Presenting in my life

Presenting and public speaking is something that everyone will have to do at some point in their life time. But for 74 percent of the world suffer from speech anxiety. In my life time I have seen this in many different areas whether it was work, school, or in the community. When I was young I use to hate public speaking and would try to avoid it whenever I could. One of my worst was a presentation that I was not ready for I did not understand or have any knowledge of the topic and I had to talk about it. From this I ended up just rambling off the slide word for word and in a small pitiful voice mumbling most of it. After that day I decided to push myself and try to figure out what I could do to advance my skills.

Throughout my days in college and at work I tried many different ways to make my public speaking skills better. The first advancement that I made was being prepared. When I was in high school I would wing my presentations by making the slides on power point then just hoping I would get through it with no problems. Now I study my slides I make sure I know what information is on each slide this made me confident with the topic. Another advancement that I made was note cards of what I was going to say but only using them if I needed to so I wasn’t reading off flash cards. My final and most important way I made my public speaking skills better was just to relax. I learned listening to a presentation from someone else that if you can relax and feel in control of the situation public speaking is not that bad. For me I thought this was impossible but after taking a couple deep breaths and making a “power pose” in the mirror in the bathroom I was able to see the importance of feeling in control. Public speaking is something that is hard for everyone but with enough practice you can find ways to get around this fear like I did many years ago.