10 Tips for Public Speaking

I'm not going to tell you that public speaking is easy it really isn't but at the end of the day our worst fear from public speaking is assuming death from it. This is ridiculous, what can happen if we go out there and make fools of ourselves? we will make some people laugh if you can play it cool, break the ice, and learn from the experience right, so my overall tip for public speaking is this: Acknowledge to the group that you are nervous and to work with you, even encouraging interruptions in form of questions (at least the beginning until you get familiar with the emotion and learn to control it and your speaking improves)

Here are some proven tips on how to control your butterflies and give better presentations:

1. Know your material. This is important! Pick a topic you are interested in. Know more about it than you include in your speech. The more you know the less you depend on notes and can easily deliver facts as common sense to you which will make you seem more calm and deliver your message clearly. Use personal stories if possible and humor. 

2. Practice. Practice. Practice! Little by little, one topic at a time over a period of time not the night before all at once.  

3. Know the audience. Meet members as they arrive. Invite friends if possible too, as is easier to speak to a group of friends than to strangers. Make the presentation a conversation.

4. Relax. Practice breathing exercises, don't get too worked out on these either, but just do simple in and out breathing techniques like they thought you in grade school..  

5. Visualize yourself giving your speech. Again do this a few days in a row before time.   – it will boost your confidence.

6. Be patient with yourself, others want to hear you talk, not hear blurbs. The worst thing you can do is speed up your words because you are nervous and ruin everything so remind yourself that they are there to listen and you can take your time, even if on the clock because is best to cut a great presentation short that listeners can take something away from than wasting 5 minutes listening to blurbs from a scheduled 30 min presentation. 

7. Don’t apologize for any nervousness or problem – we all understand is our human nature and most likely you felt it more than they did. 

8. Concentrate on the message – Focus only on your message and not who your audience is and you think they expect... only deliver what you know.  

9. Gain experience. Keep at it, practice! practice! practice! 

10. Eat healthy. Specially the day and hours before the presentation, you don't want to ruin your presentation due to unfriendly stomach symptoms and besides eating healthy improves your mental condition, eat healthy. 

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