Dizzy head. Pounding heart. Shaking limbs. Sweating body. Shallow breathing. Queasy stomach. These symptoms hold people back from what they really want — SUCCESS. Public speakers of all levels will resonate with the concise methods found in "From Fear to Success," an easy-to-read guide to overcome anxiety and relate to any audience on their journey to find their communication confidence.

Ideas and Presentation

55. Brainstorm: The Friends-and-Family Effect (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

Who knows you better, outside of yourself, than your friends, family, and colleagues? When you are searching for topics or trying to fine-tune a passionate presentation, invest time with the people closest to you. Throw ideas against the wall and see if they stick. Use the close relationships to ensure that the messages you want to convey truly come across as intended. You should not fear feedback because of the comfort in realizing that if this group of people can't provide you with the gift of their honest opinions, then who can? It is impossible to do it alone.

I spent the first year and a half after joining Toastmasters practicing my speeches in the car and in front of mirrors. Although both are good tools, they can't compare to the eyes of your spouse or significant other staring back at you. I learned that if I could do it well in front of my wife, then a couple hundred people would be easy. I finally shared a competition speech with my wife right before I got in the car to drive to the competition. The speech typically took six and a half minutes to perform. For her, I did it in five minutes because of my anxiety, since I really wanted to impress her. Within the speech, I had the line, "Millions of dogs and cats"; instead, I said, "Millions of dogs and a cat." We laughed together after the speech. I knew she was a supporter of my public speaking, but didn't realize how much I could rely on her. After I became more comfortable with my dependence on her, I learned to have healthier dialogues regarding subjective feedback. In another speech, I had the line, "My first legal adult beverage...," and my wife said it was too obscure and lacked the punch I wanted. She suggested using, "My first beer...." I fought her on it until a friend suggested the exact same line. Somehow, I had known she was right, but I had refused to listen (I still have work to do in listening to my wife). I have now become an open book to friends and family, especially to my greatest supporter, my wife.

56. Keep a Notebook Nearby (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

Ask me what I had for dinner last night and there is a really good chance I won't remember. Not many of us can easily come up with what we ate without really thinking about it. Now think of the greatest speech idea you ever had, but can't remember. How many times have you been driving down the road or woken up in the middle of the night thinking, "Wow, I need to remember that," or, "I should do a speech on that," or some other iteration, then kept on driving or fell back to sleep and never remembered what it was? The easiest way to solve that problem is with a notebook or folder nearby. I keep a notebook on my nightstand and a folder in my laptop bag, which is typically always near me. I simply jot the idea down and toss the paper back. It can be one word or a short sentence. Write down whatever is enough for you to remember. Notice I didn't say write out the entire speech. You can let the idea stew and grow in your mind while it's in the notebook or folder. The idea will continue to nurture and develop itself over time. Go back to it when it is time, and start outlining the message and content. You will be shocked how easily the speech flows because your mind has been running in the background with this topic, simply because you wrote it down.

57. Research Your Material (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

I realize I am stating the obvious, but we are lucky to be surrounded with so many tools, like the Internet, to research our material, and it seems so natural to use these tools to strengthen our messages. The benefits of research range from keeping your material current, to ensuring that it is accurate and not trademarked by others. If you are a frequent speaker on the same topic, ask yourself when you last updated your material. Pay attention to your information, and keep it timely by scanning relevant websites, news media, and books. I used to tell a story about the word "chillax," a made-up combination of "chill out" and "relax." Over time, I found that the impact waned as the use of the word dwindled in popular culture. Besides keeping you and me up to date, researching even simple facts may yield further information for expanding your material or creating spinoffs to existing information. As obvious as it is, don't forget to use the tools that are at your disposal to research your material to strengthen your message.

58. Be a Secret (or Not So Secret) Admirer (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

There are plenty of people we look up to. Whether it is a family member or a historical figure, we get strength from the success of others. The same should be said for people who speak well. If people you know—from work, from an organization, or simply from crossing paths—have a skill you want to work on, try to find an opportunity to connect with them formally or informally. If you can seek them out as a mentor or find ways to at least get some tips from them to improve yourself, it will make you stronger. You don't want to admire from afar when it comes to improving your public-speaking skills. I have found that successful people in the field tend to be open and supportive in sharing suggestions. You should take in everything that will continue your positive learning trajectory. Clearly, we should not go about it independently. We need support and help along the way for our continued growth.

