I was asked to speak to 8th grade students at my son’s school because we my company did a big donation for them. I’m a successful business owner industrial blue collar. Pretty rough around the edges. Just looking for some ideas to talk about with these kids with work, motivation etc. any ideas would be super helpful.
Our school right now is trying to cut our zero period speech and debate class. If this happens, most of our varsity competitors might not be able to compete, or will have to drop a class that is really important for their academic careers.
any signature counts, and sharing the link is even better. try to upvote so we can get as many as possible. as someone who’s done policy for 5 years, this activity is the world to me, and i know it is for a lot of you, so please help the best you can for a fellow debater
Hey y’all, first time poster here. I was asked to be the best man for my best friend’s wedding. It is such an honor to be asked and he would be mine too, we’ve been best friends since 2017. He hasn’t mentioned anything about giving a speech to me, but I am fairly certain the best man and maid of honor will be expected to give speeches.
I have had intense social anxiety my whole life, and my number 1 phobia is public speaking. I was watching a wedding recap video last night and they had a clip of the best man giving a speech, and I had an anxiety attack even thinking about having to give one myself. I’ve already been piecing things together for months that I was going to say, but this speech is making me dread the wedding and is affecting me daily, I think about it constantly and have even had nightmares about it.
I know that if I brought this up to him, he wouldn’t want me to feel this way and would be completely okay with me not giving a speech, but it still would make me feel terrible that I can’t do this for him. But I really want to be present at the wedding and enjoy celebrating their love. I know myself well enough to know that it will make me dread the day, as well as the weeks and months leading up to it which I’m already experiencing. I’m a violent shaker when I have to talk in public, even in a small group of 5 people. It’s something that I need to seek mental help for.
My question is, is it horrible of me to talk to my friend and ask if he could ask one of the groomsmen (or someone else) to make the speech in my place? I would emphasize how special it is to me that he asked me to be his best man and how happy I am to get to celebrate this with them. I want to do other special things for them, but this speech is really affecting me in ways I haven’t experienced before. I plan to still write a speech and give it to him before or after the wedding. Please let me know your thoughts and thank you so much for the help.
Hey guys, i need your help, I am doing mcs (CA final training) currently and I will have to give a presentation on some topic, like I have never done it before and I'm so under confident also I like a boy there I am feeling for nervous, even I don't have any topic decided in my mind yet, i request to all to pls suggest me some interesting and easy topics which I can present and what all I can do to remove my nervousness.....pls share your experiences....
hi guys im a first time poster longtime viewer!!
long story short i have bad anxiety and it took a lot of courage to get up there and speak in front of her whole family and many friends i never knew, but i did it.
my heart was POUNDING. but i kept a brave face and it was going well until not even halfway my voice started wavering and i started crying and slightly shaking (im usually a bit of a crybaby and im an emotional person), and i seriously could not stop my voice from shaking and i kept laughing at myself because i was so flustered. i got through the speech and saw her mum crying which made me cry more.
the few days afterwards im just so embarrassed and cant shake this feeling of me crying in front of that many people. they all said my speech was beautiful and to be honest it was really heartfelt and got some laughs. but UGH its given me confidence but also made me feel so weird because im one to keep my emotions private.
nevertheless im so proud that i didnt let my anxiety win, i was so stressed the whole night and this speech felt so awkward and her friends comforted me after saying i did well but i cant tell if they were just saying that haha. if i cried at her 21st im going to be in shambles whenever she gets married
I've been asked to speak on behalf of all students at my graduation. From the little public speaking I've done, I always feel much better when I acknowledge my anxiety to the crowd. However, I've never spoken in a very formal setting like this. I wanted to throw in something lighthearted. Or is it best to directly say "I'm quite nervous"?
Advice or suggestions are really appreciated 🙏🏻
I regularly visit this subreddit and will continue to. But I have had a hard time finding other communities on Reddit and subreddits about "professional speaking." When you type that into search all of your results are for audio speakers. So I am curious where else you are contributing and have found value on the topics of professional speaking and public speaking. Thanks!
