If you want to significantly boost your public speaking confidence then there is almost no better way than to listen to yourself speak.
This is lesson number one of private public speaking power where I teach you how you can practice and improve your public speaking skills from the privacy of your own home.
I’m really excited about this course. I’m going to cover 21 different activities that you can do from the privacy of your own home where you can improve your public speaking skills, grow your confidence and just become a more effective public speaker.
Activity number one is what I’m covering today and if you want to get access to all the activities, just simply go to publicspeakingpower.com/private.
Okay, so the first activity is actually probably one of the hardest activities I’ve got in my list of 21 activities. However, I believe it’s one of the most effective things that you can do to really build your confidence when it comes to public speaking.
So many people are afraid of public speaking.
Public speaking is still stated as the number one fear above all else even death so it’s something that I take very seriously and something that I want to help people overcome.
You may notice that if you ever listen to yourself you sound silly. It is so awkward to listen to yourself, right? It just doesn’t sound right.
There is something wrong with your voice when you hear it back and that’s because when we speak and when we hear our own voice through our ears, but we also hear the vibrations through the bones in our jaw which goes through our ears. So it gives our voice a different sound to ourselves than what it sounds like to other people.
Record Yourself and Listen To Yourself Speak
Because of this different and the awkwardness we feel when listening to ourselves I have decided to make activity number one recording yourself and to listening to yourself speaking.
Now, you don’t need to record a speech that you’re giving and you don’t need it to be fluent. You don’t even need it to be accurate. The idea of this activity is to get used to the sound of your own voice and confident at the sound of your own voice.
For most people I would encourage you, don’t worry about recording a speech that you created yourself. A much better idea is to record yourself reading a page (or a few pages) of a book. Simply read the page and record yourself.
How To Record Your Own Voice (Hint: It’s Easy)
Now, it’s quite easy to record yourself.
Most of us have smart phones these days and most smart phones have recording capabilities. I’ve got an Iphone5 which has really great quality recording. I’ve also got a Mac Book and so most PC’s and Mac’s also have audio capabilities as well. And worst case scenario, you can buy a usb microphone off EBay or off Amazon.com for $10 or even less these days.
Get a way to record yourself and if you’re using a smart phone then there’s a lot of different apps out there that you can you, but basically what you want to do is you want to read the book, tell the story, give your speech if you want, whatever it is that you need to do.
Stick to 5-10 minutes
Go into a private room so there’s no one around, no one can hear you and you want to hit record and you want to record yourself and you want it to be at least five minutes long. Anything shorter than that and it’s not really long enough. You can go obviously as long as you want I think around five to ten minutes is ideal.
In 5-10 minutes you can sit down and you can listen to yourself and it’s not going to take up your entire day. If you’re recording a 60 minutes seminar or speech and you want to sit down and listen to yourself speak, well you have to have an hour of your day. A hour of spare time is hard to come by but five to ten minutes is very easy to find.
It’s Not How To Speak, It’s Getting Used To Your Voice That Matters
So what we’re going to do is record ourselves. It’s important to note that it’s not what you say, it’s not how you say it, it’s the fact that we’re just getting used to how our voice sounds to other people.
You then want to get some headphones, put it in your Iphone, put it in your computer, whatever it is and start listening to yourself back and you want to do it once, you want to do it twice, you want to do it three times.
You want to keep doing it until you get used to a sound of your own voice because what will happen is the first time you listen to it, you will hate it. It will be horrible.
You listen to yourself and you think, “Oh, my gosh! I can’t believe I sound like that. That is not me.” You get this feeling of dread and awkwardness inside of you, but stick through it.
You’ve got your headphones, no one else is listening. You’re not sharing this with anyone, listen to yourself and then go through it again and then go through it again and then go through it again and keep going through it until that sense of awkwardness, that sense of the fact that you hate the sound of your own voice disappears.
Now, this is hard to do. It’s a big stretch for a lot of us, but remember we are doing this in private. We are not showing anyone this recording. We’re not releasing it online. We’re just doing it for our own benefit and what will happen is that as that awkwardness goes away, as that frustration goes away, as that weird sense inside of you, “Oh, I hate this!” goes away.
Your confidence will then dramatically grow in terms of your public speaking skills. It’s not so much how you talk that gives you confidence, but it’s how you think about yourself in the way you talk that will give you more confidence.
This Is One Of The Best Steps I Have Found To Overcoming The Fear of Public Speaking
Our distaste for our own voice is one of the biggest things I think we need to overcome when it comes to the fear of public speaking and when it comes to becoming better public speakers.
We need to be not be ashamed of our voice. We need to not be ashamed of the way we speak and we need to be extremely comfortable with the way that we speak. So that way we hear ourselves back. We think it sounds fine.
Once we think our voices sound normal and then once we get passed that awkward phase, we can then begin to analyze our speeches and we can then begin to say, “Okay, what can I do better? How can I improve?” Because you’re not so focus on the way your voice sounds that you can actually begin to look at your speaking more seriously.
So that is lesson number one of private public speaking power. I know this is a hard one and I know that I opened lesson number one with a hard activity.
If it’s too hard for you right now then go through to complete activity number two, but I really, really encourage you to give this a go because it will do wonders for your confidence in public speaking. I look forward to lesson number two where we going to be talking about writing our speeches.