fake confidence

Some one at some point said these words, 'fake it, til you make it.' Okay, so that means that you sort of act like who or what you want to be. For example, if you want to be happy, you smile and perhaps just the act of smiling will make you feel better. It actually does work.  But does it work for confidence (or lack thereof) when you do public speaking? That is the question.

I'm attending another one of my evening classes on public speaking. It's my third one. And I'm finding myself getting more nervous rather than less. Not sure if that's normal, or not. But what I want to try tonight, is to fake confidence. This involves looking people in the eye when you talk, not twiddling or clicking (very annoying) pens while you're delivering your speech, and moving around in a casual sort of way, instead of holding tight to the 'box' - sorry the name escapes me at the moment.

Right, I am going to fake my confidence, by smiling into everyone's eyes and showing them I think they are important. I'm not even going to bring my pen up front, and I'm going to stroll around casually, pretending that speaking in front of peers who are ready and willing to evaluate my performance is something I'm comfortable with.

Right. Fake confidence. I'll try.  

I am truly excited about the topic tonight. It's show and tell and the prop I'm bringing is a piece of red granite - I consider it my talisman - straight from my grandfather's field out in Federofka. Maybe there's power in that granite.

public speaking

I'm taking a public speaking course - one night a week for the next six weeks. In the first class we got to laugh and cry with each other. Turns out the other eight or nine people are all self-conscious and nervous like me.

Different people from different backgrounds all have different reasons for improving their ability to present themselves in public. There's a teacher who wants to be able to speak more articulately in front of her peers at school meetings. There's a mom who's trying to lose her shyness after years of only speaking to kids. There's a salesman who wants to get a better job. There's a student who's practicing for job interviews. There's a woman who's more terrified of speaking in front of a group than of parachute jumping.  

Yeah, so we're all in this together ... learning to speak so that others want to listen.  Our homework for next week is to give a two-minute opinion piece.  In my opinion, public speaking ... just might be fun.