This is a persuasive speech assignment submitted as part of a course requirement for Advanced Presentation Skills I (CCM715) of the Public Relations-Corporate Communications program at Seneca College.
Hello everyone.
Let me first thank Seneca School of Media for inviting me to speak, and Ted for that kind introduction. Coming from my former professor who taught me a great deal how to write and deliver a speech, I cannot be more nervous than I am now.
And how that brings me right into my topic: Fear. Yes, I will talk about fear, not its medical or scientific concepts, but the emotional and mental construct of fear that we can overcome.
Just speaking about it now, I am already facing and overcoming one of my fears - that is speaking in front of an audience.
Who would have thought that this journalist who practically breathed through a microphone in the last decade interviewing and reporting in front of a camera fears public speaking? It’s one thing to do it for a job, but it’s not the same doing it for myself or as me.
Here’s what I mean when I say that. When I have a news story to write with a deadline to beat, I will do whatever it takes to ask my question. Whether that will be shouting my question out loud to get the attention of a president in an ambush interview, or be holed up with military rebels or a terrorist group in a place that is about to be assaulted.
But I will never put my hand up to volunteer to deliver a speech or let alone present in class.
Speaking before you now, have I overcome that fear already? Maybe, or maybe not. But I am facing it so I know I am overcoming it.
As I said, I will not attempt to explain the medical or theoretical abstracts of fear. But I will
speak of the practical notions of an emotional reaction to threat or harm, whether real or
imagined. And this I will speak from my own story of how I overcame some of my fears.
We can overcome fear at its source - the mind. This is how I do it : I face it, process it, and talk about it. And in my experience, fear presented itself in three ways: after the fact, during, and before the fact.
First, the fear of the after-effect. This fear comes after doing or going through something. It’s
an after-thought kind of fear. In my job as a journalist then, there were so many of this kind of
fear that would make me shudder at the thought that I could have died in that news coverage, or I could’ve been held hostage by that local terrorist group that I interviewed. But the fear came after.
I remember crying so hard after a news coverage somewhere where no one can see me after realizing I could’ve died. There was also one news coverage that left me so traumatized that I had to leave the country - go to Disneyland two days later just to get my mind off the fear of what could’ve been.
How do I overcome this kind of fear? I talked about it. So, whenever fear presents itself again to me after the fact, I talk about that situation, that event, and the could-have-beens, instead of thinking about it.
The second opportunity for which fear presents itself is during the fact, the fear of the ongoing effect. I am afraid of roller coasters. You can never get me on it. But there was an experience worse than a roller coaster that I was forced to be in because I was already right there.
I was covering the US war games off the coast of Guam in the Pacific when we had to do an
arrested landing on the narrow platform of the US aircraft carrier George Washington and also be catapulted off it. I thought I was going to die. But it was my fear that would have killed me, not the ride. So how did I get through, I faced my fear.
And lastly, there is that fear that comes before. The fear of what might happen. It is a
preemptive kind of fear that results in a loss of courage.
For many of you who remember the story of the girl in the trail in my first talk for this
Friendship Bench series, I ended on a note about the evil hill in the trail that I was afraid of.
In a forest trail that I go to everyday, there is this one hill that gave me the chills thinking of
what might happen to me if I slip or fall from there. Again, it’s a fear that my mind breeds. A
fear of the possibility.
So I processed that fear. I talked about it with fellow hikers. Then I learned the tricks to climb
up and down that hill, how they do it. So I prepared. Came the reckoning day, with my walking stick and even with my heart heavily pounding inside of me, I faced my fear. It was not really that hill that I feared, it was what I think of it. So, a mindset change did it for me.
On a final note, the sum of all fears, cliche as it may be, is only in the mind. It truly is. Prepare to battle it, because you can win it. Face it, process it, and talk about it. This is exactly what I did just now in speaking to all of you about it.
Thank you.
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