Confidence in Public Speaking
If you ever want to be
a "confident public speaker", then it is absolutely crucial that you
know what confidence really is before you resume your quest for
confidence.
Lots of people tell me that they would like to be "a
more confident speaker", or that they would like to be able to "speak
with more confidence".
The usage of these terms seems to imply
that confidence is something you get more of. It implies that currently
you have a certain amount of it in public speaking and you can go and
get more, as if you can just grab a chunk of it and insert it into your
public speaking barrel of skills.
I've found that thinking about
confidence in this way ends up making it more difficult to become more
confident! If you think that it as something you can "attain", you will
probably never attain it.
I used to think that confidence in
public speaking was something that I could accumulate. I would
"practice" confidence, like it was some sort of skill.When I would think
of it in this old way I would try to "accumulate" it by trying to act
or appear confident to my audience, and thought that as I spent more
time appearing confident, true confidence would become natural.
What Does Confidence Look Like?
You've
seen what a confident public speaker looks like - shoulders back, chest
out, neck tall, eye contact strong and unwavering, voice commanding and
inspiring, body language smooth and free, positive emotions emanating
from within, proud stride... and many more that you are already thinking
of.
These are behaviours and are the external manifestations of
the internal state of confidence. Do you think that if you speak in
front of an audience that usually makes you feel uncomfortable, and try
to perform the behaviours of confidence you will feel "confident"? You
will not. And what is worse is - you will not even be able to act in
this way in the first place. Your body will simply refuse to carry out
the behaviours associated with confidence because you are not truly in a
state of confidence.
Confidence is an INTERNAL state. The
behaviours that we associate in public speaking with confidence are
external manifestations of confidence. The body AUTOMATICALLY acts in a
confident way when the internal state is confidence.
The way to
achieve a state of confidence is not to attain an ability to display the
external manifestations of confidence - this strategy is a dead end. If
you want to project confidence to your audience, you must access the
internal state of confidence. Now the game has changed! How do you
access the internal state of confidence on the stage? I will tell you!
First, I want to tell you what confidence "is".
What Is the Internal State Called "Confidence"?
My
favourite teacher, Eben Pagan, has suggested a way of looking at
confidence, which you may find to be helpful. Here is the thing - there
is no such thing as confidence!
Do you know the what a "privative"
is? A privative is an absence of something. Like "cold" - this is a
state involving a relative absence of heat. Or dark - a state involving a
relative absence of light.
Scientists once tried to make a "cold
magnifier". You know how you can use a magnifying glass to focus the
suns energy at a single point? Well the scientists tried to make the
equivalent for cold, using ice cubes. But you can not "aim" cold at
something, because cold is just an absence of heat.
The only way
to make something cold is to take heat out of it. If confidence is like
this, then the only way to make yourself confident is to take something
out of you. What could this be?
Eben Pagan suggested that the
state of confidence is an absence of insecurities, fear, limiting
beliefs, self-doubt etc. Think of the last time you were public speaking
and felt extremely confidence - I will wager that you felt no fear, no
insecurities, no limiting beliefs and no self-doubt. Correct?
How to Experience Confidence When Speaking More Often
Becoming
a "confident" speaker is therefore a process of eliminating these
negative anti-confidence factors. When you eliminate your insecurities,
your fears, your limiting beliefs and your self-doubt, 100%, you will be
"confident" all the time. I do not know of anyone who is confident all
the time, but rest assured that as you begin to eliminate your
anti-confidence mechanisms, you will experience confidence while
speaking more and more.
Definitively I can say that as you
eliminate/remove the blocks like insecurities etc, you will experience
the state of confidence on the stage more frequently.
How much
more simplistic does this make the problem of becoming a confident
public speaker? From this new perspective, you have quantifiable tasks
to complete. If you become aware of a specific insecurity, then you know
how to become more confident - eliminate the insecurity. This article
is not about eliminating insecurities etc - find these on my site linked
to in the resource box.
I advise that you take this notion of
confidence not just into your public speaking efforts, but into all
areas of your life, because it will provide you with specific actions
that you can take to become more confident in any area.
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