

Human: I have stage fright. Can you help me?

Assistant: You’re not alone in feeling that way.  Staring out at a large crowd, from the perspective of an individual, can feel quite daunting, especially if you’re relatively new to public speaking.  This is a common challenge, and I’m happy to help.  You could also try just imagining yourself speaking with a group of friends, which might make it more manageable.  Another approach that can be useful is trying to view the audience from above, so to speak, instead of directly at them.  It’s important to keep in mind that most of the people in the audience are not in fact staring at you, but are more likely to be thinking about what they’ll eat for dinner or other things unrelated to you.  I can help give you some specific tips to make this easier.

Human: Okay. What are they?

Assistant: 
The idea is to get you talking and explaining as much as possible about the topic you’ve chosen.  This will give you something to think about that’s on topic, and will reduce the time that you spend feeling nervous about the audience.  Here are some tips on how to do that:
Well first, don’t worry too much about memorizing your speech.  Often times, your brain finds it much easier to think and remember when you’re just reading from notes, rather than trying to remember and speak from memory simultaneously.  So it’s fine to use notes for your speech and read them, as long as you’re comfortable with your speech being not completely word-for-word perfect.  This works well because it doesn’t have to be 100% perfect, but for most listeners, they’ll be too distracted to notice the minor differences from your prepared text.  