Dale Carnegie said in his book: “You can't feel confident unless you know what you are going to say.” Preparing to give a talk is also a good way to increase your confidence, because preparation is half the battle.

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<\/p><\/div>"} 1 Have a strong and persistent desire to speak in public. You need to have a positive attitude toward speaking in public instead of trying to avoid any assignments, requests or invitations that involve some sort of public speaking, such as speaking at birthdays, employee gatherings or the like. Start with the strong belief that you have what it takes to speak in public, and look forward to achieving more confidence after every public speaking engagement.

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<\/p><\/div>"} 2 Find a topic. Dale Carnegie in his book “The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking” encourages us to: “Talk about something you have earned the right to talk about through experience or study.” Dig inside yourself to find the topic you want to talk about. It is the one that you know thoroughly, inside out. It includes your experiences, your hobbies, your expertise, and things that you have been studying deeply. These are the right topics for you.

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<\/p><\/div>"} 3 Assemble and arrange your ideas. Many times, the topic you choose (or are assigned) is too general. You need to narrow it to become an appropriate base for your talk. For example, if your topic is automotive, you can narrow it to one of many aspects related to this topic: car design, fuel consumption, machine power, potential markets, potential buyers, or how to sell a car. Which aspect is suitable for you depends on your experience, training, education, and your background. Collect all the ideas that you want to talk about and put them on index cards. This will make it easier for you to arrange and organize your thoughts.

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<\/p><\/div>"} 4 Structure your talk. Once you decide what you want to talk about, you need to arrange or structure your thoughts in easy to understand flows of thought. When organizing your message, think in threes. Such as: “Three Steps to…”, “Three Keys of …” or “Three ideas on…”. It makes your talk concise, interesting and memorable. Can we talk more than three ideas? Yes, we can. But it will be easier for us to remember three points, instead of five, for instance.