen before the speech, not usually during it, and they only last a few minutes. Knowing that they will not last forever has also helped me.

Re: Public speaking is tough

#62

Post by nedwin »

bedhead wrote: post #59

I had never spoken publicly, as in a featured speaker in front of a large gathering of strangers. I had spoken in front of everyone at my old company (80 people) but that was the closest I came to public speaking, and since I knew everyone it didn't count. I remember freshman year of high school having my stomach in knots when teachers would call on me. I just had that nervous personality. Want to know how nervous I'…

I think the moral is "practice makes perfect". Nice work!

Re: Public speaking is tough

#63

Post by tjmc »

nostromo wrote: post #4

Here's two pieces of public speaking advice nobody will tell you about, but actually work. 1) Beta-blockers. Ask your doctor. 2) Alcohol. Obviously, be careful with this. :) But having a drink really will take the edge off. This works better when giving a toast as a best man than it does at work. It could probably work at a conference too. Other than this, for a big talk or pitch, I just practice until I'm blue in th…

I'd add teaching. Nostromo is right that you calm down quickly after you start speaking, but the problem is most people only have experience of talking for a brief time. 2-5 min talks in front of the class at school is a common experience.

However if you teach a class for an hour or more, that period of nervousness is comparatively short and you quickly learn to be comfortable in front of others.

Re: Public speaking is tough

#65

Post by vkr »

nostromo wrote: post #4

Here's two pieces of public speaking advice nobody will tell you about, but actually work. 1) Beta-blockers. Ask your doctor. 2) Alcohol. Obviously, be careful with this. :) But having a drink really will take the edge off. This works better when giving a toast as a best man than it does at work. It could probably work at a conference too. Other than this, for a big talk or pitch, I just practice until I'm blue in th…

There's a very interesting TED talk related to this, by Amy Cuddy (title: Your body language shapes who you are) - http://on.ted.com/Cuddy

Basically you can manipulate yourself into being calm by taking on a relaxed and confident body language. Sitting up, stretching out, taking in a lot of space, ..

I tried this several times and it does help, of course it doesn't make your stress vanish entirely.

Re: Public speaking is tough

#66

Post by theraccoundude »

saurik wrote: post #57

To some extent the point I want to make I'd similar to the one made by reuven elsewhere in this thread, but I think it is still different (and maybe shorter? we'll see ;P) enough to still post. (OK, after writing, this failed at my goal of being shorter ;P.) So, I also do a lot of conference speaking, albeit nowhere near as much as reuven. I remember in high school, public speaking was terrifying. By the end of colle…

This is incredibly well articulated. Fear is the number one issue to overcome for most people, not how to construct their presentation. If you have A LOT of fear going into speaking, this is the essential blockage which must be understood and overcome before anything meaningful can proceed. There are a lot of patterns of thought that go into the construction of a phobia-level fear of speaking which might be so strongly habituated that they simply take time and exposure to overcome.

Meditation with observation of narcissistic personality reflections will slowly start to ease the internal dialogue that generally contributes to this state. Like most people, when you are natural (like around your best friend) your creativity and gifts naturally come out. You don't need to be trained on them (though sometimes that can help a bit too)

Re: Public speaking is tough

#67

Post by cmbaus »

Theodores wrote: post #56

Just wing it. Seriously. Why is it that so few schools teach children how to speak in public? It is not difficult, all you need is a debating society. I am fortunate enough to have gone to a school where the debating society was the thing to do. Even on a cold winter with snow outside two hundred or so of the thousand at the school would show up, of their own accord and without anyone telling they had to go. To be vo…

Personally I think winging it is very difficult to do well. If you know the content very well you can get away with it, but if it is new content, I think it is important to prepare. The best speakers I know spend a lot of time on prep.

Re: Public speaking is tough

#68

Post by pmiller2 »

Between grad school (teaching, seminar talks, etc) and other occasions, I've spoken in front of groups of 3-300 people hundreds of times. I have no idea if I'm all that good at it, but at least I'm comfortable with it. :-)

The biggest trick for me is realizing that talking in front of a group is different from talking to one person, but talking in front of a small group is not that different from talking in front of a medium or large group. Under 5 or so people is still pretty much an intimate/conversational atmosphere in my experience, but going from 5 or 10 up to 50, 100, or 300 is pretty much all the same. The only real difference is the amount and type of projection equipment involved.

Depending on the specific scenario, there are other things I try to keep in mind (e.g. I found that between 0.5 and 1.5 slides per minute worked well for a seminar talk in grad school), but abstracting away the size of the audience in my mind is the one that's paid me the biggest returns in reduced anxiety. Now if I just had a way to make sure the A/V equipment always worked, I could make a crapload of money. ;)

Re: Public speaking is tough

#69

Post by vvvVVVvvv »

matteotom wrote: post #41
chad_oliver wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your idea for a Rift app sounds like an excellent idea! It'd be a lot of fun to try to create a realistic model of an audience. The small motions would make all the difference: that guy who suddenly looks up and stares at you, the person who sits stiffly with their arms crossed, the person who just can't sit still. However, one big problem is that, currently, the Rift is designed to be used when sitting down. What yo…

In addition, it would be difficult for it to accurately show the crowd reacting to what you say. In my experience/opinion, one of the more stressful things about public speaking is how the audience reacts.

Isn't there any voice recognition software able to detect stuttering, tone change (I'm a pro at that), irregular rhythm and the likes ?

That'd be a really interesting challenge to have to keep your speech in a fast paced yet balanced and clutter free fashion.

Re: Public speaking is tough

#70

Post by mebassett »

Say someone is a mediocre-to-decent public speaker already. How does one "level up" to be a really great public speaker? I've thought about a speech coach or class, but I don't know anyone who has had any success with this who could recommend where to find a good one.
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