Destroying Your Social Anxiety - The Principles To Public Oration

Many of us, in fact perhaps all humans have a degree of social anxiety. Public speaking is commonly cited as one of the top fears of humans. As per my qualifications on why I can teach you public speaking, I have given speeches ranging from 1 on 1 to thousands of people using a teleprompter. So let's begin.

What Is Public Speaking?

Whoever you are, you will speak and talk with other people. Public speaking does not necessarily have to include you standing in front of an audience. It can be as simple as talking with your family, friends and your lovers.

The essence of public speaking is the communication of ideas. It is to introduce thoughts to your audience so that they feel a specific emotion either through the thought itself, or through the law of state transference.

Do not underestimate the power of public speaking. Beautiful oration might be one of the most highly valuable assets you can have in a digitalized economy. If you might question how valuable this skill may be, just ask how much money sales people make.

Good public speaking can help you open doors that might not be otherwise available, it can help you gather support and start a movement. It can help you get a raise. It can help you attract women. It can help you be an effective leader and communicator. Dreams cannot come true without the skill of communicating ideas.

Keep It Simple

During oration, our goal is not to teach but to inspire, motivate or induce positive emotions to our listeners. This means that we cannot introduce many complicated ideas into the conversation all at once. Everything must be kept simple, easy to digest and understand.

It is actually difficult to keep it simple. The default outcome without any intervention is that most humans would tend to overcomplicate things and make it more complex. It takes time, effort and money to make things simple.

This goes similar to your speech. If you manage to focus your idea into one singular focus point, you'll be able to induce that emotion 100 times more than if you were to be scatterbrained. If you cannot communicate your idea in less than 100 characters, you need to spend more time making it simple!

A good example of simplicity during conversation is those catchy phrases. Catchy phrases communicate a simple idea and therefore, amplify the emotion. You will know when your speech is simple when people remember what you say a month before.

Public Speaking Will Induce Anxiety

Any speaking where you cannot accurately guess how the "other side" will respond to you will induce some degree of anxiety. This is a protective mechanism from evolution that discouraged humans from dealing with other unfamiliar things, which might be dangerous.

You can see how the lack of public speaking skills hold people back everywhere. Perhaps they would like to start a social media channel, but constantly afraid of how people might judge them (ahem). Or they might be afraid to create opportunities for themselves through cold approach/calling/email etc.

Anytime you "stick your head out" it will cause some anxiety. But I assure you that the old consequences of evolution are gone. You will not see the Grim Reaper if you get rejected. Perhaps a little bit of embarrassment on your end, but nothing consequential long-term.

Eitherway, one person has 24 hours in their lives. When you speak to them, you perhaps take that little sliver of their time everyday. Even if you embarrass yourself, they might laugh and judge you for that 10 seconds, and forget about you just as quickly after. So don't sweat it.

Anxiety is good. Lean into it and train your muscle to slowly develop yourself into a great public speaker. You will get burned here and there for every botched speech, but over time, you'll suck less and less like any other skill.

The Anatomy Of Great Speech

First, try to keep your speeches below 30 minutes. Any interviews, speeches, corporate meetings or whatever should be below 30 minutes. Anything longer than 30 minutes and you will lose the attention of the audience.

Second, include a Q and A aspect to your public speeches. Perhaps get your point across in the first 15 minutes and then take answers from the audience. This way you always ensure that you provide an opportunity for people who showed up to extract some sort of value for their time.

Third, remove all filler words in your speech. If you don't know what to say, just shut up, think and look at the audience. Do not allow the audience to judge you, instead, you are the one judging your audience. Scan around the room and talk between a few of them.

Fourth, do not use ambiguous language that might mean different things. "Quite good" is a good example of this. In North America, "quite good" means it was done very well. In Europe, it means not too well. In Asia, it is interpreted as passive-aggressive language of shitty work while trying to be polite.

Fifth, engage and listen to your audience. Your audience contains very valuable information that you'd always want to know, wherever you are. They always know something you dont. So be curious and make them the star of the show. Listen more than you speak.

How To Listen Attentively

Listening does not mean hearing. Hearing means that you have heard them without understanding a single word. Listening means accurately understanding what they want to tell you. If you suck at listening, try to notice your habit of talking over others instead of shutting up and listening. Reverse that habit.

More often than not, when a person feels heard, they will shut up and be more receptive to what you have to say after the fact. It is human nature to prefer leading with the ideas, thoughts and beliefs they have in their mind. Let them dump it all out first through the art of listening, and then, go second.

