Public Speaking

In a national survey, people were asked 'What are you most afraid of?', and here are how the numbers fell out:
1. Fear of public speaking
2. Fear of death
3. Fear of spiders
4. Fear of darkness
5. Fear of heights

Yes, you are reading that right, fear of death is #2 BEHIND public speaking. Now, I'm sure if you asked them 'are you more afraid of public speaking or death?' they may say, death. But in the land of surveys there are reasons you ask open-ended questions, and one reason is to get at what people are really thinking about, not what they are thinking about in comparison to other things. Coming up with an answer off the top of your head indicates something about that answer, and I for one find those survey results very interesting.

The reason I bring this up is because yesterday I was at a meeting and I was picked to be the 'report out' person for our group's conversation. Actually I offered to be the 'report out' person after a torturous 3 minute conversation asking people. I've been that facilitator before, and I'm sorry but I had to have mercy on the poor girl. But, back to the point. As I was sitting there getting ready to report out I realized that I was nervous. Now, what in the world was I nervous about? I wasn't saying that I had the right answers, I was just saying this is what we talked about, and I knew 3/4 of the people in the room from previous meetings or work related events. And yet, I definitely had that pit of the stomach nervous feeling. Which got me thinking about that statistic, which then got me thinking, why is public speaking (of any kind) so nerve wracking for humans? To be quite honest if you asked me if I was afraid of public speaking I would say no. I do it all the time, in fact it's kinda become more or less a major part of my job to talk in front of groups, and yet I do not at all feel comfortable with it.

And so I've been pondering this and have determined the root of it is due to our need as humans to be accepted by our peers. Even though I knew there was nothing I was saying that wouldn't be accepted, deep down I wanted to be sure. If you look at it through the lens of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs it would fall on the 'self esteem' need section, right before you get to the point.
In theory as you fulfill the needs at the bottom of the pyramid you can focus on the needs further up. And so my question for you is - by passing the health care bill, have we made people more afraid of public speaking? Just kidding :) My question is this - is it all that surprising that people are more scared of public speaking than death? Most of us are trying to fulfill that little slice of our pyramid and so our minds are much more focused on that. So, when you ask an open ended question, our mind goes to that slice of our pyramid without us even thinking about it.

So, I'm done my random philosophical meandering for now. In reality all of this was to say, I hate that I hate public speaking no matter how much I want to not hate it.