My husband's father passed away two weeks ago. We are all very distraught, but my husband is facing a horrifying prospect. His mother wants him to deliver the eulogy, and my husband has a terrible fear of public speaking. It's so severe that the last time he had to give a speech he literally shit his pants. Luckily, he had planned ahead and wore an adult diaper as a fail-safe, but obviously this is a situation we would not like to repeat.
The one piece of advice I have given all of them is this: "Rehearse! Rehearse! Rehearse!" I give this advice because no one taught it to me; I had to learn it the hard way. When I first started learning public speaking in a Toastmasters club, I was locked to the lectern. I was so nervous that I grasped the sides in a white-knuckle death grip and read my speeches from notes.
With 4 million app downloads, Estonia-based startup Vocal Image aims to help people improve their voice and communication skills with AI-powered coaching. But out of its 160,000 active users, it may be its CEO, Nick Lakhoika, who best embodies its mission. Lakhoika was born in Belarus, didn't speak English until his relocation to Estonia, and once struggled with speaking anxiety.
My vision is fuzzy, my heart is racing and my lungs are emptying of oxygen. I've just been asked to speak in a meeting at my first graduate job on a fashion magazine. My task is simple read out the week's social media stats but I can't make it through. I cut the presentation short. I sit down, murmuring an apology, my eyes stinging with tears.
An interviewer once asked James Baldwin if he'd ever write something without a message. "No writer who ever lived," Baldwin said, "could have written a line without a message." This is true. People write because they have something to say. Baldwin had something to say, and he spent his life saying it. But many who thought they got his message didn't get it at all.
There's never been a job title I held that she didn't tell her friends was more important than it actually was. There's never been a place I've lived that she didn't try to immediately say was actually downtown in the closest big city.
I first took beta blockers two years ago, when I was asked to give a eulogy. Terrible at public speaking on a good day, let alone at a funeral, my first instinct was to refuse to do it. I had made a speech at a friend's wedding 15 years before and my legs shook so violently throughout that I thought I would collapse.
Norton struggled with her speech delivery, creating concerns about her future in office, highlighting the challenges faced by leaders in the public eye.
