You are not alone!

Every individual experiences some degree of nervousness before speaking in front of a large audience.  That happens because our body undergoes some physiological changes when we gain the attention of a large crowd. "Research has shown that more than 40% of people say their top fear was speaking in front of other people. According to one survey, fear of public speaking came before heights, death, illness and other common phobias" ("overcome fears", 2004). one can overcome this fear by mastering some of the techniques,  and applying the following strategies of before, during and after the presentations.


The Stage fright graph





The stage fright graph explains the relationship of our perceived distressful consequence and actual projected negative performance (Stage_fright_graph, n.d.).  As a presenter, our underlying fears of what our audience might think (negative evaluation) of us, effect our actual performance by negatively impacting it on stage. As the graph shows, our stress level of stage fright increases with our presumption of what our audience might be thinking and in doing so, deteriorates our actual performance on stage.  Now that you see how vicious this psychological cycle is, we must do everything in our power to understand the problem and avoid it in order to win our audience.


Reference: 
Public Speaking Tips. (2004). Overcoming your fear of presenting. Retrieved from http://www.speaking-tips.com/Articles/Overcome-Your-Fear-of-Presenting.aspx_


Stage_fright_graph, (n.d.). Yahoo Canada. Retrieved from http://ca.images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0PDodh5PU1P9n4AzRftFAx.;_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?