During a presentation, the most daunting thing is not presentation, appearance or something superficial, but the confidence vested within a person, this issue can be countered in multiple ways.
Check your comfort with eye contact with the crowd
Some people feel much more comfortable making eye contact while speaking in a crowd, making them appear confident and collected during presentations. At the same time, some others find it easier to appear calm while not maintaining eye contact. This can be dealt with by shifting the focus of vision to the surroundings rather than the people.
Make a ritual
Usually, sports players do this to increase their confidence during a game too! You can start a small ritual like rubbing your forefinger’s knuckle with your thumb when feeling confident. This will trick your brain into thinking you’re performing well (Pavlov theory).
Practice your speech You can improve your confidence by repeatedly speaking/practicing your speech. This creates a reflex in your brain that causes you to execute the speech while using minimal amounts of brain power.
Pace around
Pacing around and/or fidgeting while giving a speech causes your mind to have a distraction while speaking. This causes your mind to drift from nervousness and makes you concentrate more on two things: causing there to be no place for a third though.
Take pauses and use expressive body language This may seem like a scam, but taking pauses during speech to collect yourself helps a lot while speaking in public as doing that helps you to collect yourself while being able to catch your breath. Expressive body language causes you to spend your nervous energy in a manner that will not mess up your speech.
( Sreya Amireddi. )
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