Speaking in public has the power to threaten this vital part of ourselves. By nature, we are all born with the desire to please other people. But with pleasing other people comes the inevitable feeling of self-consciousness and anxiety of making even the tiniest of mistakes. This feeling is the source of the fear of messing up my words and saying the wrong things just because I’m scared of what people might think of them. I’ve begun to realise after a while that my words weren’t even mine anymore, but they belonged to other people. Speaking in front of an audience may not be a milestone for others. You might even think that this essay is an exaggeration of such a trivial thing. For me, a simple thing like answering a question a teacher asks in class can become as burdensome as delivering a five minute speech in front of the whole student body. When I stand in front, my mind always fails to bring up the words that I spent memorising the night before in front of my bedroom mirror. My hands tremble with the fear of criticism. They don’t say it aloud, but I can hear the dreadful names that they call me in the silent pauses between my “uhms” and stuttering, almost as loud as the drumming of my heart in my ears. Then, like routine, I mutter “I can’t do this” and walk away, feeling defeated again, like the thousands of times