How do you speak naturally while all those people are watching you?

This document covers hints and tips on public speaking and presentation skill, dealing with public speaking nerves and anxiety, public speaking skills and public speaking techniques, public speaking training.

Common Fears of Public Speaking

What happens when you have to speak in public?

Did you know that public speaking tops the list of phobias for most people? Not spiders or heights – public speaking – speech in public!

Well, if you didn’t know that, we bet your body does. It will do all kinds of unpleasant things to you when you have to stand up and face a sea of faces with the hope of getting your message across in a compelling and interesting way.

Your hands may sweat and your mouth goes dry. Your knees may shake and a quaver affects your voice. Your heart may race and those well known butterflies invade your stomach.

When all that happens most people don’t think of getting their message across in a compelling and interesting way; they just think of getting off the ’stage’ as quickly as possible!

Have we frightened you sufficiently yet?

It’s normal

We don’t really mean to frighten you, just remind you that your body reacts ‘in extremis’ when put under pressure, and for most people, public speaking is just about the worst pressure they can be put under.

It’s normal to be nervous and have a lot of anxiety when speaking in public. In a way, it’s less normal not to have nerves or anxiety; in fact, to feel you have a phobia about public speaking.

Why do we get Public Speaking anxiety?

Fight or flight

Our bodies are geared to fight or flight from ancient time – fight that mastodon or get the hell out of the way. We don’t have too many mastodons around these days, but the body still reacts as though we do. So, if we have to get up and speak in public, all that adrenalin and noradrenalin goes coursing through our bodies – way more than we need.

We can’t run away (well, we could, but we’d be out of job pretty quick if we did it too often), so our only option is to fight. But in terms of speaking in public, it can be hard to define just what we’re fighting.

Why does public speaking do this to us?

Good question. You’d think that for most people, being given the opportunity to impress their audience would be a fantastic one. There you are in front of a group of people, the spotlight is on you and for the length of time you’ve been give, the world is yours.

Or is it?

The very fact that the spotlight is you is enough to trigger every fear, anxiety and phobia you’ve ever had about public speaking.

Here’s why

You may be judged by all those people, and judged badly
You may feel like a fool
You might make mistakes and loose your way
You’ll be completely humiliated
You’ll never be as good as _________ (fill in the blank)
‘They’ won’t like you
‘They’ won’t ‘get’ what you’re trying to say

How to overcome fear of Public Speaking
What good are Nerves

Public speaking may not be comfortable, but take our word for it, nerves are good. Being ‘centre stage’ is not a good place to feel too comfortable.

Nerves will keep you awake and ensure you don’t get too complacent. Hard to feel complacent when your heart is beating so hard you’re sure everyone watching you can hear it.

If channelled well, nerves can make the difference between giving a humdrum presentation and giving one that keeps people listening.

Get your attention off yourself

It’s very tempting to keep focused on how you’re feeling, especially if you’re feeling really uncomfortable. You’ll start to notice every bead of sweat.

To make your nerves work for you, you need to focus on just about anything other than yourself. You can distract yourself by paying attention to the environment in which you’re speaking and seeing how you can make it work for you.

Once you’re actually in front of your audience, pay attention to them. If you can, notice how people are dressed, who’s wearing glasses, who has on bright colours. There will be dozens and dozens of things you can pay attention to help you trick your mind into not noticing what’s going on with you.

Anything will do and you will find that the less you concentrate on how you are feeling and the more you concentrate on other things, the more confident you will feel.

How to build confidence in Public Speaking

Your audience can be your friend

Unless you know you’re absolutely facing a hostile group of people, human nature is such that your audience wants you succeed. They’re on your side!

Therefore, rather than assuming they don’t like you, give them the benefit of the doubt that they do.

They aren’t an anonymous sea of faces, but real people. So to help you gain more confidence when speaking in public, think of ways to engage your audience. Remember, even if they aren’t speaking, you can still have a two-way conversation.

When you make an important point pay attention to the people who are nodding in agreement and the ones who are frowning in disagreement. As long as you are creating a reaction in your audience you are in charge.

Keep them awake

The one thing you don’t want is for them to fall asleep! But make no mistake public speaking arenas are designed to do just that: dim lights, cushy chairs, not having to open their mouths – a perfect invitation to catch up on those zzzzs.

Ways to keep them away include

Ask rhetorical questions
Maintain eye contact for a second or two with as many people as possible
Be provocative
Be challenging
Change the pace of your delivery
Change the volume of your voice

Public Speaking Training

Get a coach

Whatever the presentation public speaking is tough, so get help.

Since there are about a zillion companies out there all ready to offer you public speaking training and courses, here are some things to look for when deciding the training that’s right for you.

