Project 6 is about vocal variety.
Time Taken: 7min 12sec (Just Right!) hehe...
What I Spoke:
What is fear?
Fear is an emotional response to threats and danger. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus such as pain or threat.
Where does fear come from?
Fear believes to come from anxiety. Anxiety is the troubled feeling in the mind caused uncertainty about the future.
Then where does anxiety come from?
Anxiety comes from stress. It may help a person to deal with a difficult situation, for example at work or at school, by prompting one to cope with it. When anxiety becomes excessive, it may fall under the classification of an anxiety disorder.
The creation of fear begins with a scary stimulus and ends with the fight-or-flight response. Stimulus can be spider, cats, or formless such as darkness, news article like the recent Mumbai terrorist attack and China Sichuan Earthquake. As for the response, from the term fight-or-flight, which means one will either fight for his life or runs for his life. This is an instinct of every animal. But what really make us to determine to fight or flight? There are 2 paths involved in our fear response.
One of them is low road which is quick and messy while high road takes more time and delivers a more precise interpretation of events. These processes can happen in us simultaneously. The concept behind the low road is “take no chances”. For example as I can recall, I was chased by a swarm of bees while playing basketball near my neighborhood. My first response was to run for my life. So this is a form of low road process.
As for high road, high road process is much more thoughtful. It considers all the options. “How did I react previously?” “How did Indiana Jones react to bee chase?” “What kind of bees are chasing? Honey bee or hornet?” These questions will pop out so to allow us to decide to fight or to flight.
How do we know we are fearful?
Due to our brain’s chemical reaction, when we feel fear, it will cause our heart beat to be faster, our breathing to be faster and our muscles to be tightened. Besides rapid heart rate, fast breathing and tightening of muscles, we will also experience in a rise of blood pressure and increased sweating.
Other effects such as nightmares and phobias may occur. I remembered that day when I was attacked by the bees. That evening, I was in fear. My imagination drove me crazy. I kept thinking that the bees would come and attack me. I shut all my windows and was unable to get into sleep and even broke out in tears. The moments when the bees were chasing kept on replaying in my brain just like a defective player. Finally fell asleep but awakened by nightmares.
Many specifics phobias can be traced back to a specific triggering event, usually a traumatic experience at an early age. For instance, a person’s fear of dog. Perhaps he was bitten by a dog when he was young. Even 20 years later, the person’s brain still associates the sight of a dog with the pain of a bite. Therefore, whenever the person sees a dog, the brain will signal to the person as a fear.
Panic is another effect of fear. Panic is an immediate physical response to unrealistic and irrational fears. This can have a huge affect on both emotion and physical well-being – as well as your ability to reach your full potential. I had this experience in the swimming pool when I was young. I wasn’t a good swimmer. At that point of time, while swimming my goggles flipped. I remembered, I just screamed for help. Help! Help! Help! At the same time struggling kicking, punching for breath. Then a warm hand caught hold of me. It was my instructor, he scolded me “Do u know u are very near to the wall?” I woke up & realized the wall was only half arm length away from me. Looking around the pool, everyone was looking at me. I lost, not because I was embarrassed. I had totally defeated by fear and panic. Lesson learnt panic will not just cause one to feel lost; panic will also make one lost the survival capabilities.
How to overcome fear:
1. Learn about the thing you fear. Uncertainty is a huge component of fear: Developing an understanding of what you're afraid of goes a long way toward erasing that fear. Then train yourself to do it. Start small and work in steps. Slowly build the familiarity with a scary subject that makes it more manageable. A very good example is Toastmasters Club, helping us overcome the fear to speak in public.
2. If u feel that fear is getting over u, take a moment to pause. Close your eyes, take a deep slow breaths and focus your attention on the sound of your breathing. And try not to let your mind get carried away with negative thoughts. Keep focused and concentrate on the “now”. By living in the moment, u will meet the need in front of u as it arises without getting caught up in the “what-ifs” and “should-haves”.
3. Seek help. Fear is not a simple emotion. If you're having trouble overcoming your fear on your own, find a professional or someone familiar to help you. There are lots of treatments for fear out there, and no good reason not to try them under the guidance of someone with training and experience.
4. Another unconventional way was to eat a sweet. After a shock, our body consumes a large amount of glucose so to prepare for the flight and fight response. By taking in sweet stuffs, it can help us to replenish our blood sugar levels. In additionally, research has shown that by eating sweet stuffs, it makes us happy. In this case, we can be calm and more optimistic to handle the upcoming situations or events.
Conclusion:
To conclude, stress makes us anxious, while anxiety will make us feel fearful. Fear is unavoidable, but we can reduce the impact by preparing for the fear, seek help from professionals and calm ourselves by pausing and having sweet stuffs.
hehe... I thought I performed pretty well this time round. Only felt that at the beginning have some problems how to start & almost forgot my speech. This time round, I memorised my speech again. Thought that this was the best way, at least for me. It really able to gain some confidence when I memorised the whole speech. Think I should do that for the next few projects, and dont act tough! haha...
Evaluation by Mr.Andrew (from Entreprenuer Toastmaster Club):
Hightlights:
- Good use of pauses
- Good natural body language
- Nice vocal variety
Recommendations:
- Volume control (I have no idea how! haha...)
- Pace of speech, may like to include whisper in the speech (haha... havent master the art yet)
- Stronger opening, a more dramatic opening. (I agree with this point, not saying I dont agree with the above 2 points. Because this is the point that I know I can do it better!)
Ah Counting:
- 1 er
- 4 repeitions
Total: 5
Stuffs I learnt:
- Perfect
- A sharp tongue
- delighted
- Moving on
- air time
- Evaulator evaluate like a friend
- Evaluation is always at the speech & the proj objective
In general, I was glad with my performance. Hope I dont screwed myself the next time! haha...
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