Posts Tagged ‘Anxiety’
How to sound more confident when speaking and presenting
If giving a presentation or speech makes your knees knock and your stomach flip, you’re in good company. Feeling nervous when speaking in public is an extremely common challenge. Yet we don’t want our nerves to impede our ability to communicate… we want it to be easy for our audience to understand and act on our message. Even those who do feel comfortable speaking and presenting might not be signaling confidence with their speaking style. Since our stakeholders weigh the merit of our ideas partly based on how credible they find us, portraying confidence is vital to the success of our message.
There are a variety of physical and audible ways to develop and portray a greater sense of confidence when presenting. This article will focus on the latter: what our audiences hear in our voices. If you’re not sure whether you’re conveying confidence with your voice (or body), ask for feedback from some trusted sources and/or watch some video footage of a recent presentation you’ve given.
Ever wondered…
…why your voice sounds so different on a recording? When we hear ourselves talk real-time, we hear the sound waves through both bone conduction and air conduction. We hear others (or recordings of ourselves) only through air conduction.
If you’d like to sound more confident than you currently do, use the following tips to bolster the quality of your audible communication. These tools will help in all communication scenarios: one-on-one conversations, roundtable meetings, and in front of larger groups, whether virtual and in-person.
Read MoreThree quick and easy brain hacks for public speaking anxiety
In the moments leading up to giving a presentation or speech, many people feel a surge of anxiety—heart-racing, hand-quaking, sick-to-their-stomach anxiety. Some of the work to fortify oneself against the fear of public speaking happens well in advance of the actual presentation or speech. But when the adrenaline and cortisol flood your body right before you take the “stage,” you need an additional, entirely different set of tactics.
Read MorePieces and Parts: For when you’re anxious and stressed
Do not be anxious.
Easy to say, isn’t it?
Harder to do.
I wouldn’t normally say I’m a person given to anxiety. I would, however, freely admit that I get overwhelmed. Perhaps they’re not entirely different.
God’s Word speaks about anxiety and how He wants us to handle it:
…do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6 ESV)
The Greek word translated “anxious” is mérimna. It has some of the meanings we’d expect, such as worry, fear or care. But it also carries the connotations of being drawn in many directions, fracturing a person’s thinking into many parts. Read More
No worries. Yeah, right.
I’m not much of a worrywart. Or so I thought.
I co-lead a small group for middle school girls on Monday nights. I don’t prepare the lesson, so I’m not sure I should be called a leader. Mostly, I’m there to be another adult presence in the room and to build relationships with the students in our youth group.
The true leader of the group prepared a lesson on worry for the girls. She encouraged them to journal a list of things they’re prone to worry about. Turning open our Bibles, we read passages that speak directly to the subject. Her definition of worry went beyond the notions of anxiety or fear. She expanded it to ‘taking responsibilty for something we’re not meant to be in charge of.’ Read More