Public speaking is one of the biggest fears a human can face. Each year at Tahoma High School, students who take English 11 do a unit where they must get in front of the whole class and give a speech about a controversial topic. When this unit came around this year I kept hearing my junior friends complaining about the speech they had to do and how nervous they were about presenting.
There are different steps and helpful ideas you can use to overcome your fear of public speaking, the first one is to understand how common the fear is. According to psycom.net, “a fear of public speaking is a very common phobia and one that is believed to affect up to 75% of the population.” It is good for someone nervous about public speaking to understand that they are not alone in this situation.
Another thing that helps is realizing where the fear stems from, according to hbr.org “Our brains have transferred that ancient fear of being watched onto public speaking.” This quote shows that we feel a certain pressure from the audience that induces fear in even the most confident speakers. Secondly, the fear comes from a fear of being judged, feeling isolated from a group, and the fear of failure, but it is important to remember that everyone cares more about the way they present themselves than the way that you do.
A simple method you can use to overcome your public speaking fear is memorizing and understanding the speech that you are given, the more confident you get about knowing what you have to say, the easier it will be to stay calm and collected when giving your speech. Another related aspect is putting effort into your writing, making sure that your writing is good and sounds fluent will also help boost your confidence. Both of these in preparation for the speech will help raise your confidence exponentially. You will worry much less about what to say and how to say it.
One last thing you can do to help stay calm is regulate your breathing, take long deep breaths to slow your heart rate, and feel overall more relaxed. According to mayoclinic.org “Do some deep breathing. This can be very calming. Take two or more deep, slow breaths before you get up to the podium and during your speech. ”.
I had the opportunity to speak with two Tahoma students, Yorimitsu Hopple and Dallas Gurtin about their experiences giving speeches in front of their classmates. Yorimitsu shared, “I usually feel nervous before giving a speech, I usually perform worse when I feel less confident, I put a lot of time into memorizing my lines to boost my confidence”. This quote shows a common approach to a speech, feeling nervous is completely normal, and as you can see in this example Yorimitsu deals with this feeling by memorizing his speech. On the other hand, Dallas talks about how visualization is what helps him deal with nervousness, Dallas said “I try to imagine myself in front of the class giving my speech perfectly just like I wrote down, This helps me calm my nerves because when the time comes it’s like I have already been there so many times in my head ”. Despite their differences, Yorimitsu and Dallas both shared effective methods to help get over the fear of public speaking and perform to the best of their abilities.
