FACE YOUR GREATEST FEAR!

Have you attended meetings where you wanted and were expected to contribute and simply did not dare to get up and be heard? Have you toyed with the idea of giving workshops to increase your business, but shied away because you were too scared to get up in front of an audience?

Why is it that so many us, who have worthwhile contributions to make, avoid getting up in front of a group of people, to put our thoughts into words? Why is it that small vocal minorities often seem to get their way? Why is it that Toastmasters International attracts over 170,000 members every year? Because many people are afraid to address an audience.

A U.S. publication, "The Book of Lists" reports that the greatest fear of people in North America is to get up in front of a group of people to make a presentation. You are not alone!

And what do most of us do to overcome this fear? We simply decline invitations to speak. In other words, we throw away opportunities for career advancement or increased business. We choose to remain in our comfort zone.

If we do accept to speak to an audience, we have a tendency to hide behind electronic wizardry rather than making our speech a promotional platform for ourselves and we fervently hope that the audience does not notice our shaking knees, trembling hands and quivering voice.

Real communication takes place when one human being reaches out to others by using his or her own natural wizardry. All the email, faxes and multi-media equipment in the world will not be able to replace the human voice, body language or emotion in communication.

Presentation skills are within all of us but we have often developed a negative attitude towards speaking in public. Many psychologists and therapists tend to agree that this phobia about public speaking might have developed as a learned negative behavior during our school years.

Kindergarten. Show and Tell. I bet you can recall several of your little class mates who were called upon by the teacher to do their "show and tell" in front of the class and who left their mark...on the floor, right in front of the whole class. That's how scared they were!

Elementary School. Presentations in front of the class. This was the period when we had crushes, and the subject of our admiration was snickering at our ineptness!

High School. How did the teacher always know the kid who had not prepared his or her homework? Another humiliation in front of our peers!

Is it any wonder that we grow up with this negative attitude about getting up in front of a group to make a presentation? Of course not! It is the result of negative conditioning. Since one of the greatest human motivations is the avoidance of pain, we have learned that speaking in front of a group is to be avoided at all costs, because it creates nothing but pain and embarrassment.

But there is hope, negative attitudes can be unlearned. We can learn effective ways to control this fear and to use our voice, body language and emotion to make successful presentations and deliver workshops that create results. Here are a few tips:

Read the complete article that provides various solutions to overcome this FEAR of speaking in front of a group, in our semi-monthly ezine. mailto:speakertip@smartbotpro.net Visit the Speaker's Coach Website at: http://www.intranet.ca/~jwaisvisz