FAKE IT UNTIL YOU MAKE IT

A large part of your speech presentation does not depend on your actual speaking ability.

What you say and how you say it, is greatly enhanced by your physical appearance.
Do you look Confident? Trustworthy? Authoritative? Professional?
If you do, then half the battle is won, If you don’t, your speaking task is made so much harder. I get nervous before every presentation I have to make – no matter how many times I’ve done it before. The thing is I don’t let anyone see.

The last time I showed nervousness during a presentation was when I completely lost it during an election speech while running for office in Key Club. Even now I get embarrassed just thinking about it. I lost that election, but won an important lesson. I learned how to FAKE IT. And it worked. BIG TIME. Now when I’m up on stage in front of thousands of people, I’m calm, cool and collected – or at least it darn well looks that way. This air of calm and confidence helps me centre myself and focus the energy from the nervousness into my presentation. Pretty soon, all nervousness is gone.

Even if you are nervous and unsure during a presentation, there should be nothing that gives this away to the audience. So go on out there and pretend to be the most confident speaker ever. Hide all evidence of your nervousness, and guess what. If you pretend often enough – pretty soon it’s not pretending anymore. After a while that mask of confidence becomes your real demeanour – and you probably won’t even realize when the change happened.