Monday, November 10, 2008

Fear Buster - Stage Fright

This month, as always, is the IT Month for Sabah State. There will be numbers of IT seminar that are organized by the gov agency including UMS. Last week I received a buzz from my friend asking me to chair one of the seminar. Oh, no!
Public speaking is my forever nightmare. I don't know why. It's always ok if I were to stand infront of the students, as a teacher. To lecture an academic topics to the students..no problem! But when it comes to be an emcee, speaker for a talk, doing presentation to public or whatever related, thousands even millions of butterflies starts growing and flattering in my stomach. I used to be at a point where i’ve lost of words and i just don’t know how to continue my speech. This feeling is really terrifying. Do you have any suggestion on this? How do i make my thoughts flow?
Compering means :-"A person who acts as host at formal occations"
According to this guy, some symptoms like; tired of standing on stage, gripped by fear and paralysed by nervousness, are the signs that you have a stage fright.
He listed 10 tips to overcome the stage fright.
  • F - Focus on your most powerful Experience
  • E - Energize Yourself
  • A - Acknowledge Your Fears
  • R - Relax… BREATHE!
  • B - Believe in Your Value!
  • U - Understand the Audience
  • S - Smile! ..Yes.. I can do this..
  • T - Talk to Yourself ..I always do this, to make myself more comfortable..
  • E - Enjoy Yourself! ..Gulp, How?..
  • R - Rejoice!

Friends, anybody.. just wish me luck for tomorrow. I hope I won't pitam or paralyse. If somebody out there have any suggestion on the lines or script for a chairperson, you're most welcome to lend it for me.. pleeaaseee..

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How was it? By the time I write this I think the whole thing is over for you.

Stage fright is my curse too. When I was in form 1, I was chosen to be one of the emcees at one of my school's important event and at one point, I just froze and humiliated myself.

I avoided all sorts of stage commitments after that. But you know what they say about facing your demons... there are things that you can't avoid.

Confidence and comfortability are important. Plus it would help a great deal if you have a complete script of what you're going to say on stage. Practice the night before and all will be fine.

Hehe tapi saya pun pandai cakap ja... Of course, everytime I have to face such things... I would freak out big time!

Anonymous said...

How was it?

Did you start with a question?

That' one thing the World Champion of Public Speaking taught me.

Andrew

Misako said...

Hi bee, andrew..
Surprisingly, it turns out to be ok. Like bee suggested, confidence and feeling comfortable were important. Therefore, I tried to calm myself, telling to myself that everything will be ok, just imagine the audience were my students. And it works!

Night before, I googled "How to introduce speaker" and found various helpful links. I wrote my own script, practice and recite it over and over again.

After I gain my confidence, slowly I added some jokes that I had in my minds. Even I pinjam your Obama's joke, Bee.. and they like it! Thank you for sharing that info to me.

At the end, I think I enjoyed the whole process. Although, I really feel the nervousness rush to my body.

But if you ask me another time to do it again, I will try my best to avoid it.

If really I have to do it, I will try Andrew's idea.. start it with a question. Right, Andrew?