I have connected with many great speakers who produce routine newsletters, and have found formal and informal mentors who have shared what they do well with me. These little things begin to add up to a much greater success when we start to implement their feedback. Even if you don't know someone personally, are there other ways to connect with him or her? Can you connect with the person through LinkedIn or through other professional groups? Do you go online and read well-known speeches and analyze them or even attend a webinar? You can go to YouTube, Google, or other websites to find great speeches and great speakers who can meet your needs. Do you take a unique learning perspective to see the strengths of the speech structure and purpose? Can you easily understand the intended message? Finding individual speakers whom you can emulate and learn from should inspire you to reach further and perfect your craft. Finding the right connections and immersing yourself in their teaching can only make your own presentations stronger.

59. Practice—This is Not an Option (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

If you are giving a prepared speech, then ensure that it is prepared. You can't check over notes right before you go on to present and consider that preparation. You should practice in front of family, friends, cats, and dogs. Find anyone and anything to be in front of to ensure that you have practiced more than just the words. You should practice pacing, voice inflections and places to pause, stage usage, and physical aspects of the speech. There is too much left to chance without preparation.

There is no such thing, in my opinion, as too much practice. There is some risk of too much of a staged presentation, so you should use caution to make sure your movements remain natural. However, practice is required to get better. When practicing for speeches, if I am listening to the radio in the car, I practice during commercials, or if I am transitioning between tasks at work, I may find a few minutes to run through a speech or presentation. The amount of positive feedback I continue to receive about my obvious improvement in confidence and skills is validation enough to keep practicing.

60. Be a Student of Yourself (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

Only you control the final touches you will make to the presentation. After receiving feedback from anyone and everyone, don't forget the most important person to get feedback from: yourself. Be a student of yourself. Use the simple tools of a mirror or a video camera to improve in all aspects of speaking, whether it is speech content, delivery, stage usage, non-verbal gestures, voice inflection, or the many other facets. Video is often difficult for people to accept as a valuable tool, probably because it says so much. To see, hear, and analyze ourselves is tough because most people are harder on themselves than on anyone else, due to the pursuit of perfection.

Once you get past the uneasiness of watching yourself, you will immediately see the benefits of video because you can rewind and watch it multiple times for further reinforcement. More importantly, you can target the feedback for yourself. When you review the video, break it down by isolating certain aspects. For example, turn off the sound. Because you no longer need your hearing senses for this part of the exercise, you will make crucial observations about the non-verbal and physical aspects of the speech that you might well have missed otherwise. Invest time to be critical of yourself and you will be amazed at how much you transform. The ability to study yourself drives home the best in you because who knows you more than you?

61. Practice Through to the End (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

When I first started learning the piano, at the late age of thirty-eight, my passionate piano teacher drove into my head that when I hit the wrong note, I should keep playing through to the end. She emphasized that if I stopped every time I made a mistake, I would never make it to the last note. I would suggest the same with a speech, once it is ready to practice in its entirety. You need to get it ingrained in your head that you will not be perfect. You will make mistakes, and that is a fact. When you stop at the point of the mistake, you will hurt the flow and also probably influence how you react in the middle of a real presentation if you make a mistake; you may be creating a habit of stopping where you are and starting over, which will not be good for you or the audience.

As you go back to certain sections and repeat them over and over, you are fine-tuning portions of the presentation but limiting your ability to look at the speech holistically. There is more to a speech than just content. Flow and rhythm are built throughout, and stopping each time you make a mistake makes them harder to recognize. In some of my earlier speech practice habits, I started over again whenever I made a mistake. This made the beginning of the speech flawless because I had said it so many times. There have been times, because of the added pressure of the actual performance, where I lost my place in the body of the speech that had been practiced less. I surprised myself with mistakes I had never made before in practice. I am convinced it was because I did not take my piano teacher's advice. I have made considerably fewer mistakes since I have learned to practice all the way through.

62. Practice with Distractions (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

I once was in a Toastmasters divisional-level speech contest (for the state of Maine and parts of New Hampshire), when out of the blue came the boisterous noise of a jackhammer. The floor was thumping and rattling, and my concentration was shot. I became flustered and made several mistakes. After the contest, I analyzed my practice routine leading up to the event: I would clear the room of any distractions, put the dog outside, and close the doors for complete silence. In a perfect world, this made sense. How do you prepare for an unexpected baby crying (I've had this happen, too), papers rustling, or silverware and glasses clanking? As a speaker, you can only control so much.

