Too nervous to give good presentations

[Blake]

jEs imAgiNE tEh auDieNcE neKKed

[Thread]

jEs imAgiNE tEh auDieNcE neKKed

Blake, speaking before Boy's Town.

[pgardn]

this isnt that uncommon, and theres no one bandaid.

- usually gets better with practice or repe ion. its very normal to have nerves the first few times you do public speaking type stuff. i remember sweating bullets in my first court appearance even though nothing consequential was happening and it was basically just the judge assigning a trial date.

- it also helps to be very prepared. know the subject matter inside and out, even more so than what your presentation actually covers. you want to be comfortable with the subject matter and not just memorizing a canned speech word for word. you never want to be reading a script. at best you have bullet points to remind you of the topics and keep you in sequence, but you should have enough mastery over the material that you can basically just be riffing and get across what you want. the more confident you are in your competence of the subject matter, the easier it becomes to speak about it, since you are speaking from knowledge and not just memorization.

- its kinda useless to tell somebody to "be confident" because its not as easy as just saying it and then doing it. but try to remember that you are definitely scrutinizing yourself waaaay more than the audience, including stuff like "am i breating a little loud" or "my hand placement kind of feels awkward, i hope it looks normal." nobody is thinking of that .

- practice is important because you want to knock off any filler words such as "umm, like" as much as you can. and for me, that takes practice. i have a knack of always trying to fill space. i always get nervous when i pause because of concern if comes off as an awkward silence. that also leads to me talking to fast. i have to regularly train and coach myself to slow down and be ok with taking a deep breath and pause. pausing for 5-10 seconds between points is totally fine, and it might seem like an awkward eternity from your position, but for the audience it could actually be a nice little break to allow them to fully digest what they heard in your previous point

Bullet point 2 solves the others eventually.
You know your stuff well and actually relish in discussing it, you will even enjoy people thinking critically enough to bring up counter points to your ideas. They may even lead you into your next piece of speaking and you can thank them for their attention and foresight.

[FrostKing]

Social speeches a common trick is begin with an ice breaker. Quick joke or comment off script bout right now, here and this. Then proceed into the story telling.

Speeches are similiar to cold approaching a woman.