Communication Anxiety: Mind Exercises to Help You

What if you could relieve all of your communication anxiety and stand up in front of a group with confidence and no fear. Would you be a better speaker than you are today? Not likely. If you had no anxiety whatsoever it would mean that you simply did not care about how you were perceived or whether your message was communicated.

If you did not care, would you prepare? The adrenaline that you get from being a bit anxious helps you to perform. So, some anxiety is actually a good thing!

It is when communication anxiety cripples us that we need to find effective strategies to manage it. Even if your anxiety is not crippling, you too can benefit from employing these methods.

Here are Some mind suggestions...

• Know your weaknesses and strengths. Take the time to consider which parts of your delivery typically give you trouble - this is the first step in correcting them. Pinpoint the onset of your anxiety to manage it before it becomes an unmanageable problem.
• Choose a topic you are familiar with. In the workplace, this is easy as usually you are asked to give a presentation because you are the resident expert, so to speak. In the classroom, virtual or otherwise, we often pick topics that we are interested in but know not that much about. If you are familiar with the topic, your speech will flow much more smoothly because it is something that you have thought about and talked about before.
• Have appropriate notes. You need a method for using notes that works for you. If you are 6 feet tall with average vision, you will not likely be able to read notes at desk level printed in 12 point type. Having your speech written out word for word on 156 note cards may sound like a good back-up but what will happen when you drop those notes? How will you ever recover.
• Practice! Knowing your material is important to how your speech flows. Practice the introduction and the conclusion even more - they are the first and last thing your audience will hear, and remember.
• Visualize your success. Think of how you feel as a listener when you see a speaker flustered and stumbling over his/her words. Do you hope that the speaker will continue on that path or do you go as far as trying to put the words in to the speaker's mouth? You, of course, want the speaker to recover as you feel that person's pain. Remember, your audience feels your pain too - they are rooting for you to succeed.
• Learn from your experience. Since we are creatures of habit, we often make the same mistakes over and over. Taking the time to de-brief after a presentation will certainly help you to ensure that the next one goes better.
• Don't try to be perfect. No one is a perfect speaker! We are much harder on ourselves than others will be and when we are in the audience of the presentations of others, we often fail to see many of the flaws. Remember, if you do not see many of another speaker's flaws, they likely do not see many of yours either.

In Summary

Doing these mind suggestions are a great start to defeating high communication anxiety. Take some of these tips and in force them into your routine before talking in front of a crowd or group. If you need more advice and want to fight your anxiety Go Here for more information Right Now. You’ll make yourself and a lot of people proud.