The first time I spoke in front of an audience was back in college when I had the chance to teach computer skills at a private school to earn some extra cash. Fast forward many years and I have given thousands of talks around the world in 3 languages. Four years ago, after extensive Neuroscience training, I started to coach people for their public speaking engagements and I was immediately hooked! There is SO MUCH room for improvement even with the most seasoned speakers. All those years led me to develop a great amount of notes and methods, but this information was always locked within the confines of my private sessions. Now I started to record some of these learnings in Youtube videos, and publishing a newsletter, but I am not sure if there is really an audience out there that would be interested. What do you all think?

I wanted to share my story in the hope that this will be helpful to someone. This is the story of how I botched probably the most important presentation of my life ... and how I recovered from it.

It was 2018 and I had to deliver a 15 minute long speech at the World Public Speaking championships in Cape Town, South Africa. This was probably the most important presentation of my life -- I had to speak in front of an audience of hundreds of the best public speakers in the world (not to mention that I was spending my own money on the airfare to go there).

When I got up to speak for my first round ... I froze. My mind went totally blank. I couldn’t even remember the first word of my speech. And the more I spoke, the worse it got. I started stumbling over my words. I felt that red-hot flush of humiliation. By the end of the speech (which felt like the longest 15 minutes of my life) I was holding back tears. I was convinced I had let myself down completely. I felt like a total impostor. What business did I have being at worlds?

There was a two-day gap before my next round, so I locked myself in a room and repeated the speech over and over again. The first few runs were horrible. Every time I spoke, I could envision myself in that room again where I couldn't finish my sentences. And I'd feel just as anxious as I had previously.

But something magical started to happen around the fifth / sixth time I repeated the speech. I began to feel what actors call a “through-line,” an inner sense of the arc of the story. Up until now, I had never felt this before. I wasn’t just memorizing; I was embodying the speech. Slowly but surely, I started to feel the words I was saying.

Two days later, I stepped onto the stage to deliver the speech again ... and it turned out to be the best speech I’d ever given. I felt invincible when speaking. I ended up ranking second place overall in the speech category at the World Championships.

Here’s what I learned from that experience:

Confidence comes from repetition. I'll say it again because it's so important: confidence comes from repetition. If you have a presentation and you want to do well, you need to rehearse it fully at least 10 times -- more if you can. Find an empty room. Walk around the room talking to yourself (it's okay if you look crazy). Deliver the presentation as if to a real audience. Don't ever show the audience your "first draft"!

At first, you’ll fumble. You might feel out of sync. But with each repetition, you’ll start to feel the "through-line." Once you feel it, that's when the magic happens. You’ll feel the ideas flowing naturally, and that’s when you know you’re ready to speak in public.

If this resonated with you, I'm hosting a free online workshop this week on Wednesday (7pm ET) about speaking confidence. Samples of topics I'll cover:

• Techniques for improving at impromptu speaking
• How to build confidence when speaking in public
• Daily practices you can implement right now to get better at speaking
• Getting rid of filler words

If you’re interested, fill out this form. And don’t be intimidated - we’re all here to learn! I'm happy to answer any questions over DMs or in the comments, so feel free to reach out.

I became inspired by Simon Sinek and Vinh Giang how powerful communication skills can help folks. But only way is to practice so started a communications MeetUp group. Some friends have asked for this offhand.

It's online and virtual, so if you want to join please sign up to the event:

Empower Your Voice: Communication Practice:

https://meetu.ps/e/NzSzS/GtFPj/i

Some times when I tell a personal story People think I'm too proud of myself while I don't want to show off and just want to share a story

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Hi there!

My life literally changed when I was placed in a new office, and I met a family of people who were incredibly skilled at communicating.

I told myself that this must have come from their upbringing or perhaps from someone who had "shaped" them well.

Then I saw something even more astonishing: a friend of mine is the girlfriend of the boy from this family, and over the last two years, she has changed a lot as well; she too seems to have acquired these communication skills that she didn't have before.

Of course, they had their pros and cons, but the positive things I noticed and would like to learn in my life are numerous. Here are a few to give you an idea:

• They are skilled at making you feel comfortable, getting you to share events from your life, and they excel in speaking, enunciating words, and body language. Every interaction with them is memorable.

And then there are the most important and striking things that impressed me greatly:

• They are excellent at reprimanding people without making them feel stupid, very good at asserting their rights.

The reprimanding/scolding part is the best one I loved.

