Naomi the Wordsmith

Dread having to speak in public? Sweaty palms when your boss tells you to do a presentation? Racing heart at the thought of a crowd of faces watching you, listening to your every word?

You’re not alone. As many as 75% of us fear public speaking.

Read on to see my tried-and-tested strategies for conquering this fear.

Every fear has an origin story…

Mine is a little embarrassing.

Here goes…

When I was six years old, my schoolteacher had us all write a poem about the autumn.

When we were done, she had us give her our poems. She looked at mine and said, “Come here, Naomi, read out your poem to the class.”

So in a shy, faltering voice, I read it out loud. My poem was about green leaves turning red turning brown and falling to the ground…

It’s funny the details you remember 19 years later.

When I finished, she said to the whole class, “This is how to write a bad poem. This is the worst poem I or anyone else has ever read. If any of you ever feel unconfident about your writing, well, at least it’s not like Naomi’s.”

She then scrunched up my poem into a tiny paper ball and threw it in the bin.

While silently sobbing, I decided two things:

1. Never, ever, ever write a poem again, so no one else would be harmed by having to read it
2. If I speak in public, I will be humiliated. So don’t do it.

And so my fear was born.

Ask yourself: Why am I afraid of public speaking? What’s behind my fear?

You can’t conquer fear if you don’t know why you’re afraid.

Protecting yourself from fear often means strengthening the fear

That’s the strange thing about fear.

Avoiding anxiety triggers ends up making the anxiety worse.

This is how it went for me.

As I said, I believed that public speaking meant I would be humiliated. So I decided to avoid it at all costs.

At least, until the next teacher asked me to answer a question in class…

Every time I managed to squirm my way out of saying anything to an audience, I was so relieved. Yay! I avoided humiliation again!

The thing is though, I was actually making the fear stronger. Every time I avoided it, I was thinking about how awful public speaking would be.

It made it seem so much worse.

Does it feel like that for you?

I think I would’ve continued like this for the rest of my life. I was lucky. When I was around 12, I got the opportunity to become a patient advocate for my condition, raising awareness.

I didn’t at first realise what I’d signed up for. Speeches. Lots of them.

A nightmare if you’re terrified of public speaking, right?

The organisation I volunteer with started teaching me how to do a damn good speech. The strange thing is, the techniques actually helped me deal with the fear…

Strategies for public speaking also help you conquer the fear

There’s a lot of strategies for how to excel at public speaking out there. Here are the 5 strategies that fight my fear every time.

1. The audience is not your enemy. If you’ve been invited to give a presentation or a speech, that’s for a reason. People want to hear what you’ve got to say! Always remember that.
2. Know your audience. The most important element of any form of communication is the connection. If you don’t know who you’re talking to (and why they’re there), your connection drops. When you know your audience’s perspective, you know they want you to succeed. How’s that for fighting fear?
3. Get clear on your message. If you know what you’re there to say, that’s a tool for you to fight the fear. Tell it, “You might think I’m a loser, but my message is important and people want to hear it.”
4. Practice, practice, practice. This is how to nail a presentation, but it’s also how to manage the nerves. When you know you’ve practiced your speech and techniques, no fear can take that from you. Even if you’re freaking out, remember: You know what you’re doing.
5. The power of a pause. Pauses are great. You can use them for effect … and to calm your nerves. If you’re bumbling your words or can’t remember what’s next, pauses work. Just take a deep breath and let it go. It won’t seem like long for your audience and it makes you look professional and collected. Better yet, it buys you time to make your message overpower the fear.

These are the 5 main strategies that worked for me, but there’s so many others out there. Do you know any tips that help fight the fear? Help each other out and share in the comments.

Ultimately, the best way to conquer the fear is to face it anyway

I know it’s hard. I wish there was an easy way of doing this that didn’t need you to be so brave.

But fear is a tough boss to defeat. You gotta be tough in return.

There’s more opportunities to do public speaking out there than you think…

Ask your boss if there’s any chance you can run a meeting sometimes. Present a project update (in school or work). Do a toast at your friend’s wedding. Join toastmasters.

Seize the day and if you can’t find the opportunities, make them. Commit to conquering the fear.

Fake it til you make it

The fear might never go away completely. Like I said, fear is a tough boss. It takes a tough person to deal with it.

Victory over the fear of public speaking doesn’t mean never feeling afraid again.

Every time I do a speech, whether it’s to 5 people or 500, I freak out.

Sweaty palms, racing heart, and I start focusing too much on my breaths and am I breathing too much, maybe I should hold it, wait, that’s weird to hold my breath, can everyone see…

“Fear is ever-changing and evolving”

From the song, ‘Battle Cry,’ by the band ‘Imagine Dragons’

It’s a good song -> you should check it out.

Since fear is ever-changing and evolving, we must be prepared to keep fighting it.

If all else fails, fake it til you make it.

Be brave, conqueror of fear

Let’s recap.

• Know the origin story of your fear to start fighting it
• Don’t make the enemy stronger by fleeing from it every time
• As Sun Tzu says, you need to prepare to win the fight
• Be brave and face the fear
• Keep on fighting the good fight

Share in the comments any battle stories you have of your encounters with the fear of public speaking.