Category Archives: Training

Stage Fright & Fear of Public Speaking: How to Cure it Right Now

David Portney wrote:


If you’ve already tried traditional methods to get rid of stage fright and it hasn’t worked, it’s time to try more serious public speaking training techniques.

Stage fright is caused by how you hold representations in your mind - a fancy way of saying that whether you know it or not, you’re running scary movies in your mind that create fear.

Using this public speaking training technique you can conquer stage fright quickly and easily.

One of the most effective public speaking training techniques you can use to get rid of stage fright is what I call “The Hero Process”, here are the steps:

1. Identify Your Hero:

Who can you think of that would never have stage fright, not in a million years? Who can you think of that could confidently speak to any size audience? This person may be living or not, real or imaginary, someone you know personally or not. Important: pick a Hero that would not have stage fright, ever.

2. Observe Your Hero:

It doesn’t matter if you observe your Hero in your mind, on a video, or in person. What you’re looking for here is the outward demonstration of a total lack of stage fright - in other words, how does their face, their voice and their body look when they’re calm and confidently speaking to an audience? Make detailed notes about their face voice and body.

3. Become Your Hero:

Emulate and act like your Hero - stand the way s/he would stand. Make your face like their face. Speak the way they would speak. Feel all the feeling of calm confidence they would feel. Try practicing parts of your speech being just like your Hero.

4. Rinse Then Repeat:

Go back to being yourself for a minute or so, then practice being your Hero again.

3 tips that make this method work best:

1. Don’t “impersonate” your Hero, just emulate the qualities they have that make them free from stage fright.

2. Use 2 spots on the floor that are six-feet apart; on one spot, you are you. On the other spot, you transform into your Hero.

3. Try different Heroes: if one doesn’t seem to make a difference in how you feel, try another and another until you can speak free from stage fright.

Summary & Bonus Tips:

This is not “fake it until you make it” because the Hero Process literally rewires neural connections in your brain to short circuit stage fright and build new neural connections for calm confidence about public speaking. Remember - you are emulating, not imitating. Use this 2 ways: to practice speaking without stage fright, and to stop an on-stage panic attack by becoming your Hero and instantly calm down.

Bonus tips: by emulating your hero, you can also become a much better and more effective speaker more quickly. Feel free to emulate several different heroes, or even take the best qualities of various heroes who are great speakers and build a “super-hero” to emulate.

For more pubic speaking training articles visit http://www.bestpublicspeakingtraining.com



Public Speaking Training on How to Handle Blunders & Mistakes on Stage

David Portney wrote:


There you are on stage - you’re doing public speaking, training, or even a seminar, and you make a mistake.

You trip over something.

Or you spill your water.

Or you click the wrong button losing your place in your presentation.

Or your PowerPoint is somehow screwed up and looks very different than when you created it yesterday.

What should you do?

Okay, this public speaking training article comes to you from me having done 1,893 workshops, seminars, and public speaking engagements since 1982 - and I have made all the above mistakes and many, many more.

So I can tell you from experience exactly what to do if you “make a mistake” or things just don’t go right.

You have 2 simple options:

Strategy #1:

Ignore the mistake. This is a very good strategy for handling many kinds of public speaking blunders.

For example, if the “mistake” is something like your PowerPoint presentation looks wrong to you, remember that the audience has no idea how it was supposed to look. Making apologies or comments about how it looks different than when you created it last night just makes you look ruffled and nervous.

Or let’s say you forget a portion of your talk, or you accidentally screwed up the sequence of your speech: why point it out when the audience A. doesn’t know that’s true and B. doesn’t really care.

In such cases, you’re better off not saying anything and just ignoring it.

Strategy #2:

Point out the mistake and make fun of it or joke about it. If you spill your water, you could ignore that, and that’s just fine. Or if you trip over a cord on the floor, you could ignore that too. But in this case the audience has for sure seen this “blunder” or mistake.

So make fun of it!

You spill your water and say “does anyone else want some water” and everyone will laugh.

Or you trip over a cord and you say “okay, whoever put that there is fired” or “that’s the best trip I’ve taken in years!” and people will laugh.

Summary and Super-Important Bonus Tip:

If you make a mistake or blunder, the audience cares less about that than you do. You may need to get a number of public speaking engagements under your belt to fully realize this, but it’s 100% true - in most cases the audience just does not care.

Here’s the bonus tip: you should never be afraid of mistakes and blunders because when you make a mistake it proves to the group that you are human, you’re one of them. We all make mistakes. The biggest mistake you can make on stage is to try to be perfect, a legend, a hero. People don’t want that, they want to hear from human beings, not perfect super-heroes! Knowing this, you might even want to plan a mistake or two in your presentation!

 

Get even more great tips and public speaking training articles at http://www.bestpublicspeakingtraining.com