Too Shy, Shy – How To Overcome Your Shyness An Become A Public Speaker

Shyness is something that every speaker needs to learn to overcome
Shyness is something that every speaker needs to learn to overcome
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When we take a look at all of the things that can hold us back from becoming the great speaker that we want to be, what always seems to be at the top of the list? More often than not, it’s a fear of public speaking. There can be many reasons for this fear, but one of the main culprits is always a bad case of shyness. Here’s what you can do to overcome this.

Start To Overcome Your Shyness Slowly

If, despite knowing the importance of public speaking, you are dealing with shyness, then there’s nothing that you are going to be able to do that is going to make it go away overnight. Instead, you are going to have to come up with a plan that will allow you to slowly overcome your shyness.

A great way to start this process is to sit down and take the time to identify something that you feel that you do very well. We all have some skill that we’re just a little bit better at than most people. Identify this skill and then work at it – become even better at doing what you do well. Knowing that you have a skill that you are good at will fill you with confidence and when you work this skill, or a discussion of it, into your next speech you’ll have started to overcome your shyness.

A lot of our shyness comes from a fear of interacting with people that we don’t know. This is something that you’re going to have to work up to overcoming. A great way to start this process is to practice speaking to close friends and family members. Once you can do this easily, start to widen the circle of people that you talk to in order to include friends that you are not so close to. Keep widening your circle and eventually add strangers. This all takes a while to do, but you’ll be amazed with how easy it eventually becomes to talk to a room full of people that you don’t know.

In order to overcome your shyness, you are going to have to want to overcome it. This is the key to your success. Spend some time thinking about what you could achieve if you didn’t have to struggle with your shyness. If you can focus on what you could do, then the desire to achieve that will turn out to be stronger than the shyness that is holding you back. Keep the focus and the shyness will go away.

Action Is The Key To Long Term Success

When we are dealing with shyness, it can be all too easy to want to stay at home and not take on all of the risks associated with going out into the cruel world and giving a speech. Resist this urge and make sure that you show up! I realize that this can be tough to do, but once you make the effort to go, you’ll be that much farther along in overcoming your shyness.

Finally, in order to successfully overcome your shyness you need to have a plan. The plan has to relate to why you are willing to get up and give speeches in the first place. This all has to be leading to some goal that you want to achieve. If you can identify that goal, then every step that you take in overcoming your shyness will be taking you one step close to realizing your plan.

What All Of This Means For You

Shyness is a fact of life for everyone. It can be overcome, but we need to take a number of different steps in order to accomplish this task and be able to share the benefits of public speaking with our audiences.

Right off the bat we need to develop a skill that we can be proud of. Using this skill, we can start to give speeches to friends and family members and then push our circle of audience members out to start to include strangers. The goal is to make our desire to speak stronger than our fear of speaking. We always have to keep in mind that no matter how much we fear it, we need to get up and show up so that our next speech can become part of our overall plan.

The wonderful thing about tacking your shyness is that it can be overcome. Once you’ve conquered it, it won’t come back. Later on, you’ll look back and be amazed at just how much your shyness was holding you back. Start to tackle it today!

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: Do you think you should mix friends and family in with strangers for each speech you give?

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Note: What we talked about are advanced speaking skills. If you are just starting out I highly recommend joining Toastmasters in order to get the benefits of public speaking. Look for a Toastmasters club to join in your home town by visiting the web site www.Toastmasters.org. Toastmasters is dedicated to helping their members to understand the importance of public speaking by developing listening skills and getting presentation tips. Toastmasters is how I got started speaking and it can help you also!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Not every speech is the same. In fact, every speech that we give is different from all of the speeches that came before it. However, each of our speeches will fall into one of four different categories: instruction, demonstration, motivational, or humorous. When you have an idea that you want your audience to support, it’s time to get out the demonstration speech. This is a great time to show off the importance of public speaking. Let’s talk about how best to do this…