It’s been a while since I’ve spoken about “Overcoming the Fear of Speaking Up or Public Speaking.”

I believe all of us want to use our voice for something. Without fear, we would be speaking our truth and advocating for ourselves. We want to use our voice. I’ve never heard of someone telling me “no, I don’t want to be heard, I don’t want to use my voice.”

So what is it that is stopping us?

After working with a variety of clients – from newly promoted managers in their 20s to multi-millionaire entrepreneurs in their 50s-60s, I’ve identified the 2 key mistakes stopping them from speaking with authentic confidence.

And if you don’t think you’ve a fear of speaking up, then replace “speaking” with a challenge you’ve been harbouring for a while now. It could be:

• Posting your thoughts on LinkedIn
• Finally having that difficult conversation with your colleague, boss, or a loved one
• Starting that business you’ve been meaning to for years

Whatever it is, these 2 common mistakes apply.

Mistake 1: ❌ Jumping straight into techniques ❌

Many people treat fear of speaking as a skill-based issue. This is putting a band-aid over a wound with no in-depth analysis. The wound could worsen over time. 

See, many people think that the reason why they have fear of speaking is they don’t have enough practice. So they practise more. 

When the practice they do gets them some results, the results validate them enough to think that “more practice” is the solution. 

One day, a bigger challenge comes by that is something you didn’t practise for. Your fear response comes in to protect you, causing you to freeze, and you end up beating yourself up and shaming yourself. 

That is why… you need to:

✅ Identify real root reasons ✅

Get clear on what exactly is holding you back. Instead of assuming the reason, ask yourself “What’s my real fear here?”

99% of the time, what you believe is your fear isn’t your real fear. We will dig deep to identify the real reasons why you are stuck and grow from the inside out. 

Based on experience, the top 3 reasons that people fear speaking up is: 

1. Fear of failure – perhaps you’ve failed in public speaking before. 

Most of the time when we meet with failure, we are unable to deal with that pain, and to make ourselves feel better, we give ourselves excuses such as “You’re an introvert, that’s why you’re not good at speaking! It’s normal!” or “You just need to get more experience then you’ll speak with more confidence!” 

Overtime, these excuses become our beliefs, ingrained into us. Holding on to such beliefs hold us back from speaking up TODAY. 

2. Fear of judgement 

Perhaps because of the culture you’ve been brought up in, saving face is important. 

Perhaps you’ve been scolded for speaking up innocently as a child. 

Perhaps you’ve showed up authentically before and it has brought you suffering – you’ve been bullied or outcast. 

And even if none of the above has happened to you, research has shown that as humans we are WIRED to want to fit in. 

Throughout the 3.5 billion years of life on earth, the ecosystem constantly changed and only the fittest survived. We had to fight against stronger carnivores. Therefore, humans had to form a group and do everything to stay in the group to survive.

And even though we no longer have dangers like the killer carnivores, we are wired to want to fit in to feel safe. And perhaps that need for safety and fitting in is magnifying your fear of judgement, holding you back from speaking up as yourself. 

3. Fear of Being Wrong

f you’re someone who has been brought up in a way where you’re told what is the right path to follow, right thing to say, right way to act… there’s a high chance you’re afraid of being wrong.

You may end up playing safe by sticking to what an authority figure says, and so you find it hard to speak up for yourself. OR if you are the “authority figure” in your team/ workplace, then perhaps you believe you need to always be right, since that was what we observed since our childhood days – our teachers and parents never showed weakness and seemed to know it all. This belief could further magnify your fear of being wrong.

As such, you may find it hard to speak when you don’t have a script perfectly written or a framework to follow.

Do you resonate with any of these fears? 

If so, what we’ll need to do is to 

✅ Neurologically rewire the beliefs and patterns that direct your thoughts, words and actions ✅ 

Whatever beliefs you’ve been holding on to has served you to become the person you are today. 

But in order to evolve BEYOND the person you are, you’ll need to think, speak, and act differently. We need to identify what are the beliefs that serve you, amplify them, and identify the beliefs that DON’T serve you, so we rewrite them. 

Mistake 2: ❌ Not having the habit of self-reflection ❌

When you don’t do well in public speaking, or anything for that matter — you may try to forget that it happened, so you don’t feel so terrible about yourself 

What we see as mistakes and failures are actually great opportunities for self-reflection. 

✅ Master the Skill of Self-Coaching ✅

Self-Coaching is the process of guiding your own growth and development, including 

• holding space for yourself to feel your emotions and process your thoughts, 
• identify your limiting beliefs, 
• expand your perspective to see possibilities instead of problems 
• deciding on inspired action steps 

Success is determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself. The reason why we are stuck is because we see a limited perspective. You want to learn how to ask yourself the powerful questions to coach yourself into seeking fresh new perspectives. To learn how to coach yourself into befriending fear.

One of my coachees, Lis, had an insurmountable fear of public speaking, she literally would tremble and shake when she thought of speaking. 

“I’m an introvert, I am just this way” – was what she thought.

As we dug deeper, we realised the root cause was so much deeper — she was shut down by her mom when she was a child, which created a belief in her that “I am not good enough, my opinions aren’t good enough.”

After healing that part in “Rewire Beliefs” as part of the Own Your Voice Methodology, she’s went on to embody a new, empowering belief that she IS worthy.

Now, she speaks with so much more conviction, she’s even started her own book club, speaking and facilitating a group, allowing her to use her voice to facilitate conversations around topics she is passionate about.

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Look, if you are reading this, you definitely have dreams. You are hungry to learn and you’re working towards your evolution. And if you’ve been constantly hitting walls, I want you to know that I GET IT. Truly. For YEARS I’ve chased bigger and bigger stages – as an emcee, as a wannabe social media influencer, I’ve wanted to feel confident, only to realise that the external things I’ve been doing to build my confidence will not create lasting results.

What I needed to do was the inner work. I needed to identify the root reasons as to WHY I kept getting stuck in a shameful loop, and neurologically rewire the beliefs and patterns that kept directing my thoughts, words and actions in my tiring and toxic cycle.

The beliefs you’re holding on to has served you so far. They’ve made you the person you are today. Acknowledge them. Be grateful for them. They’ve protected you, kept you safe, and pushed you towards your goals for as far as you are now.

But in order to evolve BEYOND our current state, we’ll have to evolve our beliefs. Your current thoughts have created your current reality. When you change (or expand) your thoughts, you’ll create a new reality beyond your wildest dreams. And I’m so excited for you if you’re planning to do the work to make that happen 🙂