There were many flaws, of course; some of them, after skillfully extracting information, would gossip behind people's backs, but this is a trait I would not want to learn.

Guys, now, I am not a native English speaker; I am Italian, and I would really like to know what kind of upbringing these people have had and if I can learn to be like them.

Hello everybody I've got a question regarding communication. I just come off a phone call with a friend. And it appears that in reality the way I (and think how I) communicate is way off of what is being perceived by the other person/listener. My friends feedback was that the way I talk is like a diary entry and - to my surprise - I'm not getting involved in emotional aspects during the dialogue. For example: diving deeper and asking questions when something emotional/personal has been said (and to be honest I don't notice exactly when it would be appropriate to ask further questions or when I do believe its the right timing, it appears that I ask the wrong questions and/or ask about the wrong part of what has been said). Furthermore this is something which has been said to me quite often and I tried really hard over the years to analyse what has been said as well of what I say to get more involved in the conversation and make the other person feel seen. It appears, the people I talk to, don't feel seen and that is sad. As well I was told that I don't share much about myself even though I thought I did. I'm an enigma I was told. As well as when the person shares something, that my response is, that I share a similar situation from my personal life/experience - I so thought that this is a way of showing empathy but it appears this is not the case! I'm lost to be honest. Why is my communication so off? Even though I make an effort for it to be not "not welcoming" or awkward. Any tips or tricks? Or somebody having similar issues? Anyway, thank you for reading. Much love.

I don't know how to talk to them due to my lack of communication skills and the fact that I only see them roughly once every 3 years not including phone calls that I've joined in. My grandma is in the early stages of dementia and has cancer that makes us think she won't make it too next year and I want to be able to talk too her. What do I do?

Hey everyone! I'm writing this post because I've been facing few problems.

1. first is " I have a habit of speaking fast." because of which the new people i meet cant comprehend everything. how do I improve that!

2. My friends have told me When I'm trying to talk to someone who is above in hierarchy to voice up/stand for myself or someone else.

They always tell me to mind my tone because the tone sounds very Authoritative and it's not because I'm demanding something from them but because i speak with very few words (few words which are sharp & logical/reasonable hope you get my point)

So How do I learn to talk in Formal situations and I am very intrigued by eloquence How do i learn that!

Thank you! also do tell me what do you think of my personality based on this!

The title may be silly, but there's a reason for it. I'm almost at the end of my undergrad in communications and I've been pretty set on getting a PHD in the field. However, I just finished up a Media and Technology communication course and the ENTIRE course was based on, and presented through, the lens of Marxism and Marxists. Every piece of reading started off by saying the theories are Marxists and the author identified themselves as Marxists. Little of the curriculum was about communications and most was about Marxist economic theory and activism. The last one was an article calling for the "Marxist radicalization of communications scholars and academia." I'm really not interested in getting a PHD to become, or propagate Marxism.

Also, I'm not really keen on working in academia. I'd prefer to consult corporations and political campaigns, run my own PR firm, write books, build a substack audience and so on... How necessary would it be to get a PHD in communications to do these things?

Thanks all!

My girlfriend (33F) and I (29M) recently returned from an international trip, during which we discovered a simple but effective way to communicate how we feel about doing specific activities. Both of us tend to be pleasers, always wanting the other to be happy, but this sometimes leads to us doing things that one of us would have preferred to skip. For example, we went on a two-hour hike where I was fine either way (rated it a 2 on our scale), but she was likely at a 0, meaning she really didn’t want to do it. This type of situation used to lead to one of us feeling uncomfortable or unhappy, but now we have a quick, easy way to share our feelings.

We created a simple number scale, 0-3, to express our willingness to do something:

• 0: I don't want to do this.
• 1: I'd prefer not to, but I’ll do it if it’s really important to you.
• 2: I’m indifferent. I’d enjoy it but wouldn’t be sad to skip it.
• 3: I really want to do this.

And my girlfriend added a fun twist: -1 means "If you make me do this, I will kill you."

This scale has made it so much easier for us to communicate honestly and quickly. It helps avoid misunderstandings, opens the floor for more conversation if needed, and ensures we're both comfortable with our decisions.

TL;DR: My girlfriend and I created a simple 0-3 scale to communicate how much we want (or don't want) to do specific activities. It helps us quickly and honestly share our feelings, avoiding misunderstandings and making sure we're both comfortable with our decisions.

Helloo public speaking community of Reddit! I'm Adithya. When I started off speaking, I really struggled with low confidence. I would freeze up in front of people and run out of things to say after 10 seconds. I'd constantly get very intense feelings of panic before I spoke in front of crowds.