Focus on positives not negatives

Any training you do to become more effective at public speaking should always focus on the positive aspects of what you already do well.

Nothing can undermine confidence more than telling someone what they aren’t doing well.

You already do lots of things well good public speaking training should develop those instead of telling you what you shouldn’t do.

Turn your back on too many rules

If you find a public speaking course that looks as though it’s going to give you lots of dos and don’ts, walk away! Your brain is going to be so full of whatever it is you’re going to be talking about that to try to cram it full of a whole bunch of rules will just be counterproductive.

As far as we’re concerned, aside from physical violence or inappropriately taking off your clothes, there are no hard and fast rules about public speaking.

You are an individual not a clone

Most importantly, good public speaking training should treat you as a unique individual, with your own quirks and idiosyncrasies. You aren’t like anybody else and your training course should help you bring out your individuality, not try to turn you into someone you’re not.

Hints and Tips for Effective Public Speaking

Here are just a few hints, public speaking tips and techniques to help you develop your skills and become far more effective as a public speaker.

Mistakes

Mistakes are all right.

Recovering from mistakes makes you appear more human.
Good recovery puts your audience at ease – they identify with you more.

Humour

Tell jokes if you’re good at telling jokes.
If you aren’t good, best to leave the jokes behind.
There’s nothing worse than a punch line that has no punch.
Gentle humour is good in place of jokes.
Self-deprecation is good, but try not to lay it on too thick.

Tell stories

Stories make you a real person not just a deliverer of information.
Use personal experiences to bring your material to life.
No matter how dry your material is, you can always find a way to humanise it.

How to use the public speaking environment

Try not to get stuck in one place.
Use all the space that’s available to you.
Move around.
One way to do this is to leave your notes in one place and move to another.
If your space is confined (say a meeting room or even presenting at a table) use stronger body language to convey your message.

Technology

Speak to your audience not your slides.
Your slides are there to support you not the other way around.
Ideally, slides should be graphics and not words (people read faster than they hear and will be impatient for you to get to the next point).
If all the technology on offer fails, it’s still you they’ve come to hear.

You can learn to enjoy public speaking and become far more effective at standing in front of a group of people and delivering a potent message.

When it comes to improving your public speaking skills we have three words:

practise, practise, practise!

monday motivation

What do you think are some of the more common things that people look for when they consider starting their own home business? Due to the failing economy and all the people that are being layed off more people than ever are looking to the internet to start a home business. So what do you think are some of the more popular work from home ideas that people look to when trying to start up their own business from within the walls of their own home?

One work from home business idea that is usually at the top of people’s list is to get in on a franchise. Work from home business franchises are actually pretty popular and there are a lot of them that have been around for a while and have a pretty good reputation as home based franchises. For example you have Jani-Pro and Jani-King which if you can’t tell by their names are janitorial cleaning services that are run by individuals in their homes. These services have become quite successful cleaning office buildings, exercise gyms, schools, department stores and malls. Imagine all  the places just in your town that probably use one of these home business franchises to clean their location or another service that is similar.

Another popular thing that has really taken off for home based business franchise is pet care or pet grooming. We adore our pets so much so that they are usually treated as part of the family. Unfortunately for a lot of us though we find that we have little time to give our pets the proper care that we know they deserve. So in those difficult times when your days are running short on time and your pet needs some TLC who do people call? Pet sitters, dog walkers, poop scooper’s and mobile pet groomers these are all examples of home base business franchises that have vaulted to the top of popularity in just the last few years.

For those of you that are handy around the house either through your knowledge of plumbing, construction or painting skills a couple of popular services that are good start up home base business franchises are Mr. Handyman or Rooter-Man. Again these are services that appeal to people that have neither the time or energy to do these little things around the home.

I described just a few ideas all of which were easy to find online. A good site that most people who want to start their own work from home business is the site entrepreneur dot com. One of the best resources for work at home business ideas as well as a cool website to find out what work from home franchises are doing well and more importantly are legit. There are a lot more work at home business ideas listed at that site that I did not even touch on but think about all the people that really want to stay at home and really work from home?

That is where the online world comes in and all that it has to offer to people looking to work a home business. A couple of the more popular things that we tend to go for in the online world of work at home business is selling stuff on eBay, affiliate marketing or even blogging. These are all very popular in terms of people attempting to make a living off an online home based business. Probably your first question is how many of them are truly “successful” at working an online work at home business? This point is very debatable and depending on what you want to believe to you will get varying opinions on how successful a certain online work at home business can be. When you look at people that blog and say that they earn a living doing it all from the comfort of their own home. The odds are that they want to sell you something to be just as successful as they are writing blogs away from the comfort of their own homes. Most of the times those people are successful in their online home blogging because they are really good at selling products to you and people like you that promise to show you all you need to know about how they succeeded and how you can do it to.

