Love vs. Fear: The essence of public speaking.

Public speaking.  As one who often prefers to be behind the scenes of leadership, I don't feel like I have much to say about it.  But something the presenter said really hit home with me: truly care about your audience.

She went on to apply caring about your audience to different situations.  Someone in the professional world who truly cares about their audience will be perfectly honest with them and not try to con them into a less-than-ideal business move.  Managers who truly care about their employees will speak to them with respect and do what's in their best interest.  Teachers who truly care about their students will speak to them in a way that helps them learn.

It's a simple thing, but really caring about your audience is a big deal.  In my current leadership role, I don't have to do much public speaking.  But when I do, it's easy to care about the audience when you think of them as your family.  At church everyone is my family, so speaking in church is the perfect venue to practice and get good at public speaking.

Public speaking is a major fear for people.  Love conquers fear.  Loving your audience is the perfect solution to being afraid of public speaking.

Just because I felt like I wasn't giving you enough, I googled "fear vs. love quotes" and found this cool article.  Here's part of it:

There are really only two emotions in the Physical Universe - those being LOVE and FEAR. All other emotions are just variations on these two primary states of emotion. LOVE is the emotion associated with a 'knowing' that everything in the Universe is an expression of a singularity (i.e. God) and is therefore interconnected, whereas FEAR is the emotion underlying the perception (i.e. illusion) of being separate from God. The following article compares these two states of consciousness.

LOVE is an expression of the Oneness that underlies all reality associated with a deep felt knowing that everything is an expression of Source and that nothing (no-thing) can exist outside Source. By contrast, FEAR is rooted in the illusory perception of separation that pervades the Physical Universe.

LOVE expresses itself as an urge towards unity, whereas FEAR is a result of the perception of dis-unity that is part and parcel to God's game of separation that defines the Physical Universe. (i.e. The 'them' versus 'me' syndrome associated with the isolation currently experienced by most humans)

-Alex Paterson

I think the fear of public speaking results from this "them versus me" syndrome.  When we allow love to conquer this warped perception and view ourselves on the same team as everyone we're talking to, then the fear dissipates.  The end.