It is advised to be a good listener than waiting for our turn to speak.
So how one can get better and tonality if focussed on listening too much. how and where to find the right balance between these two?
Hi everyone im new here. So as mentioned in the title, how do you actually overcome this fear? I lack confidence like alot. Even tho im good with doing the small talk or socialising but when it comes to maintaining the conversation, that is the part where i fumble.
Even when i hangout with friends or so i feel like i need atleast two people or a group to hangout cuz i cannot keep up and dont know how to carry the conversation or make it interesting eventually leading to the demise of it.
I wanna join MUNs partake in em but the thought of debating or argumenting with someone in front of audience gives me chills. Ill admit that it is more of a fear of failure or people laughing.
But how do i overcome this? How do i practice it? How do i make myself standout and kill this fear? I wanna practice it myself before going on stage or some mun so how can i actually do this?
How can I work on using the least amount of words and being understood, well, by the most amount of people?
I struggle with over explanation and putting things in simpler terms.
I’ll add that I’m very new so I’m lacking the fundamentals and core practices but these are my biggest pain points.
Thanks in advance!
Hi fellow toastmasters, I recently came across this free public speaking website https://www.onstage.club/ . I find it interesting and a useful aid therefore share it here
It has multiple virtual scenes from speaking at conferences to classrooms to meetups and also, interviews
It can also generate table topics or questions using AI on the fly and the user can also select the type of impromptu questions
Have fun learning
Hi y’all — first time poster. I could benefit from some guidance but am struggling to find the right coaches and resources for my specific needs and goals.
A bit about me: I was approached to give my first keynote in late 2023. I didn’t envision it as a career pathway at the time, but that one speech has since resulted in numerous organic, paid bookings. I am now eager to take a more proactive role in pursuing opportunities, and just delivered my first TEDx talk this weekend.
By trade I’m an award-winning podcast/narrative audio producer and oral historian. Most of my speaking to date has been at travel conferences centered specifically on Route 66 and cultural preservation. This has been greatly rewarding, but I have more to offer and am ready to grow beyond this niche. I’m open to the college and university market, and have also been told by multiple people that I have real potential in the corporate keynote space. This is a world I’m genuinely interested in pursuing, though I’ll be candid that it’s not my native habitat and I need help translating my work into that language.
For what it’s worth, I’m also a trained stage actor with years of professional performance experience, so the delivery side of speaking is not where I need development. Most of the courses I’ve encountered so far feel fairly generalized and cover a lot of ground I already feel secure in, which is part of why I’m turning to this community.
What I’m really looking for help with is twofold. First, the pivot itself — how do I take a body of work rooted in oral history, cultural preservation, and American storytelling and translate it into something that resonates with audiences and event organizers outside my current niche? Second, the business side of speaking — positioning, packaging, and proactively pursuing opportunities rather than waiting for them to come to me. That second part is frankly foreign territory, and I suspect I’m leaving a lot on the table.
Any coaches, books, courses, communities, or hard-won advice would be genuinely appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Hello! Im a high school student and they often require presentations and such. Last time I was repeating my text a lot, I had a whole lot to say and when it was time for speaking i spoke a sentence and my mind went completely blank. I was so anxious I was looking down for some reason trying to remember what I wanted to say. I even kept apologizing for my mumbling in middle of that all. I have a presentation this week and im extremely terrified if that happens again. Any tips?
I'm 32 and pretty introverted. For most of my 20s I called the quiet thing a personality trait and moved on. Around 30 it stopped holding up. I was skipping stuff I actually wanted (speaking up at work, posting my writing, asking people to hang out) and just calling it being introverted.
The confidence apps I tried didn't help. Most are rebranded journaling. The "do one scary thing every day" stuff burned me out in a week.
What worked was small. Embarrassingly small. "Say good morning to the barista." "Ask one question in the meeting." I kept a list, then notes, then built a simple iOS app because notes got annoying.
One challenge a day across six categories: social skills, career, public speaking, networking, self-expression, comfort zone. Each has a clear ask and a one-line tip.
