“The brain is a wonderful thing. It never stops functioning from the time you're born until the moment you stand up to make a speech.”
- Herbert V Prochnow and Herbert V Prochnow Jnr
Let’s face it, there are really very few people in the world who can step up in front of a large crowd and not have every single thought in their heads fly away. The truth of the matter is that most of us dread having to face any kind of gathering, be it large or small and have to address them.
This at least in my mind, is a refined kind of torture. You know you have to do it, you know there’s no way that you can get out of it barring your falling off a cliff without the benefit of a bungee chord or a hang-glider, and you know that unless you do it right, this day, this moment will more than likely come back to haunt for the rest of your living years.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If we dig deeper we’ll find that public speaking of any kind is a terror all by itself. In most cases it surpasses even our fear of heights, of closed in spaces, or spiders, or snakes, or being alone.
In short, making a public announcement of any sort is for a great many people, just one step short of meeting the devil. For other people, besides those of you who are wondering what on earth I’m talking about and who actually like public speaking, it is akin to having all your worst fears come true, all at once.
That of course, is just the beginning. We could go on and on about what drives these fears of public speaking, but since I am most definitely not Freud, and since I definitely have no desire whatsoever to spend my time trying to figure out what makes me tick, I feel that we can safely leave that up to the experts.
And now if I’ve scared you enough on the aspects of public speaking, we might get down to what this book is really about – dealing with your fear of public speaking! Actually that was just a joke. You didn’t read the title incorrectly. We will instead be taking a look at wedding speeches and toasts.
And if that scares you because you have to give one in just under an hour, I have only one question to ask you: what are you doing reading the introduction? You should be looking at the speeches instead!
There is truly nothing as bad as going up in front of large gathering of expectantly waiting people to find that you have no idea what to say, so get cracking and start flipping through the various ideas in the book.