But with the right training, I qualified for the Canadian National Debate Team just two years later. That same year, I was the Harvard World Schools debate champion and ranked top 10 individually in the world debate championships.

I have a genuine love for teaching and bringing communities together. I see a lot of questions on this subreddit about speaking confidence, removing filler words, preparing speeches, etc. - I'll be answering all of these and more through a series of free online workshops I’ll be hosting this month.

Samples of topics I'll cover:

• Techniques for improving at impromptu speaking
• How to build confidence when speaking in public
• Daily practices you can implement right now to get better at speaking
• Getting rid of filler words

If you’re interested, fill out this form. And don’t be intimidated - we’re all here to learn! I'm happy to answer any questions over DMs or in the comments, so feel free to reach out.

My(m34) husband(m36) is a very smart and caring man

A difficulty he has is over-explaining Depending on the context it can range from harmless, helpful, annoying, condescending/patronizing, or hovering

We had an argument last night And while trying to resolve the specifics of the situation, I took a step back to try and help him see his attempts at communication weren’t working

I told him roughly ‘when your conversation partner gets this much information, it can overwhelm, confuse and often his own point gets lost in it

He responded by over-explaining why he isn’t over explaining That he insists all that info is needed (it’s not), and that’s just how he processes

I tried to explain to him his process internally is fine, but communication is a two way street, and the repeated outcome I see for him even aside from myself, is it isn’t working

It didn’t get through It devolved into him hairsplitting specifics and just not engaging in the larger view of his communication and instead focusing on specifics of individual situations or arguments

TLDR: my husband is caring and means well but cannot see the forest for the trees and needs to go through a whole forward and prologue just to tell you or ask you something that really only needs a single sentence

when we are in conflict it becomes circular and makes me want to tear my hair out I’m fucking exhausted

I have a former boss whos on matternity leave that I really like, and my new boss whos covering her is also great. Today, I sent a message to former boss saying that “theres a big hole where she was sitting, people can always do out job but you cant cover someone whos great to be around!”

I meant like, people cant be replaced- but didnt mean to say my new boss is not good, cause hes great as well. She replied “ sorry to hear that”, which cause me to wonder if she thought I was bad mouthing current boss, which I am not! I then sent another message saying that I really like new boss as well, etc.

But can you give me a feedback if my previous message was badly written?

Hi Everyone!

I will be teaching interpersonal communication as a Junior/Senior class next year. Every class in my master's degree and bachelor's degree related to communications was... lackluster. It mostly consisted of reading the textbook and answering questions. I am hoping to make this more relevant to students and teach it in a more hands-on way. Does anyone have ideas for activities/content for this class? FYI, Teachers Pay Teachers has very few resources for this

hello. so… i’ve been in this long distance situationship? with a girl i know from years ago, we met through the internet in our adolescence, we had our ups and downs, there were periods of time where we didn’t speak, so basically we started speaking more frequently a year ago and both of us had been learning about each other, also realizing and accepting the others personality cause we have change a lot since our teenage years, that’s the normal thing to happen in life.

the thing is that she is a very sensitive person and i can be very straightforward with the way i communicate or try to talk about certain topics. i am a direct person but i am not rude. i’m always trying to express what i think with absolute respect and also trying to take her perspective and matters into consideration, but it’s an issue when we need to talk about stuff and she feels hurt by the way i said things or if i don’t agree with her she feels like she’s bothering me. i’ve told her that we can have different opinions about things and it wouldn’t be a bad thing, we cannot be on the same page all the time. what happens is that the subject we need to talk is forgotten because she focus if i hurt her or not. it’s a big issue in our bond cause i feel like, whatever i do, even if i’m being careful even if straightforward, she’s just not having it. i dont know how to deal with this situation anymore cause i’m in therapy, i’m working on my boundaries, in the way i express myself (cause until not so long ago i was very passive and just adjust myself to the others wishes, but i’ve found a respectful and direct way of communicating and i feel great that way) so this is really something that i don’t know how to deal with

other important thing to mention is that she’s complains about me not being more affectionate and stuff, but we are in a long distance situation. people that know me in real life know that i’m not always just direct or “intimidating” i like to support and be with my people if they need it, but since she only knows me through internet, she can just see a part of me? and as i said, she’s always complaining or confronting me by being the way i am and the way i am not

Hi, someone recommended some system of email writing that simplified thoughts to look up, but I don’t remember what it was called. If this reminds any of you of something you’ve heard of, please let me know thank you!

Hello all, ive been having some trouble recently.

1. how do i help comfort an individual? Whenever one of my friends or siblings gets hurt i wanna help them but i just can't and it makss me feel like a bad friend.

2. how do i say what i think? ever since i joined ny special ed class i have had problems saying what i think, i overthink hiw the ither people would feel and end up saying nothing, or when i have a complaint i just cant say it.

tldr: I want to be able to talk with supervisors/managers/bosses and be able to resolve conflicts without cracking under pressure

So this is something that happened to me over the summer. I am currently a college student and I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to work with a PhD student in the lab. But during the experience I messed up a lot and big time. Eventually it got to the point where we were gonna have a ‘talk’ at the end of the week about if my role was right for me. Originally I was planning to accept responsibility for all my mistakes and try to tell her that I would do my best to improve and ask her questions about things I didn’t understand. However once the meeting started I just kinda froze and cracked under the pressure. In the end I basically just ran away. I didn’t really get what I wanted to say across and I just kinda accepted that I would just leave my position. I’ve been thinking about what happened for the last several months, and I realized the same thing happened in high school when I was working at Subway. When my manager gave me too many hours I kinda just quit with the excuse that school was getting busy. I guess my question is how do I talk with my superiors and not crack?

I don’t get this one. I was arguing with someone that I wanted to pursue a certain hobby and they hated the idea of me doing that hobby and basically banned me from doing it but when I said no I want to do it they basically gave up and said ‘go do this thing I don’t care’ I’m trying to understand what this means or what it is in terms of type of communication

So I work out a lot and I’m quite strong now but I want to get stronger in the future too and when I talk to my male friend about my progress he always says “you are going to be strong” they say this even though they have acknowledged my current strength. What is happening here?

When I get nervous my mind goes blank. I probably couldn’t tell you my name at times.

What causes someone to just stop responding? A long time ago (like 8 years ago) I became close friends with this guy that lives in Mexico, we met online and we talked a lot to help him practice speaking English and also to help me practice Spanish. He was always very busy and sometimes we wouldn’t talk for a long period of time and then we would pick back up after. We recently reconnected and he seemed very enthusiastic about building a friendship again and asked me a lot of questions about my life and told me a lot about what he has going on his life. He is a lawyer in Mexico and he said he really wants to get serious about being fluent in English because it would help him connect with high profile clients. He offered up many topics that he would love to talk to me about. And told me he spends a lot of his time watching American tv shows and writing down new English phrases and expressions. He is very busy so he would only respond once a day or every 2 days but he would bring many topics to discuss and I was excited to talk about them! But then out of nowhere he just stopped responding and we haven’t talked since, it’s been almost 2 weeks. Idk if it’s weird and i’m overthinking it? It just seemed like a weird time to cut communication. What would be a reasonable explanation for this? Is he just busy or do you think he isn’t interested in communicating? Should I reach out or just leave it and see what happens?

Recently, I’ve realized that my goodwill has been taken advantage of on several occasions. A few months ago, someone at work who is a pathological liar and a clinical narcissist sensed my vulnerability during a stressful moment and manipulated me. I ended up shouting at them in front of everyone, which damaged my image. I’m unsure how to approach toxic people with calmness and, more importantly, what kind of language or phrases I should use. Most of the time, I feel that avoiding communication with them altogether is best, but there will be situations where I have no choice. When I try to set boundaries, they seem to push for even more closeness, and I don't want to respond with fake kindness. I’d appreciate some examples of the type of language and sentences I could use in such situations.

We’ve all been there—too many notifications and too little clarity. The average worker receives 121 emails per day (source: Radicati Group), not to mention chat messages, alerts, and meetings. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But here’s the thing: it’s not about stopping notifications, it’s about designing better systems. Every message should serve a purpose, every notification should add value.

Here’s how:

1. Create separate channels for different types of communication (quick chats, deep discussions).
2. Turn off notifications during focused work hours—give people the time to think.
3. Use email for non-urgent matters; instant messaging for real-time collaboration.

The key is intent. Not every conversation is urgent, and not every notification needs immediate action. Could less communication actually lead to more productivity?

I’ve been told I’m an over communicator, meaning I ramble and overall just speak inefficiently (specifically, I use too many words). Any recommendations for books, online courses, or groups that could help me work on this? I looked into toastmasters but I don’t think that’s a fit for me right now.