FBC – 231 – How to get over your fear of public speaking

How to get over your fear of public speaking.

We have all been there. You are standing at the podium with everybody looking at you and the words won't come out. You are terrified and can't form a decent sentence… Well, it happened to me too a while back.

Thankfully, I found an easy method that allows me to overcome public speaking fear and ace my presentations.

All the details can be found inside this podcast episode

So regarding public presentations, some of you guys might have some apprehension or be scared to go on stage and speak in front of people. It’s understandable. A lot of people are afraid to take the mic and just talk to strangers. It's really hard. What was the case for you?

It could have been the case for us today. But here's the thing. Here is something that you can do to avoid that, because we've all been there the first time when you have to get on stage and talk about something.

You're very nervous and you may actually lose your chain of thought and you might forget some really, important elements. So what you do usually is that you will make some notes. But it's a dilemma between do you do some notes or not.

You don't want to be reading that stuff all the time because you get so nervous that you're always looking at your notes and then I guess you're even more nervous. So it's not a good situation. And there is there is something that you could do to prevent that from happening and to have a great presentation. Okay.

The mistake that we often make is that we assume that people want to hear some facts. So some people need like a few numbers and all that stuff. But we make the presentations way too academic.  “Research shows that blah, blah, blah”. So it’s very factual.

So I'm a factual guy and I’m naturally drawn to this kind of presentation and stuff. And this is precisely the thing that you need to avoid. Because these are the kind of data that, if you’re nervous, you’re going to struggle to remember.

So what can you do? So there is something that people absolutely love and the information is will be retained far better by whoever you're talking to, if you present it in the right form. And this is how, pretty much everything you know, like stuff that your parents have passed down to you has been expressed in the form of a story.

How to get over your fear of public speaking

Everybody loves a story. If you basically tell people, oh, dude, I have this story that I need to tell you, people will listen. The minute they hear I have the story, people will listen. If you're like, oh, man, you know what? I have this fact. And people like that. You know what? I don't care.

My stories are very powerful because this is how legends are born. If you present everything in the form of a story, it's going to draw the attention of your audience.

So the best possible way to start a presentation or something is to basically tell people, I am going to tell you a story. People pay attention to stories and they will remember the stories far better than facts. The facts, like 90 percent of them, will be gone. But if you tell a story to someone, in most cases, they will be able to repeat that story to someone else.

But also expressing things in the form of a story makes it easier for you. And very often it's your own story. Right. The best thing is if you're telling your own story. Right. Why? Because you know the story. You don't have to be nervous. You're just telling people what happened. All right. And this is how you need to present things. So whatever you need to present, try to put it in the form of the story.

The hardest part, if you're super nervous about a speech, will be the beginning. Right. Once you're into the speech and stuff, it's fine. Once you've passed the nervous barrier or something, I don't know if it has a name.

Once you start it, it's fine. So you don't have to do the whole thing in the form of a story. Just start with a story which will be easier once you're in there and then that's it. You don't have to worry about it anymore. You won't be nervous. All right.