Do not be mistaken for those introverts and socially anxious people. They too like to lead with their ideas, thoughts and beliefs first. They are just too held back by their emotions to do so. So with them, make sure you make the extra effort so that they feel appreciated and heard in your presence.

There is only two sets to good listening. First is that you give them your full and undivided attention when they are speaking. Do not be distracted or attempt to multitask when you are attempting to listen to someone.

Next is to understand their perspective and understand them fully. Often times than not, our self biases and beliefs get in the way here. To understand someone we have to put down our ego and let them go first, before we interject ourselves.

To "understand" someone does not mean that you will need to agree with him, take his viewpoints as reality or any of that. We are just simply, understanding their viewpoint, making them feel heard and understood and then when they are done, introduce our perspective.

This only works if the audience is willing to listen to your viewpoints as well. Most people lack the adequate listening skills to engage in productive conversation, and with these people, just try to cut the conversation short with them and move on with your life.

Make It About The Other Person

Pause for a moment and think about how social anxiety comes about. Right. It's when you put the focus on yourself too much in an unreasonable manner. To stop the feelings of social anxiety, make it about the other person. Mentally focus on the other rather than thinking of yourself.

You might think, "But it's because I think and care about others so much that it is causing me social anxiety." This is not true. You only care about others only to the extent to how they relate to you. Approval might erase social anxiety on the surface, but not at the root causes.

This is why you should focus on two words. "Thank you" and "Please." These two polite words will always be met with good reception, and can never be used too much. When we use the words "Thank you" and "Please" we make it about the other person, rather than ourselves.

Also focus on praising others. If you have no praise, then say nothing at all. Remember that criticism, blame and hatred only reflects you and not the other person. A person who is ahead in life, will never criticize nor discourage those that are behind him. By criticizing and releasing negative energy, you are subconsciously reinforcing that you are a victim in life.

Glory Hounds

There are pretty dense and stupid people in this world, who cares more about being right to reinforce their worldview rather than to learn. The reason why we have to discuss this is because we need to quickly identify who these people are before they destroy all communication channels we have with other sane people in the same space.

For example, one of these glory hounds might force you to enter into a debate or argument in front of everyone, making you look like a stupid fool. This causes breakdowns in communication, loss in trust with your public perception and branding with your other well-intentioned counterparts. One bad apple spoils the fun for everyone.

Here is all the ways we can spot a glory hound:

1. They do not listen, they only just heard you
2. They do not appear to have an interest in your responce
3. They seem ideologically motivated in some way or form
4. They attempt to debate, rather than being curious
5. They cause polarization and simplification as discourse tactics
6. They cannot explain what you mean in an accurate manner
7. They are intellectually dishonest
8. They just straight up criticize you, without any logic behind it

To those that you can ignore, just ignore them. If you are forced to engage with other people around, we want to answer the question not to that person, but answer it for those that are listening. If you are forced to engage with a glory hound 1 on 1, just say something polite and stop talking with this person.

Ignoring them is one thing, removing them is another. Glory hounds suck morale and positive energy from the environment. When you can remove them, do so as quickly as possible. If pestering you online, you can quickly remove them by clicking the "block" button.

If you are quick on your feet, you might realize that your social anxiety is actually a protection againts glory hounds. To break bad news, glory hounds are everywhere, you just simply can't avoid them! So perhaps that's another good reason for you to be less socially anxious. Why do you care for the opinions of glory hounds?

Deterministic Socialization

Often, anxiety is caused by outcomes that are deemed to be of free will, where in some shape of fashion we can influence the outcome we desire. That is not how I like to think of socialization. I believe socialization is a deterministic process.

Whoever that might be attracted to us, or repelled by us (to become a glory hounds) are reflections of what others see in us, and what we see in them. The "inside" of your personality is the component made of free will, but the outcomes it provides (who likes you or not) are deterministic.

When you believe that rejection is deterministic, then you won't break a sweat because you're merely only looking for the right audience where your ideas can make a big impact upon. Do not take rejection personally, as it was already decided long ago before you even got rejected.

And because you understand socialization to be deterministic, you better make sure that your authenticity is attracting the right people into your life. Always remember that socialization is merely a mirror unto oneself.

Conclusion

We have expanded the meaning of "public speaking" to include a wider definition. We have addressed that communicating great ideas requires it to be simple. We also discussed the best practices of oration and the skill of listening. We also discussed how to deal with glory hounds and the reasoning behind why they exist.

Hopefully you'll be able to connect the dots through some practice and realize this amazing skill into your life. Please check out my other posts and practice everything holistically. Send me an email if you want a specific topic written. You can see "coaching" to see if I have room to onboard new students.

Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling.