Power Speaking: Confidence and Cowardice
Word count: 1500
Answer the following questions:
- What is the cause of self-consciousness?
- How does moderate excitement affect you?
- What are the two fundamental requisites for the acquiring of self-confidence? Which is the more important?
- What effect does confidence on the part of the speaker have on the audience?
- Write out a two-minute speech on “Confidence and Cowardice.”
Power Speaking:
Consciousness is among the philosophical techniques of how different people reason about themselves. It creates a sense of awareness of the surrounding. Self-consciousness is the extension of the state of consciousness to oneself. It strengthens and talks more of what’s inside the person. In the case of self-consciousness, one is made aware of their inside part even the small issues other people may not see or understand an adolescent is seen as the most appropriate time for people to realize and exercise their self-consciousness highly (Blanke, O. et al 2015).
Self-consciousness is caused by unpreparedness of the speaker and lack of previous knowledge of the subject, which makes them feel guilty and ashamed of wasting their audience time. It is sometimes accompanied by pride and shyness such that the person cannot stand and say something formally in front of an audience (Roerink et al 2015). This can result to disappointments among the presenters which may discourage them from participating again. On the other hand, self-consciousness can positively transform one’s self-esteem and develop their identity hence give them courage since they get a good test of their abilities and understanding.
Self-consciousness is also caused by how we understand our responsibilities and obligations, goals and standards for completing a certain task before us. It normally comes into one’s mind whenever they have a certain role to play, which may involve audience or their friends. Whenever they imagine on how to undertake it, now the question burns in their heads asking them who they are and how they would look like in front of people. With this feeling of oneself, a sense of self-consciousness is developed. It is proved beyond doubt that high levels of self-conscious are mostly developed among the youth at the adolescent stage as this is the time they realize who they are and start experiencing high levels of pressure, especially from the social dimension.
Another feature that always affects presenters whenever they are on the stage is the excitement. This may be referred to as the mental arousal of one’s feelings which extends the conditions to the whole body to such a point where it can’t be controlled. It is also compared to the butterflies in the stomach as there is always an unsettled condition among the participants. Excitement may generally be defined as that state of physiological arousal.
Moderate excitement is always temporary and has a great impact on both the speaker and the audience since an excited speaker will automatically excite the audience and generally make them lively. This drives them to a state of stability such that everyone feels comfortable. Excitement also affects both the presenter and the audience in making them more likely to take actions due to the provision of perfect conditions in the body and this applies most in the case of marketing where customers get convinced to make purchases from the feeling and pleasure given to them (Oda, S., & Shirakawa, K. (2014).
This type of physical arousal increases the heartbeat, resulting in increased activity of the overall nervous system, which enables the brain to send signals for the production of body hormones. Excitement affects people’s emotions making them powerful and granting some authority which mostly affects their decision making process and mechanisms applied in judging issues. Those under the influence of excitement are likely to make decisions even without much thinking and thus they sometimes end up making the wrong decisions. It can take up to 20 minutes for the excitement spirit to pass (Burza et al 2016).
Self-confidence cannot be achieved just by a single day but it takes a process to be attained. There are two fundamental requirements which are very vital in acquiring self-confidence in order to be in a position to stand and give a speech in front of people, May it be motivational or for marketing purposes. Before going before the audience, one must be prepared psychologically and physically in a recommendable attire as well as having full knowledge of the previous topic/subject which will not portray bad reputation to the listeners (Epstein, S. (2013).
The first fundamental requirement for acquiring self-confidence is expecting success after preparing for it. Actually after thorough preparation, one should not be afraid of anything rather than expecting good results from the overall performance. One should have hope and automatically erase the feeling of failure from their minds, practicing the highest level of humility before the audience. Over-confidence leads to destruction and the audience may get annoyed to the extent of not answering questions as asked to them by the speaker.
The second requirement is the assumption of mastery over one’s audience where the speaker will assume that what they are talking about is very positive and benefiting all the audience even if it is not the case. This strengthens the capacity of argument by the speaker and the direction of the speech in general. In this case, the speaker should always put into consideration speaking the truth so as not to lead the audience astray. Make sure that your courage can’t be confronted by the audience under whichever circumstances. Self-confidence requires one to enhance pauses in between the speech to give listeners room for meditation.
The most important requirements between the two discussed above is that of confidently expecting to be successful as this increases the excitement and enables the speaker fell relaxed and free when giving the speech. They are very sure that what they are doing is benefiting every listener in the audience group. They also have total faith that the decisions they make are always good and not externally altered (Seyfarth, S. (2014).
Confidence on the part of the speaker enables the audience to believe what is being spoken about by the speaker. The audience needs all the focus, maintenance of eye speaker-audience contact playing a major role during the transmission of ideas from the speaker to the audience. A confident and presentable speaker before the audience will initially capture the attention of the audience even before saying anything. They will, therefore, expect much even before it is spoken to them from the way they see the courageous speaker who is fully prepared with the message in front of them. Speaker’s confidence enables the audience to easily believe what is being taught to them even if it’s not true and they are easily convinced and persuaded by the decisions made by the speaker without hesitation (Jiang & Pell, 2015).
Confidence and cowardice
There are two basic aspects which determine the success or failure of a speaker in different ways. The speaker may be a coward such that they fear or are unable to stand in front of people and say something of substance to them, or be very confident in such a way whenever they go before the audience they are fully composed and able to deliver as per their audience’ expectations. Confidence simply means the feeling of self-assurance that what someone does is good and beneficial to them as well as their audience. It is accompanied by a feeling of certainty where fear is not the portion of the speaker (Mathew & Boyd, 2014).
Both confidence and cowardice are experienced and witnessed in public speaking for they portray themselves interchangeably, meaning that where there no confidence, cowardice is prevailing. They are directly opposite words which signify the condition of the speaker while in front of the audience. Coward people stand in front of an audience to discuss lies that even an old person will realize that they are lies and vow not to listen to such kind of speakers again whereas, for the case of confident people, they stand to testify the truth of the matter, justifying through various solid examples. (Wadlington, 2015).
Cowardice limits the speaker from sharing what they have to the audience and this leads to the reduction of the audience attention and after all they term the speech as boring. They normally come to give speeches they have not practiced, even without the knowledge of the previous business. Most of the coward leaders always claim that they are not ready and did not know whether they will be expected to give a speech or even they pretend to have forgotten about the event.
References
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