Public speaking

I hate public speaking. I mean I can talk a person ear off but to get up and know that everyone is looking at you and you have to use proper grammer just freaks me out. I hate having to do this. This is one of my Biggest FEARS.

I used to hate having to speak in front of more than half a dozen people, but I regularly talk to groups of fifty to a hundred now, and amazingly it just doesn't scare me any more. I think when I first found myself in a position of having to speak to a larger group, I used to obsess over what I was going to say, whether I fidgetted or had any off-putting nervous habits etc, but the worst fear was what if my mind went blank and I couldn't remember anything to say. Well, I can honestly say my mind has gone a complete blank on me many times in the middle of a sentence, and I've made it through to the end of my speech, presentation or whatever. I've introduced a speaker by the wrong namae. I've contradicted myself. I've said the exact opposite of what I was trying to say (many, many times) And I've attempted to tell a joke to break the ice, only to feel the air freeze over even more. You know what? I survived every disaster, and every time I get up to speak, I learn something new, about myself and about people in general. So whilst I sympathise with your fear of public speaking, and a few short years ago would have shared it, I now know that most people want to be entertained, so they want you to do well, and since most of them are thinking they would never get up in public, they are amazingly forgiving of the momentary hiccups. I have to say though, a 'huge crowd' to me now would be in the thousands, and that would give me the most enormous butterflies...

I am really bad at talking in front of a crowd. It is just terrifying to me. When I had to I would talk really fast just to get it over with. And I would stumble on my words too. It is just not for me.

I am not scared of a huge crowd when coming to public addressing. The only problem is I cannot be as tension free as I speak Malayalam, my mother tongue, if I have to speak English.

I can actually do it pretty well. I work at a school and have to talk in front of other faculty, parents and students all the time, so it really doesn't bother me a whole lot.