While I was young, one of the major challenges that I faced was stage fear. I could not speak to a gathering at all; it scared me too much. But, in my 8th standard, we had an elocution competition in our school wherein our topic was to talk about our most favorite thing, I was very interested in our cars. As I was scared to do any such thing, but still I had written the essay for the competition just so
that I could feel that I had the content. Though speaking at that competition was not seemingly possible, one thing I knew was that no one knew about the car better than me. As I was feeling left out, I told my father at home that I wanted him to hear my essay. As I read the piece, he gave me a reply, saying that he had learned lots of new things today from my speech. This triggered something in my mind that if my dad had learned something new, then there was something worth in my essay.
So, I decided that I will somehow try to take part in the competition. I planned that I would go on the stage, close my eyes, and just rant out the essay. On the day of the competition, I went up to the stage and closed my eyes, and I started ranting, and I noticed that everyone was listening without noise so I tried to open my eyes and also lessen the speed of my speech, slowly I was able to end the speech. Finally, I won the competition, and the key learning that I was able to take away from the competition was that the key to public speaking was content and calmness.
#IIMRaipur #ABGLPWooMe
Comments