Why does blogging for money from the comfort of your own home seem like such an appealing online home based business to so many people? I think because it comes down to cost and even though the majority of those home base franchise businesses that you just read about can be done from your house they still all cost a good amount of cash in start up cost. Where as a blog can be done by anyone from anywhere for free and it’s not to hard to try something for free.

A couple of ideas for those of you thinking about a new start in your life with your very own home base business. Beginning a work at home business from home is not something to be considered with out some careful planning because a work from home base business is something that appeals to almost everyone at some point in their lives.

What is smart goal setting? And what is a goal setting system? And can they help you to achieve your goals any faster? Join me as we take a look at how smart goal setting and goal setting systems can help you to reach your goals at lightening speed.

Points Covered In This Article:
* What Is Smart Goal Setting?
* What Is A Goal Setting System?
* Putting Smart Goal Setting To Work With A Goal Setting System

* What Is Smart Goal Setting?
If we think of a goal as a time line, we find that we can put an A point and a B point to the equation. We find that we are at A, and our goal is at B. Now in the science of goal setting and achievement, we can think about this statistically.

You can either don’t succeed or you do succeed. And out of the successes, we find that some of the success stories will achieve their goal sooner than another – even for similar goals, with similar circumstances.

We want to focus on those that achieve success quicker. And the reason is simple, it means smart goal setting. And this is what the smart part is – a way to work smarter not harder to get goals achieved in quicker time.

* What Is A Goal Setting System?
A goal setting system is a framework, which works with all your goals. You can apply it to create projects big or small.

A goal setting system can be your own system or someone else’s. And it should first be tried and tested, and then learned off by heart, so you can always use it.

* Putting Smart Goal Setting To Work With A Goal Setting System
Smart + a system to set goals = major success. The reason is simple, and I will go into the equation.

You see, when you get that smart system, you are ultimately moving forward. But, without a system, you can easily get stuck. Well, when the space shuttle is ‘go for launch’, it goes and goes. There is no stopping it, and no room for procrastination. Instead you are moving forward.

A goal setting system is there to constantly provide you with the framework to keep moving forward. A goal setting system is like the parts of a vehicle, the engine, and the wheels.

Your part is to act as the smart fuel. You take action, and the results work, because you always create goals when problems or obstacles present themselves, and you can move forward at lighting speeds!

Find out more about smart goal setting and the goal setting system I use, and get your free eBook worth $7, where I give you the 10 best goal setting ideas. Get your copy by visiting: www.howtogoalset.info

In the last few years, goal setting software is becoming more and more popular. Offering ease of use, goal setting software looks like it may transform the way goal setters set goals. But, how does goal setting software compare with setting goals on paper? As you read this article, you will find the benefits of both goal setting systems.

Paper based goal setting systems are used more often than not. There are benefits and negatives to using a paper based goal setting system. Some goal setters like to write goals down on paper, and it can seem like a great idea.

After all, goal setting on paper, allows you to easily refer back to your goal. This is important, because more often you see your goal, more often your focus will be on it.

However, this benefit can work against us. For example, you write your goal on paper. Now that is an extra piece of paper, which often will get into piles of other papers. Now the goal is hidden. It is time to bring it out, but where is it!

Goal setting software is a good alternative, and it allows you to have your goals all in one place. There are many different goal setting software available today. They basically all do the same thing, help you to set goals.

When you look for goal setting software, you will find a difference in focus with some of the goal setting software. Some may focus on a project management system, while others are dedicated to an alternative to ‘To Do’ lists. And yet others focus on actual goal setting which goal setters focus on.

Finding goal setting software to achieve this balance is difficult. Some focus on certain areas, and there is also the fact of trying to figure out which goal setting system is best for your needs. The good point is that many goal setting software companies will have trial versions, allowing you to test to see if the software meets your needs.

Many of these goal setting software packages allow you to print up some form of summary for your goal. This can be ideal, because goal setting often requires setting several goals – some big, some small, and some in between. And you may not want to have all your goals on paper, just the big ones.

One of the biggest problems you will find with goal setting software is that of focus. Having software is great, but it can become like a book in a library – hard to find. Self discipline then must come into focus, so you can enter the software, and keep looking at your goals and working forward on them.

Overall, we have many different ways of working. You may like working your goals on paper, it may seem more like you are setting the goal, whereas some may prefer a software based goal setting software. Either way, it can be hard getting used to a new goal setting system. Either way, you will have the tools for goal setting and goal accomplishment.

Discover more about goal setting software and the goal setting system I use, and get your free bonuses, visit the links now!

Dreams and Dream Interpretation

By Joseph Ho

Jan 23rd, 2009

What is a Dream?

