The Unexpected Relief Of Public Speaking

There comes a time in your life where you have a fear, and you may not know when its going to happen in your life because some of us it may happen when we’re younger or as we get older and become young adults. Many of us may already have some fears that could be things like heights, rides, or in my case public speaking which is more common than not. I’ve always been a very shy person until you start talking to me to get me out of my comfort zone, most of us would back away from our fears or say to ourselves “I’m not gonna worry about that because I’m never gonna do that” but somehow I discovered that the people that say that lets it get to them and you never know how scary its really gonna be or if it’s gonna be scary at all unless you get out there and try it.

I was always nervous and scared of public speaking my entire life because I have always been a very shy person not one that talks a lot and ever since highschool and when I was younger I was the one always being called on in the classroom because they knew how smart I was but I was to shy to do it so I would always refuse those oppurtunities and have someone else do it. Ive gotten many oppurtunities to get out of that phase and thankfully my teachers and my family pushed me to get there but it took effort and me being uncomfortable to comfortable getting to that point when I knew everything was at the right timing to get there.

A fear is a fear and sometimes you cant get ride of it if you dont try that fear and soon somehow could lead to an unexpected result into something positive and good. One big class that got me to where I am now is JMG stands for Jobs For Maine Graduates. This class is a class that teaches you life skills which would include: the right way to fill out a resume, job applications, interviews. I decided to take a role in being a officer as the secretary and when we had the I&I ceremony I was the master of ceremonies that night and I spoke some lines and I never thought I would have stood up infront of an auditorum infront of some of my senior classmates that im going to be saying goodbye too soon and tons of peoples family including mine.

When I was the master of ceremonies that night I felt very nervous because I never spoke infront of a huge audience that big and as it was I was running a bit late that night because me and my cousin got into a huge fight that night and I thought that I wasn’t going to make it, but thankfully I did and when they called my name to the podium I was holding the speaker was nerve racking. My legs where shaking a little bit, heart pounding fast, I could feel the sweet dripping down my back.

I took a deep breath and I spoke for the first time in a mike and that moment when I spoke it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was, my heart slowed down a lot and my legs stop shaking I wasn’t sweating so much anymore. When I spoke you could hear the confidence in my voice and I spoke loud enough so you could hear me, the JMG teacher was so proud of me, and my family was proud of me. The moment I was done speaking I got a huge round of applouse from the audience and my peers and I felt so much better about putting myself out there and not letting my fear be in control, I got myself out of a unexpected situation that wasn’t so bad after all. Iv’e noticed ever since then I have had so much pride with my body language and confidence in myself.

The very next day I went up to my english teacher the very next day and told her all about it and how I overcame something that I never thought I would and she belived I could do it because the motivation I put into it, and me wanting to overcome my fear she had faith in me just like I had faith in myself. Another thing I did was be a part of our English play 12 Angry Men last semester, that play was huge and I was the angry character and I acted out very well and spoke with so much confidence and sarcasm like the characters role.

Getting out of a fear ecspecially public speaking for a lot of people is hard because you never know what your going to be walking into like the people in the audience could be very rude and make fun of you while your standing up there, but never let a person stop you from doing what you want to do ecspecially your fear because you can easily get yourself out of that unexpected situation that you dont like. This reminds me of when in mean girls when they had to stand up on stage infront of people and reflect infront of their classmates and apologize to one another for the time they did something stupid.

Photo by astro_matt on Foter.com / CC BY-SA