Fear of Speaking

Being an introvert, I find that I am more natural with books and the library. I was very self-conscious as a junior college student and kept to myself. I could spend hours at the school library as I love books on psychology and philosophy and did not dare to venture into public speaking. I was glad that my natural major was in Philosophy as I could spend hours at the university’s library on my research on writing. I chose the major because there was no group work for most of the modules.

Ironically, I took on jobs in social service and teaching which requires standing in front of groups of people or talking to people. The nature of such jobs require me to make a lot of pitching to people. I have to talk and talk and talk.

In my current job, I had to work more with human beings than books and computers. In fact, I could only retreat to story books and text books in their earlier part of the day. From the afternoon timing, I had to counsel, teach, advise and speak to people. It was such an abrupt change from my youth days.

Indeed, it was such a miracle that I am no longer stuttering like a Moses character when it comes to addressing potential problems faced at work. Speaking convincingly and intelligently does not come easy. It can take a decade to be a fish in water and not out of water when it comes to speaking.