Slowly but Surely After a few weeks of feeling at a loss for not being able to overcome my speaking anxiety, I've developed some mental techniques that have helped me put things in perspective and it seems to be helping. I still get nervous about talking, but now I'm able to stay calm so that I can actually focus on what I'm trying to say. Staying calm means I enjoy myself much more and do better. One of the biggest realizations is that I'm beginning to see mistakes as positive things. Another step forward has been to realize that all the anxiety and negative thoughts that arrive when it's time to speak are completely imagined and self generated. If I try, I can just as easily focus on the positive. Recently, I made the same mistake over and over again, but instead of getting frustrated, I was able to laugh at myself. I simply made a note on paper of where I need to focus my attention to get better and I moved past it. It was a nice change. My first big challenge is coming up in a few weeks. I'm visiting some Indian friends for the weekend and I'm going to try and speak as much Hindi as possible. We'll see how it goes!