Me and Public Speaking :A never-ending love story

Heya!After lots of thoughts,plans and short listings I've decided to write about a few incidents in my life which made me learn about public speaking and many more life mantras.

Well, Travelling into the past ,I was a typical 8th standard girl living in her own small world of family ,school, friends. I neither gave a thought about the outside world nor knew what my interests are.

One fine day, I was instructed by my teacher to give a speech on freedom fighters ( Probably it's about independence). Being a student decently good at academics, I religiously recited those 2-3 pages of script for a couple of days to give my best at the assembly. And the day came, I was called and given a mic to speak. Guess what! I was unable to utter even my introduction at that time on assembly. An unknown fear occupied my mind which made me dumb then. I somehow managed to complete the speech with the promptings given by my teacher. After getting down,  I again delivered the speech in my mind like a pro. 

After this incident, the only thought that traveled in my mind is why I was unable to do it on-stage and at that moment? It haunted me many days since I felt embarrassed being nervous at the moment. Unknowingly, may be in my sub-conscious mind, the thoughts of being dynamic and delivering fearless speeches got registered and then with the help of my teachers, I started participating in each and every contest gaining a cup-board full of prizes, decent recognition in school and heart full of self-confidence. Winning or losing, each and every participation increased my fascination towards public speaking and being on-stage . Then happened my 10th standard and intermediate where I was supposed to give a total break to all these activities and focus more on academics.

Then engineering happened and the freedom inspired me to try something exciting and thus the cycle of being into co-curricular and extra-curricular activities again started , but now in the better exposure. In these four years, met different persons ,made many friends, gained many experiences, participated in state-level public speaking contests and got introduced to ORATORY  ( The art of story telling), Content Writing , quizzing contests ( I haven't done a big thing yet! :P )took few initiatives in campus and undertaken some positions of responsibilities, gained decently good recognition in college, faced some unexpected situations which remained as a good lessons while equally balancing academics. And I whole-heartedly thank all my teachers, professors and friends and that one incident for motivating me towards a better self everyday.

Back to the present, this journey as a student interested towards public speaking gave me a few life lessons.

They are:

• Either on-stage or in life, try to break the barriers of fears and start taking initiation. It works like a charm in shaping up you into a confident person.
• Every incident,appreciation and rejection has it's own lesson in store. Grab it !
• Working a bit on your passion (or) interest always makes you active, by which you can handle many unknown situations with double amount of confidence and internal happiness.
• Practice always helps to perform better, either for speeches or for some expected situations. PRACTICE LIKE YOU'VE NEVER WON AND PERFORM LIKE YOU'VE NEVER LOST 
• SPONTANEITY becomes a savior many times in life and on-stage. To improve it, EXPOSURE and OBSERVATION play a predominant role. Just start observing the situations,people around you and start exposing yourself for new challenges, meet people of same interests and different age-groups also!(It can help you a lot for updating yourselves). What else can be a better teacher than experiences!?
• It is not about right or wrong. It is all about PERSPECTIVE. Generally in any speech, both sides of the coin are touched to give a generalized solution or message. In the same way , try to have an equal balance of thoughts on both sides of the scenario to get a proper solution.
• To be a speaker, be a listener first. Be open to listen the thoughts, consider the feedback of others with positivity to improvise your grip on any topic(or) situation.
• Starting your speech and day with a  SMILE spreads positive vibes to you and the people around you. So, try to handle any situation with smile ( Excluding some exceptional cases! :P)
• A speech becomes successful with the combination of facts and principles. Similarly, our life becomes better and happier with the balance of brain and heart.
• Keep your unique flavor of charm and never lose your originality . This will give a different level of confidence and attention, which can eventually gain you a recognition.
• Living in the moment can make you feel contented and happier, either on-stage or in life.

These are few mantras I've observed from my few experiences and I am excited to share more life mantras which I will be learning in future. And yes, I will try to give few tips on how to overcome the stage fright and about oratory in the coming posts. For now I will have my cookies! :D

Until the next post,

Manasa Nidamarthi.