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“How
to Develop Self-Confidence
In Speech and Manner” eBook Online Version
Another excellent preparation for self-confidence in speaking is that of telling stories. We need hardly remind the reader that these stories should be as new as possible, have good points, and be told in an interesting manner. The speaker must concentrate his mind upon the story and really relish telling it, so that he will be sharing a pleasure with others. Here again he may begin with the members of his own family, who will be lenient with him if these first efforts are not wholly effective. Story-telling is not a difficult art, but consists chiefly of two things: Getting a good fund of stories, and telling them without self-consciousness. A few short recitations, thoroughly memorized, may also be used as a means of accustoming the student to facing an audience. It may here be repeated that a frequent cause of timidity is a lack of proper knowledge of the subject. An audience becomes severely critical when a speaker appears not to have an adequate grasp of the facts. They will overlook his diffidence, setting it down to modesty, but they will not overlook palpable weakness and uncertainty in the subject-matter. A man who has the facts may readily be forgiven for lack of ability in presenting them, but one who stands to speak before others without proper knowledge of his subject is justly regarded as a pretender.
To become thoroughly self-confident a man should believe in his own ideas, live them, and advocate them with earnestness and conviction. He will be steadied by the consciousness of being in the right. All of which means that every man should spare no pains to ascertain the facts bearing upon his subject before attempting to give them to others. Getting the facts is the very foundation of self-confidence in speaking. We all know of men who boldly proclaim ideas of which they really are not certain, and then because of a slight contradiction suffer instant defeat and humiliation.
Next to having a solid foundation of facts, the speaker should know how to present them interestingly and effectively. He can not hope to do this without developing his powers of expression. A man, for example, who has no control of the pitch of his voice, but permits his earnestness to carry him into a high key or unduly loud tone, will not convince intelligent men as he should. Indistinctness of enunciation, a common fault with timid speakers, will tell seriously against him, since men grow inattentive if obliged long to strain themselves to hear. Un- gracefulness and violence of gesture will detract from the impression made by the speaker. In fact, any shortcoming in delivery, however slight, will have its share in producing an adverse effect.
Sometimes this nervousness in a public speaker, even in the case of experienced men, is due to over-anxiety. He wishes his speech to make a good impression, or his cause to succeed, or a sense of personal responsibility oppresses him. All these seem legitimate in themselves, but a sensible man should know that undue anxiety will possibly defeat the very purpose he has in view. When a man is over-anxious he is not at his best nor can he be. He lacks freedom and flexibility, and his real self is for the time in subjection. His mind is divided between his subject and the impression he is making, self- consciousness is inevitable, and his fear silently but surely communicates itself to the audience.
A slight nervousness at the beginning of a speech may act in favor of a speaker by enlisting the sympathy and good-will of his hearers, but he must be able to rise above this feeling as he enters into his subject, else he will fail to carry conviction. When Gladstone was asked if he was ever nervous in public speaking he said, "In opening a subject, often; in reply, never." The assumption is that once a speaker is well started, he no longer thinks of himself, but pours into his delivery all the power, intensity, and courage that his subject demands.
The nervousness of many men in addressing an audience is due to lack of proper elocutionary training. They have no knowledge of the speaking voice and its use, no facility of musical expression, and no idea of what to do with their hands and arms. They do not come to realize the importance of this training until they have actually tested themselves before an audience. Then, perhaps, it dawns upon them that the art of speaking, like any other art, must be developed through study and practice.
A writer says, "My subject is not elocution, or emphasis, or dramatic reading, or gesticulation, but public speaking.'' He forgets that he can not properly consider one without the other. The public speaker is deeply concerned with all the elements of elocution--of inflection, emphasis, pausing--and he can not be a good speaker if he disregard any one of these. In this study there must, of course, be taste and judgment. A man's elocution, although important, is not to be prominent. Proper expression will not attract attention to itself. The purpose of the study of elocution is ultimately so to free the speaker's mind that he can safely abandon himself to spontaneous expression. This knowledge of technique is an essential part of all art. The painter, musician, sculptor, architect, writer, no less than the orator, must at first be conscious of the principles that underlie his work, since it is this knowledge that finally gives him perfect freedom.
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