Exercises to improve your communication skills
Improve your body language Sometimes we define ourselves as introverts or extroverts people; extroverts are the ones who can speak to anyone in any moment, introverts are those who, on the other hand, find it harder to start a conversation… and introverts say “they’re not good at talking” but, I swear that if you put someone with the same interests in front of this person, things change and suddenly they just have a lot of things to say. So probably its not that you’re introvert, but maybe you haven’t found the way to feel comfortable in different situations… and some good news is that communication is a skill, and it can be trained! So here some exercises you can start doing to improve those skills Exercise 1: Practice active listening Good communication is not always about knowing what to say, it’s about knowing how to listen. It’s sound incredibly obvious, but you might get surprised by how often we’re actually preparing our next answer instead of actually just listening, so then when you’re having a conversation with someone, just listen, pay attention to their words, their tone and to what they’re actually telling you. Exercise 2: Tell a Story in One Minute Here we dive more into actual exercises you can do by yourself. So, you’re gonna choose something that happened to you recently and give yourself exactly one minute to tell the story… so, what’s the challenge here? It has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. This exercise makes you decide what information is actually important instead of just adding a ton of unnecessary details. So set a timer, tell the story, and at the end, ask yourself if your story was clear enough. Exercise 3: Explain Something in a Simple Way In this one, you’ll choose something that you know really well, any theme you want to later on, explain it to someone that doesn’t know absolutely nothing about it. Don’t use very complicated words or assume the other person already understands what you mean. Exercise 4: Speak Without Preparing This one is interesting!! So, you are going to choose a random topic and talk about it for one minute but without preparing anything, just start talking. This exercise helps you to feel more comfortable organizing your thoughts in the moment instead of needing to prepare every single word before speaking. You might get stuck. You might repeat yourself. You might have absolutely no idea where your sentence is going, but that’s part of the exercise! Just keep going Exercise 5: Pay Attention to Your Body Stand in front of a mirror or record yourself speaking for one minute, but this time, don’t focus only on what you’re saying instead, look at how you’re saying it: are you making eye contact? Are your arms crossed? Are you moving your hands naturally? Are you speaking loudly enough? Your body is communicating even when you’re not saying anything, the goal isn’t to control every movement you make, it’s just to become aware of what your body is communicating along with your words. Honestly, communication is a skill, not a personality thing. It’s all about how you listen, how you communicate your ideas and how comfortable you feel using your own ideas. Explore more exercises!
How to feel confident on camera
Talk to a camera as you are talking to someone Being in front of a camera can feel weird, you don’t know what to do with your hands, you become extremely aware of your face, your voice sounds strange, and somehow you forget how you normally talk. Yeah, I get it. I’m an actress, I’ve been in front of cameras many times, and I can still feel uncomfortable when I watch myself on screen. But here’s something I’ve learned: feeling confident on camera doesn’t necessarily means loving how you look on camera. It means learning to stop thinking about yourself and start focusing on what you’re doing; when you’re talking to your best friend, you’re probably not thinking about what your hands are doing, what angle your face is at, or whether your voice sounds weird… you’re just talking, but the second someone puts a camera in front of us, suddenly we become aware of everything: EVERYTHING: Where should I look? What do I do with my hands? Do I look weird? Why am I talking like that? And the more you think about yourself, the less natural you become. So the first thing you need to understand is that the camera is not necessarily the problem, sometimes, the problem is that we start watching ourselves instead of communicating. One of the biggest mistakes you can make on camera is trying too hard to look good, sound smart, or do everything “right” because then you stop being present. Instead of thinking about how you look, ask yourself what are you trying to communicate? If you’re recording a video, what do you want the person watching it to understand? If you’re acting, what do you want from the other person in the scene? If you’re presenting something, what is the message you actually want people to remember?… give your brain something more important to focus on than your hair, is like speaking in public, but in front of the camera. Don’t think about the hundreds of people who could watch your video, think about one person, so imagine you’re talking to your best friend, your mom, your sister, or whoever makes you feel comfortable… how would you explain this to them? The purpose is not to create the perfect video, the purpose is just to make the camera feel less unusual, because the more familiar something becomes, the less intimidating it feels. After all this, watch yourself. Yeah, its hard, I know that, but it’s this way you start noticing things you never did, and instead of looking “do I look good?” ask yourself “was I clear? Did I believe what I was saying?” You’re not watching yourself to criticize yourself, you’re watching yourself to learn, you just have to keep building confidence in front of the camera
How to overcome the fear of public speaking
Don’t wait to be ready to do it Public speaking is not always easy, actually, I’m sure that even the most professional TED speakers still struggle with it because it’s completely normal. We all feel nervous when we’re about to speak in public, no matter who we are. Even me, I’m an actress and I still feel extremely nervous every time I have to speak in public or even act, which is literally my job, actually, I have a professor who used to tell us, “If you’re about to go on stage and you don’t feel those nerves, or that little spark before going out there… quit, this is not for you anymore”, which is true. Now, why do we get nervous? It turns out that our body is that smart that always wants to protect us from anything that could go wrong, so it turns on all those risk alarms inside of us because of all the bad things that could happen: What if I say something wrong? What if I fall? What if they make fun of me?… and a thousand other different scenarios of everything that could go wrong. That’s when our body turns on all its alarms: we start sweating, we feel like we need to go to the bathroom, our heart beats as if we were about to die, we completely forget everything we had planned and, basically, it feels like the end of the world… I KNOW… CALM DOWN!! This is where a key moment comes in, and this can make all the difference. It’s the moment to calm your mind, quiet it, and focus on the present… start breathing, calmly… literally inhale and exhale slowly, and do it three times. You’ll notice that your body starts to calm down. Your heart, even though it’s still beating fast, is not going to jump out of your chest, you’ll stop sweating, and if you simply take those nerves and use them in your favor, you can turn them into energy to show confidence in front of your audience. Now, once you’re standing in front of them, stop thinking about how you, your hair, or your shirt looks, and focus on your audience! The only reason you should be standing in front of people presenting is because you want to teach them something… so focus on teaching your audience that. Look them in the eyes, be dynamic, change your tone and your speaking speed… as if you were talking to your best friend about something! That makes you look confident and there’s where everything starts. Don’t expect to feel 100% confident before speaking in public, you’ll never feel that way, you’re never going to feel completely ready, but that’s where practice comes in, you can actually train with exercises to improve your communications skills. The more you practice, the more you’re present, and the more you know about that topic, the more you’ll learn how to control your nerves. Because the nerves will always be there. Just breathe, focus on your audience, walk to the front, and do it. That’s where it all starts. If you want to practice, keep building your confidence!