How to Overcome Your Nervousness

Do you feel nervous when leading meetings or speaking in public? Many people do. Fear of public speaking is, according to research, the single greatest fear of people in developed countries. If you feel nervous some of the time and that it would be useful to have some tactics for overcoming nervousness. This article will give you some tips to overcome your nervousness.

Normally people tend to speak fast when they feel nervous and it will make you feel more nervous. In order to control your nervousness, you should not speak too fast. You may want to take deep breath between sentences. By doing so, it will help you to control your nervousness. Remember, the more you speak faster the more you may become nervous.

Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. So, prepare your materials, equipment, venue, participants and yourself in advance. Knowing your participants in advance is important: where do they come from and their background experience. The more you prepare, the more you will relax. By doing so, you can control your nervousness.

Another way to control your nervousness is to use actual equipment and props to help you in your explanation. You may want to use handouts, flip-charts or others presentation aids in presentation. If you are surrounded by the props and equipment, it will ease your nervousness as you have a lot of things to refer in your presentation. Even if you have a shaky hand, you can hold the flip chart stand for a while and it will make you feel better. So, use your props as much as possible. It is also good to initially ask those participants that you are confident and familiar to answer your questions so as to set the right participating mood. The more you could engage your allies, the more you receive the positive environment during presentation.

Asking some questions time to time will let you control the crowd as well. So, use questions to involve participants and to give yourself mental space to think. You can also check the understanding of your participants by asking question time to time. You can adjust the pacing with the different types of participants especially those who are slow to grasp the ideas. So, it is another good way to overcome your nervousness.

Some inexperienced presenters tend to stand still in the same spot through out their presentation. It will not make any good but it will make their space smaller and smaller, then it will increase their nervousness. Move around. So, do not stand still at one place but move around. It will walk out your nervous energy but you should not overdo it. Otherwise, you participants may feel dizzy with your movements.

It is also important to enjoy what you are doing. You must like what you are doing then you can do well. If you do not even enjoy presentation by yourself, how can you expect others to enjoy it? You must show your passion in your presentation, and then you will be able to convince people for you believe in what you are saying. The more you enjoy in the presentation, the more you will feel relax and will be able to control your nervousness.

Practice makes Prefect. Rehearsal is important. You should practice or rehearse enough what you will present. It will be good if you can get hold of your friends to be your participants and rehearse with them. Their honest feedback will help you to have better presentation later and you will be more confident when you actually present.

Lastly, you should relax. The more you relax yourself, the more relax you will be. It is very normal to be nervous but you just need to turn that nervousness to energy so that you presentation will be lively. No body wants to come and listen to the presenters who not excited about their own topic. So, remember to slow down, prepare, use props, engage your allies, ask questions, move around, enjoy, rehearse and finally ENJOY! By doing all these things, you will be able to control your nervousness.

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