Alcohol, Anxiety and Public Speaking. How do the mix?
Posted: Sunday, April 03, 2011
by Tim Ross
Even experienced public speakers feel anxiety before the event. Many people think of anxiety in a negative sense but it can be a positive influence on your performance. When approached correctly it will enhance your public speaking performance. Look upon it as a friend and control it.
For many people the answer to controlling anxiety is to have a drink containing alcohol. This desire must be stifled. Do not even have one "little drink" to calm your nerves.
Even in small quantities alcohol lowers your performance imperceptibly. You are relying on the words that you have practiced coming to your mind fluently. Alcohol impairs this.
However much you practice your speech the actual delivery will never be precisely what you have written. There may be parts of your speech in which you have to extemporise - perhaps to respond to some unplanned for event. Alcohol is a stimulant but unfortunately it does not assist coherent thinking when on your feet. Unfortunately it does not inhibit fluency itself and can lead to garrulous incoherence.
An essential part of your success as a public speaker is to feel confident and good about yourself. To be perfectly in control improves morale which in turn helps your public speaking performance.
When making a speech in public you are on show all the time. Your audience will be studying your every move. Your audience will respect you all the more if they see that you have not taken a strong drink before addressing them. Conversely if you clearly have drunk some alcohol they will think less of you. This may not be fair as they themselves may have drunk a lot but it is all part of the human condition.
It is a sign of respect for your audience and also yourself that you wish to give a first class speech. It is your audience who are there for partying and pleasure. You are there to give a professional performance.
Alcohol is a diuretic.In other words it encourage the passing of water. Do you really want to be thinking about going to the lavatory just at the time you are due to stand up and speak?
Alcohol has many pleasant attributes but it is the enemy of good oratory and will thwart you in your ambition to be a successful public speaker
Lastly, when you have given your speech and feel that warm glow that all successful public speakers rightly feel - allow yourself a drink. However, even at this stage show restraint. You wish to be a successful public speaker. There will be people in your audience who will have noted your success and decided to book you to speak at an event they are organising.
If you change from a suave communicator to the town drunk in the short time that they make their way through the crowd to speak to you they may decide that you are not the person for them after all.
Tim Ross has spoken to many different groups in a variety of locations
including the Guildhall in the City of London. The lessons in public
speaking from these experiences are detailed in his blogs and articles.
For more information visit
http://www.howtobeapublicspeaker.com/publicspeaking/
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