If you panic at the thought of making a presentation, you are not alone. Several studies have shown that public speaking is the thing that people fear most – more than snakes, flying or even death. That means that, at a funeral, most people would rather be in the coffin than making the eulogy!
How can you get over this fear? Here are some tips:
Get there early. Make sure you get familiar with the room. Stand where you are going to give your presentation until you begin to feel relaxed standing there. Try out the audiovisual equipment you will be using.
Introduce yourself to as many members of the audience as you can before you start. This helps turn the audience into a group of friendly faces rather than a wall of strangers.
Whilst you are doing this, pick out a couple of ‘friendly faces’. During the presentation, maintain regular eye-contact with your ‘new friends’.
Keep a photo of a child, a spouse or a pet near you. Look at it from time to time for reassurance.
Breathe deeply and rhythmically. This will bring oxygen into your system, relax your throat and help you breath more slowly.
Act confidently even if you are not feeling confident. You will find yourself becoming confident.
Wear a rubber band around your wrist. Snap it if you are feeling negative thoughts.
Remember that it will soon be over. Twenty minutes is not very long in your lifetime!
That topic is really important to us, because it scary to stand in front of audience and introduce yourself.
So I like to thank you to focus about it, and giving a lot of advice
Nice topic.I have suffered panic attacks again and again. especially during testimony times.i ended up leaving out the main message.
thanks for these tips, they really help. i have a seminar next week that will define my future career and i’m shaking from now.
These tips will help. It’s never been easy for me to address an audience.
(Wear a rubber band around your wrist. Snap it if you are feeling negative thoughts).
I don’t agree with the idea of a rubber band, it will display a childish behaviour and the audience will read the body language faster than maintaining the body posture, until you evercome the panicking.
Every thing written is good but, it will be more helpful if the presentation on how to beat panic when you are making presentation can be done in a video form.