Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking: Natasha Bazilevych

How can you handle the fear of public speaking? How can you become a more confident public speaker?

Natasha Bazilevych has been teaching presentation skills for about 15 years.

Episode 103 (Natasha is based in Delaware)

In this conversation with Natasha Bazilevych we explore:

• How to channel anxiety as energy
• How to use exposure therapy to overcome your fears
• Why you need to focus on the audience instead of yourself
• How to build your speaking skills like any other skill set
• Why your past does not determine your future

About Natasha Bazilevych:

Natasha is a public speaking coach and trainer. As president of ChangeView Academy she helps entrepreneurs develop[ their business skills do they can create a successful business and life.

Learn more about ChangeView here.

She has run 7 marathons and 11 half-marathons. She hosts the podcast, Speak with Power Podcast. 

To learn more about Natasha and her services visit the website

www.NatashaBazilevych.com

When you are there you can sign up for the free Public Speaking 101 video course.

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Excerpts from this conversation with Natasha Bazilevych

03:03

When I present, I experience a little bit of nervousness at the beginning, which I love. And that's another rush. And then I turn those emotions, that nervousness into energy and excitement.

So for me when I speak, it's a very similar experience when I love it. That's why I actually love it when I use this excitement and this adrenaline because it's normal to be nervous to be a little bit afraid, we would say but even say that that's just nervousness not necessarily fear.

And when you have this little bit of, of these kind of emotions at the beginning, then you can understand, okay, hey, this is not really nervousness, necessarily, it's excitement. And then you can turn it into passion and deliver a great message.

Because that's what it helps me make other people also passionate about my topic is because I use this nervous energy, turn it into excitement, and then show it through passion so that people love the message and enjoy it as much as I do.

So it is very similar to when we just start so this is not even about finishing a marathon. It's more like starting a marathon or studying some kind of event like this.

When so much excitement in the air and also nervousness because you're studying you don't know what time will you run with Will you be able to finish? It's still unknown. And so it's this this whole adrenaline energy that you use to keep going.

And then of course when you finish it's the feeling of victory.

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10:17

Yes. So this particular client, she also had a fear of public speaking. And what's interesting, we could dig out the moment that created this fear for her. So it wasn't just all the time, all her life, it wasn't psyche, cardio, or anything connected with her health.

But it was in her mind. It wasn't even physical necessarily. But in her mind, she kept remembering one moment, that was a failure for her, she gave a presentation, and people in the audience mocked her.

So she felt like a loser like a failure plus that some of those people were really respected by her. So that created this negative memory in her mind, that kept being a block for her to go and present again. And so anytime she needed to present afterwards, she had to, she just had public speaking fear, she had all that anxiety because of this block because of that memory.

So what we needed to do is to go back, use visualization. And remember the moments when she was very successful in her presentations before that, and even after, and anchor the feeling of that success.

And just remember how good she was then plus also, we needed to go back into the moment of when she was not successful. And when she failed, and we had to recreate reframe that experience of hers, so that she could see the positive of that negative experience so that you could see that it doesn't really matter to her what those people are thinking.

And then it was easier for her to look at it differently. Because this is actually a very deep work. When you go into your mindset. And you have to reframe, recreate, delete those old beliefs, and then seeing it differently, because that is what's blocking.

So the first thing we did with this client was to go into the memory and retrieve the moments of success, retrieve the moments of failure, and start reframing them emotionally.

 

12:25

And what I'm hearing there, Natasha is when we retrieve that moment of failure, for example, we can we can reframe it, we can say, Yeah, I wasn't as good as I intended to be. But I wasn't as bad as they said, I could have been a lot worse.

And so that's the beginning. And I suppose we can all also look back and say, Well, you know what? That was just, that was just practice, I can get better.

So we need to say that, hey, it was a it didn't go well. But it doesn't make me a failure.

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Your Intended Message is the podcast about how you can boost your career and business success by honing your communication skills. We’ll examine the aspects of how we communicate one-to-one, one to few and one to many – plus that important conversation, one to self.

In these interviews we will explore presentation skills, public speaking, conversation, persuasion, negotiation, sales conversations, marketing, team meetings, social media, branding, self talk and more.

 

Your host is George Torok

George is a specialist in communication skills. Especially presentation. He’s fascinated by the links between communication and influencing behaviours. He delivers training and coaching programs to help leaders and promising professionals deliver the intended message for greater success.

 

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