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For me personally, the best way to ease the pressure before giving a speech is taking a moment (either in private or in front of your audience) to slow down your breath and briefly meditate. Visualize yourself delivering your speech the way you want it to be delivered, visualize your audience taking on the information well, and focus only on the content of your speech and why it is important.
Training before the event in sufficient timeBreathe deeply into exhalation and exhalation for several timesFocus on the idea and achieve the goalIf I wanted to succeed I would succeed
Delivering a speech is not everyone's cup of tea. The nervousness is due to the thought of failure and becoming a laughing stock,which hampers all the confidence one puts up to speak.We all tend to be good speakers alone or in front of the mirror, but when you see similar and unknown faces, we try to put more pressure on our mind lest we forget. Knowningly we stress ourselves, as a result we feel blank wlile facing an audience. I, personally always felt scared to face the public though I am teaching for the past 25 years.Holding a mike was a nightmare. I experimented trying the school morning assembly, just by speaking two words.'Attention' and 'Disperse' After gaining confidence kept on adding words till sentences followed. While presenting I prefer to use a podium/dias,which covers a lot of my shortcomings, such as shivering and much more. You can try this it helped me surely you are not worse than me.
I am lucky in that I don't often feel "stage fright", so I can usually just get up and present my speech with no problems.
I have also been a vocal performer for many years and occasionally an actor, so I don't get flustered easily being infront of others. Combine that with having taught children and adults for about thirty years, and not much gets under my skin when I need to deliver a message.
A good tip to remember is that if you know your material well, you will not feel quite so self conscious about talking about it. Preparation makes most situations easier to manage, and public speaking is certainly no exception.
If you are in a well lit room, and can see your audience, try to make eye contact with a few people as you go (especially if you have friends there). Think about talking directly to them while you speak and some of the anxiety may fade.
If you are in a darkened space (presenting on a stage, perhaps), imagine that there's nobody there and you are practicing instead of presenting the actual speech. This is an illusion, of course, but out of sight-out of mind.
Ultimately, the more often you present speeches, the easier it will become for you. If you can overcome your fear once, you can do it again and again.
Marhaba Salma,
Feeling a little nervous before a speech is a good thing - it means you are still alive!
However, sometimes you can be too nervous, to the point of being debilitated. I like Maureen's suggestion, and encourage you to try it. Here are some other things you can do to reduce or eliminate such extreme pressure:
1. Be prepared. A very wise saying is "If you are prepared you shall not fear!" Things you can do to ensure you are prepared include:
1a - Have your speech researched, written, and proof-read well before time.
1b - Memorise (at least some small) portions of your speech. This keeps you busy before your speech (so you are less likely to notice pressure) AND allows you to make more eye-contact with your audience during the speech, thereby establishing better rapport.
1c - Practice your speech, preferably on someone who can give you feedback.
1d - Arrive well in advance and check that everything is as it should be, with enough time to fix it if it is not.
2. Stay busy, ideally with other things. If you are busy you do not have time to feel as much pressure.
3. Give more speeches. Like everything else it becomes easier the more you do it.
Deep breath is always helpful to ease tension or pressure before delivering a speech.
If its well known audience, there is no need to feel the pressure before delivering the speech. If the audience is new and unknown, then again since you don't know any of them, you should anyways not feel the pressure!!! Just kidding!
On a serious note, following can help ease the pressure before delivering a speech:
1) Get away from stage fear. You need to work on your stage fear, but surely cant get over it, overnight! There are several ways to do this, you can google them.
2) Try and write down the speech yourself as far as possible. It's easier to deliver something that you created/wrote than a speech written by someone else but to be deliverd by you.
3) Practice delivering the speech to yourself in front of a mirror or with colleagues/friends if you can before going live. Improvise everytime you deliver. Improved confidence helps ease the pressure.
4) Now for something that works for me and something that I practice. Stay calm for atleast mins before speech, listen to good music if that suits you. Go with a free mind.
Hope this helps.
first, you need to calm your self down and internalize everything that your have to say.
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