Ppresentation anxiety
Surveys for many years have consistently shown that up to two in every three people nominate the fear of public speaking as their top ranked fear - rating it ahead of the fear of injury, ahead of the fear of divorce, ahead of the fear of snakes, and as hard as it may be to believe, rating it ahead also of the fear of death.
In other words, anxiety about the prospect of delivering a presentation is not uncommon. In fact, some anxiety is almost inevitable if presentations are not something that you do regularly. It is gaining more experience with presentations that will help your confidence to grow .....and of course, our presentation training course offers plenty of guidance (forgive the plug!!)
But let's take a moment to reflect upon what are some of the fears that lay beneath our anxiety.
When asked what exactly was it about presentations and public speaking that made them nervous, here is what people identified as their more specific anxiety triggers - see which of them you can relate to yourself ....
i) fear that they will forget what they have to say
ii) fear that the audience will see they are nervous
iii) fear that they will be asked a question they cannot answer
iv) fear they may lose control of the audience
v) fear the audience will become bored
In our next article, Controlling Presentation Anxiety, we will explore some simple strategies for dealing with these anxieties.
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