Throughout my career, I’ve given numerous speeches on various topics. As a result, people have often asked me how they can improve their public speaking skills.

I’ve spent a lot of time working on becoming a stronger public speaker. Practice and preparation are some of the most important things you can do to ensure your success for speaking in public, but there are many more things to add to your speaking arsenal that will help you captivate your audience.

I’ve gathered my top 10 easy tips for becoming better at public speaking for this blog series, How To Be a Great Speaker. With each tip, I’ll explore in detail how to become a confident, effective and powerful speaker.

Improving your confidence will help you engage your audience on a whole new level, empowering you to become a better speaker.

Tip 10: Believe You Can.

Confidence is usually the real barrier to success with speaking. As a reminder that I really am pretty good at speaking, I’ve put together a secret list of success stories about me.

I use instances where I was really nervous and then got positive feedback from others after the occasion. (Remember: You get more feedback when you ask for it than when you don’t!)

I ask a lot.  I keep this list of 5 instances where I was nervous and things turned out good enough. 

I manage my own expectations of myself: I don’t need to be perfect. I have friends who will support me whenever I ask. And I have my list of mini success stories. These tricks usually work to bring my confidence up. For anything tougher than that, I write on the sole of my heels, “YOU CAN DO ALL THINGS.”  This is a powerful reminder that my 8 year old taught me. Give it a shot. It works.