As a student for most part of my life, I have achieved most in academics, I have performed at most of the competitions with full swings. However when I was asked to speak about a topic or give an extempore, I usually went blank and kept mum on stage. The major challenge I had was stage fear.
I usually refrain from participating in any competitions which involve speaking on stage. I shy away from such events even in my professional life which involved speaking in front of 30-40 people.
To overcome this, I started practising in front of mirror and used to speak at least half an hour every day to counter my stage fear. Slowly my communications skills improved, however I was still shy of speaking in front of 30-40 people and in order to counter that I started speaking in front of my friends, used to regularly give them knowledge transfer sessions in order to inculcate in me the habit of speaking in front of others. It took a great deal of courage to finally start speaking without fear and start taking part in competitions which involved verbal portion. As I recall today, after I resigned from my company to start my new journey to acquire more knowledge and do MBA, I was asked to give a speech on how the company is important in my life and in what way it changed my life that will never change during this course of life, I even didn’t hesitate to take the mike and started speaking my heart out.
