How To Be More Confident When Speaking To Others In Work And Life
This new article will show you everything you need to know about how to be more confident when speaking.
Lack of self-confidence can stop you from sharing your talents with others. Like you, I had experiences when my personal insecurities made it impossible for me to perform at the top. After a bad performance, I’d shake my head wondering why I could not perform in front of other people – when that was what really mattered. Low self-esteem is a cruel and unfortunate condition for many talented people.
If you are like most people, you have most likely decided many times in the past to develop self-confidence. Unfortunately, you may not know where to start. I’m going to share with you a secret I’ve discovered that has helped me become more confident and successful.
In this article, you will discover three easy-to-understand techniques that will help you develop the confidence to succeed at speaking engagements. These steps may seem strange to you at first, but give yourself an opportunity to succeed by using each technique to its fullest. Once you have applied these three techniques, you’ll be well on your way to developing the self-confidence you need to succeed.
How to Be More Confident When Talking:
Feel confident when speaking
In this first technique, we’re going to reprogram your mind so you feel different when you speak in the future. It is very easy to do and will give immediate results. After applying these techniques, you’ll find that you feel confident just by thinking about what you are talking about.
Just follow some easy steps:
1. Think of a time when you felt very confident.
It could be a time when you did something you were really good at, a time when things were going well for you, or possibly a time when other people reacted to you in a way that made you feel confident. It does not matter what you were doing, where you were, or when this event occurred. Make sure you have a clear idea of what specific experiences you feel confident about.
2. Now close your eyes and visualize this confident experience as clearly as possible.
What does it look like in your mind? When you visualize this event, does the experience seem very near you, or is it a small image in the distance? Is it in color, or in shades of gray? Is there a sound related to belief? Smell? Texture? Another feeling? Pay attention to every detail. The goal here is to know where and how your mind stores memories of these confident experiences.
3. Now imagine yourself talking.
Take this image and make it look like your confident experience by moving it to the place where you see your confident experience, making it the same size and color as your confident experience, and changing everything related, the sounds, sights, and textures of the experience to seem like your confident experience. Visualize this experience of “talking” as vividly as possible in this new way. The goal here is to place the image of yourself speaking in the same part of your mind where you store the image of your confident experience.
4. Now stop visualizing.
Think about when you spoke. Do you feel differently about it than you did before this exercise? If you are like most people, you will feel more confident now.
Better yet, the next time you speak, you’ll naturally feel more confident due to this practice.
Repeat this exercise regularly – preferably every night as you fall asleep for the next few weeks – to maintain confidence as you speak.
Feel confident on demand
There are other ways to create confidence when speaking. Wouldn’t it be great if you could immediately make yourself feel confident anytime you need it, wherever you are or what you are doing? You can.
In this technique, we’ll create an emergency button that you can press to create self-confidence. Here are the steps:
1. Choose a method of discreetly touching a part of your body.
For example, you can squeeze your left pinky knuckle, touch your index finger to your elbow, or touch the spot behind your ear. This touch should mean nothing to you right now, because we’re about to give it a whole new meaning. You will use this touch to spark confidence in the future.
2. Again, imagine a time in your life when you felt confident
It can be the same experience you used in technique I above, or a utterly different experience. Immerse yourself in memory. Watch it in your mind as if it were a movie, and pay attention to how you feel. Make movies as big, bright, and fascinating as possible. Repeat the process until you can really feel the confidence you felt during the experience. This time the goal is to truly feel that confidence now, as if you were reliving the experience of confidence you have chosen.
3. During your visualization, when you’re at your peak of confidence, do your triggering touch (from step 1 above).
This will associate your triggers with self-confidence. It works because your mind creates a connection between the emotion and the concurrent sensory input.
4. Repeat the first three steps above regularly until you develop a really strong connection between your triggers and self-confidence.
The first time you use a trigger when you’re feeling confident, you’ll create a weak connection between the trigger and the emotion of confidence. The second time, it is going to be a little stronger, the third time even stronger, and so on. You want the connection to be really strong.
5. Going forward, as you speak, use these new triggers to create confidence at will.
When you touch yourself in the way you have chosen as a trigger, your mind will immediately jump to the associated confidence. This will offer you that extra confidence when you need it in a conversation.
Interestingly, your mind is not concerned with the direction of cause and effect. Even if you create a confidence trigger by first creating the emotion of confidence and then using the trigger, your mind will let the association work the other way – use the trigger, and your mind will create confidence. If there are other emotions (besides confidence) that will help you with your speech, you can even create separate triggers for those emotions.
Build confidence by developing skills
This third technique aims to develop confidence in a more traditional way, by helping you overcome weaknesses that make you feel insecure when you speak.
Start by listing the skills that will make you feel more confident when you speak. Rank them according to importance, and identify the one that’s most significant to your level of confidence. If you need help choosing one, simply fill in the missing words in the sentence: “I feel insecure when I speak because I don’t __________ well enough.”
Next, you’ll develop the missing skills. Make a selected plan to practice this skill regularly. You might, for example, create a written exercise schedule. Or you can schedule a training session in the planning program.
The key going forward is to make your training sessions as significant as possible. Effective practice has the following qualities:
A. This practice is designed to increase performance.
This means you practice what you set out to do. Make your practice sessions as close as possible to the real experiences you’ll encounter while speaking.
B. Exercise should be easy to repeat.
Try to design a form of exercise that does not require the involvement of another person. Ideally, you want to be capable to practice on your own, at home, anytime you have some free time. This will make it easier for you to practice often.
C. You need constant feedback on your practice sessions.
Develop your own scoring system to evaluate your practice performance, or ask a friend to observe your practice session if possible. Keep records of your performance over time.
D. The practice must be demanding.
Find ways to make it harder and more challenging than your real life performance will be.
By following these steps, you’ll build important skills that will naturally help you feel more confident when you speak. Once you have mastered this skill, you can consider practicing other skills.
Conclusion
Each of these three techniques can be improved through usage. When you make them a part of your life, you’ll find that it becomes easier and easier to be confident when you talk.
The proven fact that you are reading this article is enough proof that you actually want to feel more confident. You have recognized the destructive influence of insecurity on your life. Now use these techniques to build real self-confidence, and begin living the life you deserve.
I want to thank you for taking the time to read my article on how to be more confident when speaking. I actually hope that its content has been of good help to you.
