Giving a Presentation In a Day For Dummies

Chapter 2

Overcoming Stage Fright

In This Chapter

Altering your perceptions

Controlling the physical symptoms of stress

Handling stage fright

Steering clear of common “cures” for stage fright

Stage fright. The words themselves make some people nervous. Maybe that’s why social scientists have abandoned the term. First they changed it to “communication anxiety.” Now they talk about “communication apprehension.” (If you’ve ever heard a social scientist speak at an academic conference, you know why these people are apprehensive.) But whatever you want to call it, the symptoms are universally recognized. Your heart pounds. Your hands shake. Your forehead sweats. Your mouth goes dry. Your stomach feels like a blender on high speed. And that’s just when you get asked to speak. You feel really bad when you actually have to give the speech.

If you do experience stage fright, congratulations; you’re in the majority. According to a frequently cited survey, most people consider public speaking more frightening than death. And you’re in good company — celebrities alleged to suffer from this affliction include Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Carol Burnett, and Johnny Carson. Although you just have to accept that stage fright will always be with you, this chapter discusses some great techniques so you can figure out how to control it and use it to your advantage.

Changing Your Perceptions

Teacher to pupil: “Think positive.” Pupil to teacher: “I am. I’m positive I’m going to fail.” It’s an old joke, but it highlights an important point — stage fright is a mental phenomenon. However, if stage fright can be caused mentally, then it can be cured mentally. It’s all in the way you look at things.

Realizing how your audience really feels

Stage fright is a very egocentric affliction. I’m scared. I’m nervous. I’m going to pass out. Me. Me. Me. It’s easy to lose sight of your audience’s interests, but the audience has as much at stake as you. In fact, your audience may be more scared than you. They may suffer from seat fright — the fear of wasting time listening to a bad speech.

For you to succeed in giving a great speech and controlling your fear, you need to know the following four things about your audience:

The audience wants you to succeed. By showing up, members of your audience give you a tremendous vote of confidence. They don’t want to spend their precious time to come and hear you fail. They want your speech to be a success. Their success is linked to yours. When your speech is terrific, people in the audience feel brilliant for attending.

You have knowledge that the audience wants. You were asked to speak for a reason; it’s probably because you have information that the audience desires. You’re the expert. You have the data that audience members clamor for. Even on the rare occasion that the audience knows more than you about your topic, you can still provide new information. Only you can provide your own unique insights. No one else knows your view and interpretation of the material. Think of yourself as sharing valuable knowledge and ideas with your audience.

The audience doesn’t know that you’re afraid. Social science research shows that the speaker and the audience have very different perceptions about stage fright. Often, an audience can’t even detect anxiety in a speaker who claims to be extremely nervous. This situation is like an acne lotion commercial you see on TV. A teenager gets a pimple on his nose. He imagines the pimple is as big as a watermelon and that people are staring at it wherever he goes. Of course, no one even notices it. Stage fright works the same way. It’s a mental pimple that seems a lot worse to you than to your audience.

You can treat audience members like individuals. Dr. Allen Weiner says that his clients tell him all the time that “they love to answer questions, but they hate to give speeches.” As president of Communication Development Associates, Allen gets paid a lot to advise these people. (And his clients include senior executives of Fortune 500 companies.) Take his advice free of charge: View your speech as the answer to an implied question. In other words, what question does your speech answer? Instead of “making a speech,” make believe you’re just answering a question. Speeches are far less frightening when thought of this way.

Visualizing success like a pro

The concept of visualization is simple and straightforward. You just imagine yourself performing a task successfully. A number of athletes use this training technique. They imagine themselves hitting home runs, scoring touchdowns, or signing autographs for $100 apiece. They imagine these activities in vivid detail and try to remember past successes and build them into the image.

As you prepare to give your next presentation, whether you’re 5 minutes away from stepping to the podium or you’re practicing it the day before, apply some visualization techniques to your presentation. Imagine yourself giving your talk. Your voice fills the room with wisdom. People in the audience hang on your every word. (If they lean any farther forward, they’ll fall out of their chairs.) They give you a standing ovation and rush the stage to carry you out on their shoulders. Now use that confidence to give a great presentation.

Talking yourself into a great speech

Your audience only has to hear you once. You have to hear yourself all the time, so the messages you send yourself are very important. These messages are your internal dialogue — the things you say to yourself in your head. When you repeat them over and over, you start to believe them. So you’ve got to be careful what you say. If you keep telling yourself that you’ll flub your talk at a critical moment, you probably will.

Talking positively to yourself is like visualizing success, but it’s more than that. Successful visualization techniques apply to a specific task — like giving a speech. Your internal dialogue has a much broader focus. It applies to everything you do.

So how can you keep the self-chatter positive? Follow these techniques from Dr. Steven Resnick, a prominent psychiatrist and stress management expert:

Dispute irrational thoughts. Say that you have the irrational thought, “If I stand in front of an audience, I’ll forget everything I know about the topic.” A disputing thought could be “I’ll have no reason to remember all that stuff if I don’t tell it to an audience.”

Use personal affirmations. “I’m the greatest speaker in the world.” “My subject is fascinating and the audience will love it.” “I’m an expert.” Yes, they’re corny, but they build confidence. The more you talk yourself into believing them, the less stress you’ll encounter with your speech.

Imagine the worst-case scenario. Face your fear directly. Think about the worst possible thing that could happen and realize that it’s not that awful. If you make a mistake while you’re speaking, you can correct it and continue. If the audience doesn’t give you a standing ovation, they may still applaud. Even if the speech is a total disaster, it’s not the end of the world.

Transforming Terrified to Terrific

A man went to the doctor for a physical. He said, “I look in the mirror and I’m a mess. My jowls are sagging. I have blotches all over my face. My hair is falling out. What is it?” The doctor said, “I don’t know, but your eyesight is perfect.”

Unfortunately, a lot of other people have perfect eyesight, too — especially when it involves examining your physical symptoms of stage fright. But eliminating or disguising the sweating and shaking isn’t that hard, as you find out in the following sections.

Discovering stress-busting exercises

Even though stress is technically all in your head, its effects can be quite physical. So if you can’t treat your mental state, treat your physical symptoms. Following are some recommendations from prominent stress expert Dr. Steven Resnick.

Breathing

Dr. Resnick says breathing exercises are one of the world’s oldest techniques for relieving stress. “We release carbon dioxide every time we exhale,” he explains. “That decreases the acidity of our blood.” It also increases the oxygen in your brain. (And gives a whole new meaning to the term airhead.)

Take a deep breath. Hold it. Hold it. Now let it out slowly. Good. Do it again. Breathe deeply and slowly. Keep it up. Don’t you feel better already? You’re now more relaxed and better able to take the stage with confidence.

Stretching

Stretching is a great way to relieve muscle tension quickly, and it doesn’t take long to do. Stretching for as little as 10 or 15 seconds can be beneficial. Now, you can’t just do yoga in the middle of a banquet when you’re the after-dinner speaker, but you can excuse yourself and do a few quick stretches in the restroom just before you speak. Use the following exercises to get you down the home stretch:

Head rolls: Slowly turn your head from side to side. That’s the warm-up. Now move your head clockwise in a circle (look up, right, down, and...