Dream is defined as a sequence of images that passes through a sleeping person, much like a video show except that it also carries some personal emotions. Everyone have dreams but most people do not know that their dreams do have significant impact on their real life. Dream serves to warn, instruct, direct, and foretell future events in a person’s life.

Are dreams significant in a person’s life?

Dreams are the messages of the night. It is also called visions of darkness, because it is during deep sleep that our inner soul becomes sensitive to the spiritual realm. The messages in the dreamscape contain symbols which are specific to the dreamer and so a dream dictionary can not be accurately applied for any serious dream interpretation.

Dreams can truly benefit the recipient only when it is properly interpreted. Some dreams occur from having too much activity during the day and it only reflects our mood, this kind of dream does not carry any significant messages. There are however, certain dreams which bring us warning of future events in our life and these are prophetic dreams and we should pay special attention.

Types of Dreams

There are basically 3 major types of dreams.

Type I is the carnal dreams that come from the internal soul of the person. . Past troubles which we have not properly dealt with can manifest fear, anger, and sadness and caused recurring dreams.

Type II is the Spiritual Prophetic dreams which is sent by God to foretell the future. This type of dream almost always speaks about the future and they are very important to us.

Type III is the dream we get when we are hyper active during the day. This type is more confusing and leads to disturbed sleep since they are haphazard and disjointed.

How are dreams interpreted?

In the bible, Proverbs 18:16, “A gift opens the way for the giver and ushers him into the presence of the great.”

Dreams Interpretation is a gift, it can not be easily learnt in a class setting, but it however can be imparted by a spiritual mentor. Impartation refers to the spiritual laying of hands upon the person and saying a prayer over them.

Dream is a form of divine communication that connect God with to us since God promised to tell his servant what is to come. Dream is a more complete system of authentic communication because it is a four dimensional message, it contains events, people, feelings and words or symbols. Dream can not be intercepted as in any man made device.

The dreams are interpreted much the same as the instantaneous flow of prophetic utterance, meaning given by the Holy Spirit. Peace with assurance that comes from the Holy Spirit will be the only guidance that ascertains the truth. In the book of Hosea 12:10, the bible says “I have also spoken by the prophets, and have multiplied visions; I have given symbols through the witness of the prophets.” This refers to prophetic dreams. Although anyone can claim that they can interpret dreams, the difference between true and false interpretation is that the truth will come to pass.

Philippines 4:7, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

1Corinthian 14:33, “For God is not a God of disorder but of peace.”

JOSEPH THE KING OF DREAMS

Joseph’s first dream was about rising high above his brothers. Joseph’s second dream of rising was about his brothers and parents paying homage to him. God had prepared Joseph to interpret Pharaoh’s dream.

When God sends you two dreams on the same matter, it will surely come to pass without fail. The bible says that a matter must be established by two unchangeable facts; Matthew 18:16, 2 Corinthians 13:1 and Deuteronomy 19:15.

So why did God favor Joseph? Joseph honored his father Jacob and was obedient and trustworthy so he was chosen to be trained in God’s school of adversity. He was told by God what will happen to Egypt. Knowing is only half the solution without the how to solve it, knowledge is useless. God does not give us a warning and then we are to pray about it, in fact, we are to order our life around the dream so that we will not be affected by any crisis.

Joseph’s Interpretation of Dreams

Someone’s problem becomes our promotion and God’s making us famous by marketing us to the key people in the world.

Joseph’s first dream interpretation for the Cupbearer and the Baker in Genesis 40:1, was a preparation for him to meet the most powerful man in Egypt. Joseph’s second dream interpretation regarding the Pharaoh’s two different dreams; one about the corns and the other about the cows was God’s divine plan to exalt Joseph over Egypt. God caused Pharaoh to have those dreams.

Only the anointed one from God is able to answer this riddle. And only Jesus Christ is the baptizer of the Spirit and only Jesus can authenticate a gift and since it’s a gift, not all people are called to be interpreter of dreams. My people suffer from the lack of knowledge, Hosea 4:6. But God said in 1 Corinthian 2:9, “However, it is written: No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.”

Finally, dream Interpretation is a spiritual gift, and if you have a dream you should consult reputable Christians of the same faith. I pray that you will have divine messages of the night from our Lord Jesus Christ. If you need your dreams to be interpreted you can check out my website at www.kingscepter.com and send me your dreams at prophet3333@yahoo.com. Please indicate the title of your email as dream interpretation. God bless you all.

Joseph Ho is an engineer by training, he is also a former member of FGBMI and CBMC. Presently, he is the President of Thy Scepter, a spirit led Christian Business owner Society. He has also authored 2 books, one of which is “My Sheep Hear My Voice” and is available at www.kingscepter.com.