Friday, August 04, 2006
Preparation Checklist
• Anticipate the worst situations and decide what you will do when they happen.
• Anticipate questions and practice aloud the answers you may give.
• Anticipate difficult people, even asking friends to pretend to be them, and try various ways of dealing with them during rehearsal.
• Rehearse. The biggest mistake people make is to say the speech aloud the first time to the important people. Make your first, rough rehearsal, by yourself!
• Use your final set of brief notes to rehearse.
• Write down every bad thing that could happen. You will probably get good ideas when you wake in the middle of the night worrying. Put them in a list. Next to each one, say what you will do if that happens. You will be much less fearful
• Plan for the worst, hope for the best
• Anticipate the worst situations and decide what you will do when they happen.
• Anticipate questions and practice aloud the answers you may give.
• Anticipate difficult people, even asking friends to pretend to be them, and try various ways of dealing with them during rehearsal.
• Rehearse. The biggest mistake people make is to say the speech aloud the first time to the important people. Make your first, rough rehearsal, by yourself!
• Use your final set of brief notes to rehearse.
• Write down every bad thing that could happen. You will probably get good ideas when you wake in the middle of the night worrying. Put them in a list. Next to each one, say what you will do if that happens. You will be much less fearful
• Plan for the worst, hope for the best
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Other ways to remain anxiety free:
• If others ask you to speak up, speak louder than you think you should. It may feel to you as if you are yelling; if colleagues tell you that your volume is good, trust their judgment, not your own.
• State your most important numbers and phrases even louder than your new business-loud volume to make them noticeable.
• Standing: Anxious people rock back and forth or pace. Stand in one place. Occasionally move a few steps but then stand in one place.
• Anxious people fidget with their hands; they touch their faces, scratch, put hands in and out of pockets or lock their hands and don’t move them at all. To appear at ease, use you hands to speak as you’ve observed yourself when you are casually speaking to a friend. You will look relaxed and natural.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. Throw off the lines and sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the winds in your sails. "
~ American Writer, Mark Twain
• If others ask you to speak up, speak louder than you think you should. It may feel to you as if you are yelling; if colleagues tell you that your volume is good, trust their judgment, not your own.
• State your most important numbers and phrases even louder than your new business-loud volume to make them noticeable.
• Standing: Anxious people rock back and forth or pace. Stand in one place. Occasionally move a few steps but then stand in one place.
• Anxious people fidget with their hands; they touch their faces, scratch, put hands in and out of pockets or lock their hands and don’t move them at all. To appear at ease, use you hands to speak as you’ve observed yourself when you are casually speaking to a friend. You will look relaxed and natural.
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. Throw off the lines and sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the winds in your sails. "
~ American Writer, Mark Twain