I began practicing with distractions everywhere. I have practiced with the television and radio on. I have invited the dog in and stepped over him on more than one occasion. I have forged ahead in my speech when the phone rang. My favorite was practicing while my ten-year-old daughter began her brand-new trombone lessons. Yes, it does sound like a bunch of elephants, but the distraction challenge is beautiful. You will become more nimble in your surroundings if you prepare for anything. Your concentration level, having been put to the test, will make you ready for the distractions you can't predict.

63. Write Out Key Points (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

You will want to emphasize key points with the audience, but in the excitement of the presentation, the risk of leaving out one or more of these key points is real. Have the messages you want the audience to remember in an easily accessible spot to review before the presentation, during the presentation, and at the conclusion, to ensure that all pertinent points are covered. It is easy to get caught up in a discussion or even go down a different path based on the interaction with the audience, so it is important that the points you want taken away are there to reference, to ensure that they are not forgotten.

These points should be written out, bolded, underlined, and reiterated throughout your outline and eventual speech. They are the focal points of the presentation, so you should also have indicators written out for how you want the points to be made. Delivery of these points can be critical in how your message is received and retained. Your cue may be adding it to the story you want the point to support, repeating the line, increasing your volume, or slowing down intentionally. You don't necessarily need to script out every move you make, although this might be a good habit early in your speaking evolution. The key is to ensure that your points resonate with the audience. The goal is to build muscle memory through practice so that the key points become so natural that the audience will be scrambling for their notebooks, saying, "Why didn't I think of that?" Good muscle memory starts with a good plan.

64. Add Value with Your Visual Aids (Audio of this chapter is available here.)

I have consistently been coached to find my unique and differentiating factors and to emphasize them during presentations. For example, I have the luxury of having low-cost, professional posters available. I was convinced that these posters would become my way to be remembered. As a frequent presenter with these posters, I was receiving positive feedback. I found my use of them got to a point of dependency. I wouldn't necessarily call it lazy with my writing, but my incorporation of the props became a focal point, thus a distraction from the main messages. I learned as a speech contestant that I would receive rave reviews in the early stages because judges often thought the posters were a nice touch and separated me from other competitors. As I progressed further in the competitions, so did the judges. Their experience level typically increased and they wanted a picture to be painted vividly with words, not an actual picture. In a key competition, I excitedly turned a poster around from its blank-white back to the high-school yearbook picture of a friend of mine who had passed away. I lost the competition.

After losing, I received some feedback that although the poster was nice, many people thought it took away from my message. Obviously, I had leaned on my prop as a principle focus instead of just as a supporting tool. Some feedback also indicated that right from the start the audience was guessing what was on the front of the poster, so I was losing their attention before I had even started. At the point when I turned the poster around, it hit the stand slightly. Although subtle to me, apparently the distraction was bigger in the eyes of the judges because they saw the risk ahead of time, and I fulfilled their prophecy. The most important feedback given to me on that day was that the line I delivered in the speech before I turned the picture around—"He was four-foot-eleven with a five-foot smile"— had described in words everything people needed to envision this person properly on their own. Unfortunately, I showed them the movie immediately after they had just read the book. Whatever picture they had in their own mind was instantly ruined. It was as if I had just stolen the audience's imagination. Finally, I was told that the audience at times felt my stage presence was hindered or even predictable because the props dictated where I was going on stage. Thus, the supporting props had become a distraction.

I may have lost the competition, but I guess I really won going forward if such caring people were willing to provide me substantial, easy-to-act-on feedback. I learned a lot that day about ensuring that visual aids and props support the message, but don't take away from it.

Related links:

• Chapter 1: Step into the public forum

• Chapter 2: Find the sources of stage fright

• Chapter 3: Tame the beast

• Chapter 4: Understand that success is possible

• Chapters 5-14: Road to success, the anxiety

• Chapters 15-24: Road to success, don't let personality be an excuse

• Chapters 25-34: Road to success, paint the picture

• Chapters 35-44: Road to success, set your stage story

• Chapters 45-54: Road to success, appreciate the audience’s diversity and differences

Tom Dowd has spoken at many of the Midcoast Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions clubs, is a member of the U.S. National Toboggan Championships Committee, and announcer of the event. He lives in Camden with his wife and three daughters. To read his full biography, click here. He can be contacted at transformationtom.com or tomdowd@roadrunner.com. Follow Tom on twitter: @TomDowd4; connect on Facebook at Thomas Dowd Professional Development & Coaching; and on Linkedin, listed as Thomas B Dowd.