Few honest surprises after using it for ~8 months:
Free tier has the daily challenge, streak, and widget. Pro unlocks unlimited skips and the full library. iOS only, on device, no account.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/introvert-daily-courage/id6762940412
Would love feedback on the categories or anything that feels off.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading and thinking about what makes people good communicators.
At work, when I look at high-level directors, I wonder what really separates them from me. Maybe it’s experience, maybe education, maybe confidence. But honestly, I think a huge part of it is communication.
You can be smart and hardworking, but if you freeze or struggle to explain your thinking clearly, it can hold you back.
For me, two things that have helped are improv classes and recording myself on video, then playing it back to hear how I actually sound.
I’m curious, what’s the hardest part of public speaking or speaking under pressure for you?
Is it freezing, rambling, sounding nervous, losing your point, getting judged, or not knowing what to say fast enough?
That interest led me to build an iPhone app for short speaking practice. It uses quick spoken prompts and feedback to help you practice being clear under pressure. It’s still in development, but it’s free to test.
If anyone wants to try it and give feedback, I’ll put the TestFlight link in the comments. Thanks
I’m the salutatorian of my high school and I need to do a graduation speech. The problem is, I am deathly afraid of speaking in front of people. I obtained some leadership roles at school to try and eliminate my fear, but those didn’t help much. I really want to do the speech but I am so so so scared of stuttering or stumbling over my words in front of thousands of people. Even the thought of having that much attention on me gives me a lot of anxiety. Any advice? Should I just give the opportunity to third place? Thank you
Around my uni and startup circles here in Korea, people tend to write out these super detailed scripts for presentations. But honestly, it almost never goes according to plan. You end up skipping a point, mixing up the order, getting interrupted, or having to jump back a few slides.
For me, the hardest part isn’t even the public speaking itself. It’s the mental juggling—trying to figure out where I am in my script, what I just missed, what I need to say next, and making sure my slide actually matches what’s coming out of my mouth.
So I’m curious: do experienced presenters actually stick to a script, or are you mostly just winging it off some bullet points? Also, for Q&A, if someone brings up an earlier slide, do you usually flip back to it or just answer on the spot?
I (22F) had a presentation where I stuttered and my brain went blank, this doesn’t just happen when im presenting to a public, I don’t know how to talk or explain to people a certain subject.
My uni professor said that it is a shame that im getting a master’s degree but can’t communicate clearly, and he is right.
How can I be eloquent ? Pls helppp
I am in Highschool and for my final it’s called Project Activist and I basically have to create a three minute long speech about a topic of my choice as long as it in some way helps make the world a better place.
We would watch, listen, and read some famous/well known speeches and analyze it for things such as fallacies, poetic devices, evidence types, pathos, logos, ethos type of stuff.
My classmates are all doing their topic about current events such as AI, climate change, politics, etc. Originally I was going to do a speech about misogyny and toxic masculinity however I am the topic has been done before and one of my friends is covering that in her speech. I started thinking about wanting to cover things like eating disorders, self harm, social media abuse and realized addiction was a good umbrella term to have my topic on considering I could use both substance abuse and non-substance abuse addiction.
Honestly, with addiction as my topic I don’t know how to structure my speech especially since my goal is to motivate people with addictions to choose recovery.
I wanted to look for advice, maybe some personal stories, quotes, or suggestions on what to include in my speech because I want to understand addictions and victims of it better to be able to create a good speech.
On the writing part any advice for structure, quotes, rhymes and phrases I could possibly include would be appreciated. Or even stanzas or poems I could get inspiration from!
Any advice would do wonders, thank you!🙏
I have to give a presentation about a project we are working on next week. I created some slides with the most important information and I was going to speak freely otherwise. However, I'm an inexperienced speaker and as I'm practicing I notice that I struggle to find the right words or to keep myself to the timeframe I have. What should I do? Practice speaking freely a bit more? Write a speech and memorize it? Or something in between? Please help with your best tips. Thanks!