Self Help And Education Blog

Public speaking is all about performance, whether this is on an auditorium stage, in a small room or a huge arena. Holding the attention of your audience throughout your presentation or speech is an area well documented in any public speaking course. Once you've learned how to prepare your notes, conquered your fear of public speaking and brushed up your presentation skills, tips on great ways to captivate your audience is the all-important next step!

Public speaking tips; opening lines.

Instantly gain your audience's interest by using an attention-grabbing opener. The nature of this obviously depends on the type of public speaking event you're attending, so do consider whether using a joke is appropriate! Starting with a question or a controversial opening statement will often have a dramatic effect.

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The key to carrying off a bold new style is to step out with your head held high, knowing that you look great. But you need to take a few preliminary steps to build up your confidence.

Step 1: Make a mood board for your look

This is the first thing that the fashion houses do to establish the feel of their latest collection. Gather together photos of women who are style icons, pictures of inspirational works of art, scraps of patterns and fabric swatches. Tear out magazine photos of garments that you would love to wear. Glue, pin or tape them all together onto a 'board of inspiration' and put it on your dressing table.

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Two school boys, both thirteen. One is confident, the other is a nervous chap. It's 1983 in a preparatory school in the Surrey countryside.

Both pupils have to give a religious reading to the rest of the school. The nervous one stumbles onto the stage and begins mumberling - he's such a wreck that he nervously tuts at the end of each line of the reading. He certainly isn't even speaking clearly. By the end of the passage his school peers begin to pick up on his nervous habit of tutting. He comes to the last line and reads: “This is the word of the Lord” and the rest of the pupils roll their eyes and tuts too. His fear of public speaking was so bad that for months ahead he woke up in the middle of the night sweating - this performance had just made his fears much worse.

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Reading your speech makes it difficult to deliver your speech an interesting and confident way. You are tied to one spot by the speech and it is difficult to connect with the audience.

There are 4 circumstances when you may want to read your speech

1) Political speech - where each word and phrase is to be scrutinized.

2) Technical speech - difficult concepts are being explained and accuracy is important

3) A special event - a certain theme is being portrayed

4) Confidence - where the speaker does not feel confident enough to deliver it without a written speech.

Public speaking is about effectively conveying ideas to the audience. Reading a speech makes that difficult because it confines the ability to speak expressively. Some of the shortcomings caused by reading are;

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Have you failed to reach your goals? Are you frustrated by your progress in life? Are you fed-up with people telling you to constantly set goals? Would you like to know how you can really achieve your objectives?

I am a great advocate of goals and goal setting tactics. However, many times goals can act as a barrier to your success rather than a tool for accomplishing your desires! Why this is so I will try to explain in this article and I will also endeavour to give you the best ways of combating this problem.

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Confidence in one’s self is something that everyone in life must have so they can be, happy and hopefully quite successful. You must have confidence so that you can grow as a person and achieve something in your life. By receiving professional confidence coaching, you will be able to change the things that are just not working in your life and bringing you down and have more happiness like you rightfully deserve.

Disappointing others and letting them down is an unconscious fear that you will learn to overcome. They are common and they are something that can be worked through. You will discover your true self worth and once that is discovered you will be happy and reap more of the rewards from life.

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Most of the times, regardless of what you try you often find it difficult to raise your level of self –esteem alone. Negative thoughts start to creep into your mind and tend to affect a lot of things about you such as the way you see life and yourself in general. If you’ve reached this stage it may be time to opt for the experts.

Personal Counseling and Therapy:

People who are skilled counselors as well as therapists have been trained by the right people to see their lives in a better light. Talking with someone who doesn’t know you on a personal level can make you see things from an entirely different angle. Real therapists understand how to find out the real issues and identify the root cause of what is really bothering you. People skilled in this field are able to understand your negative attitudes and will give you the required strength to find the positive things about yourself and shed the negativity.

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Confidence can be the most influential and powerful element of all in what we creative, how often we create, and how bravely we create.

When our self-confidence is high, creating comes freely and abundantly, gushing like a waterfall in the Spring thaw.

We create every moment we can, and our creative work is bold, daring, experimental, each project building on the momentum and success of the previous one.

This confidence in our creativity can’t help but spill over into the rest of our creative life. So we walk with a bounce in our step, feel more sociable, more lovable, more capable, more alive.

All of this stems from having a high level of self-confidence.

Without strong confidence in our creativity, it’s a somewhat different picture.

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A wallflower cannot succeed in this competitive world. One has to stand out in order to be heard. If you are timid and shy, you will not be noticed. You have to get your point across.

To overcome shyness, you have to give yourself more credit. In other words, you must have more self-esteem. Low self-esteem often result to being shy and afraid to speak up. If you know your worth, you will not have second thoughts speaking your mind.

If you are shy, think of the many opportunities you will miss. If you lack the courage to take the extra step, you will have difficulty in going after your aspirations and goal.

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First off, this is not a partisan diatribe and/or endorsement of Hilary Clinton for president. What this article ascribes to be is information that you as a speaker can learn from and utilize in your public speaking (Did I sound like a politician there? Probably not, because I’m striving for truth!)

I observed Mrs. Clinton speak on the September 23, 2007, Sunday morning pundits only show, ‘Face the Nation.’ BTW, I do not regularly watch this show or other Sunday morning pundit shows except my satellite dish receiver appears to have a bug up it’s….
But, I digress. Mrs. Clinton appeared on cue, and began to talk about a number of issues which Mr. Schiffer and Mrs. Clinton, no doubt prepared way in advance of this appearance.

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