The Fear of Public Speaking

If your fear for public speaking is greater than your fear of dieing than your not alone. In 2012, more people selected being afraid of public speaking over their own deaths.

When you have a fear of public speaking you can cause a lot of harm to yourself inadvertently, especially in your career or in school. In your career if you cant speak well publicly or give a proper presentation you could go unnoticed, get worked up over your fear and leave out vital parts of your presentation. In school you can very easily get a bad grade on a great assignment because you made simple mistakes even if you studied, practiced and know the material well, just because of your fear of public speaking.

How do you break your fear? It is hard for you to break fear, but the most effective way to fight fear is for you just find ways to cope with it and eventually your coping method becomes second nature and than you overcome your fear. As Homer Simpson would say "picture the crowed in their underwear", but its really not always that simple, but here is some ideas to help make it easier.

• Know your material and study it
• Hold your hands together or on your side  and do not move around constantly (just don't play with your fingers or swing around)
• Practice each slide or idea you want to present until you get a sense of how you want it to sound
• Always remember when you do a presentation or speak publicly use this format: tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, than remind them of what you told them.
• Know your audience, make sure you present in a way that is effective to your audience
• When giving examples of size or distance put it in terms you can measure. For instance: 200,000 people like chocolate out of 400,000, that would mean that in this room every second person likes chocolate.

Legendary speaker Steve Jobs gives some tips

Watch the video and remember what you read today and I promise you will you will begin to improve your skills and in-turn you will start to get over the fear because you will realize your are much better at public speaking than you thought.