Imagine being in a room filled with faces you are encountering for the first time in your life. You are moving around carrying an ID card, conquering your rushed thoughts about what's going on around you. Slowly, you realize it's a story-telling event and you notice that after every five minutes someone is called up and each set of eyes and ears remain focused on that person for the next five minutes. You listen carefully to every one of them, and most of them are good enough to tug you in their fictional world. You are still unaware of the algorithm used by them to select the next individual, but you don't care much about it, after all, your mind is still deceived by someone's virtual world. Suddenly, you hear someone calling your name, you ignore it for the first time, but, they call it again, this time along with a number which matches to the one written on your ID card. You realize it's your turn to tell-a-tale. Your heart starts pounding and eventually you wake up from this nightmare.
I'm sure that only a handful of you can sleep peacefully with such dreams. We all can agree that public speaking is no less than a nightmare for most of us. Questions like, ‘Will they really listen to me? Am I good enough to catch their attention? What if I choke in-between? What if they all just walk away, because I am not worthy of their time? What if I stutter?’, have crossed our minds at some point of time, be it a tell-a-tale competition or a debate event or when we have to deliver a speech. Questions like these stop us from leaving our comfort zone and make us realize that public speaking is no child's play. But we forget that public speaking is an art, and even Picasso was a child once.
To succeed in life you need to cultivate a lot of good habits and omit the bad ones and public speaking can help you do this in a lot of ways. Mastering the art of public speaking is like crossing a sea with all kinds of high and low tides. The journey itself is very difficult, but once you reach the destination, every single thing feels worth the pain you suffered. Let's have a look at the most important skills public speaking can teach you.
The Art of Persuasion:
Most of the times when you are facing a large audience, delivering a speech or sharing your idea, your main motive is to put forward your beliefs in such a way that you can haul the audience in your panorama so that they believe in whatever you are saying. Persuading someone is not an easy task, that's why the job of a salesperson is such a difficult task. You can sharpen this skill via public speaking.
Conveying Your Thoughts Properly:
You can be a highly intelligent introvert who is able to step in any field and master it rapidly, but all this is of no use if you can't tell the other person what's on your mind. You may know every minute detail of a task at hand, but if you can't explain it to anyone then it's of no use. Often times, a similar situation is faced by students sitting in interviews for the first time, there's a lot going in their mind, but they can't convey their thoughts properly and as a result, they get rejected. Practising public speaking on a regular basis can help you convey your thoughts properly.
Leadership:
On moving down the dusty road to master the Art of Public Speaking, you absorb traits which are not easy to possess, like confidence. Once you start facing a crowd on your own, your confidence skyrockets which can help you become a leader one day. Further, you face a wide variety of audiences out of which only a handful are in your favour but, you have to keep everyone satisfied. After a few talks, you are moulded to weave your words in such a way that you fish everyone by understanding every individual's perspective rather than manipulating each one of them.
Expanding Your Network:
Once you start public speaking on a regular basis, you'll meet a lot of new people. People who share ideas and beliefs, the same as yours, people from all fields, people from every age group. Public speaking provides you with one of the best opportunities to expand your professional network, as once you speak at a platform regularly, people will look up to you as a public figure, who has a vast knowledge in that field and it may even lead to some direct job opportunities.
- Sachin Kumar
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Want to get published on EMN and join the community? Here is an opportunity to join the Board of Young Leaders Program by Eat My News. Click here to know more: bit.ly/boardofyoungleaders
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