7 Fool proof ways to rid yourself of public speaking anxiety

The very fact that many people rank the fear of speaking in public as one of their greatest sources of anxiety could be hurting their professional and personal life.

It’s far more common than you may ever imagine; perhaps you’ve even experienced it yourself.
Sweaty palms, feeling nervous, butterflies in your stomach and that feeling that you would rather do anything else in the world than give that presentation.

The fact is, whoever you may work for you are likely at some point in your career be called upon to present your thoughts and ideas to others. When it happens you will want to speak in a way that is calm, creative and compelling.

Regardless of your age, position, background or experience the fear of public speaking is very real.

Thankfully, there are however, a great number of ways for you to not only dramatically reduce that anxiety but also become a high impact public speaker and presenter.

The following 7 suggestions will show you exactly how to present in a way that is very calm, creative and compelling.

1) Form a strategy

Uncertainty is one of the greatest sources of anxiety when it comes to presenting and speaking in public. With that in mind approach your presentation or speech from a strategic perspective and long before you even think about opening your laptop be very clear on:

What you want your audience to think?
What you want them to feel?
What you want them to do?
Why they should care?

What difference what you have to say will make to their personal or professional lives.

If you can’t answer each of those questions in a direct and concise way then it’s inevitable that you will feel unduly nervous.

Once you have a clear strategy then and only then can you organise all of your thoughts in a way that will help you to stay focused, calm and creative.

2) Find the ‘gold’

Another major source of unease professionals feel when they are called upon to present is the knowledge that most people believe that far too many business presentations are boring.

That awareness is often compounded by a common belief many presenters have that their very own topic is boring anyway so they feel certain that they will struggle to keep their audiences attention and that if they can’t, they will damage their reputation in the process.

I don’t believe that there really is such a thing as a boring topic, I believe there are only boring speakers; but no one has to be boring at all.

The secret is to find the gold for yourself and more importantly your audience. In other words, your audience aren’t interested in all of the ‘dirt’, ‘pebbles’ and ‘rocks’ obscuring the ‘gold’; they just want the ‘gold’.
Sift through your content and craft a presentation which you feel certain:

• Will have a significant impact on your audience
• They will benefit from and make a difference to their personal or professional lives
• That you care about and you know they will too

When you find these 3 nuggets, you have your ‘gold’.
If you really can’t find them then do your audience a favour and don’t call them to a presentation, simply send them an email instead.

When you speak about something you really care about and know your audience will too you will feel be more comfortable and confident in speaking about it and will be far less nervous.

3) Don’t be selfish

When your focus is on yourself rather than how you can help your audience and make a tangible difference to their lives it’s inevitable that you will feel nervous. Whilst we are all unique, human beings also have many things in common and one of those traits is an innate desire to look good and impress others.

There is nothing at all wrong with that of course as its human nature and it’s the way we are all ‘hardwired’. The trouble is that in the absence of that awareness far too much of our attention then revolves around us rather than our audience and most of it is negative:

‘I hope they like me’
‘I bet I forget what to say’
‘What if they ask me a question I can’t answer?

The best antidote to angst is to remember that your presentation has nothing at all to do with you, and as terrible as it sounds your audience don’t really care about you, they only care about how you can help them.
So don’t be selfish by worrying about yourself and trying to look good, focus on how you can help them.

4) Get some feedback

I’ve lost count of the number of presenters who say they feel very troubled by the way they present because:

- They speak to fast
- They ramble
- They turn bright red
- They lose their way
- Their legs tremble
- They don’t know what to do with their arms
- They move around too much
- They constantly say, um, err…

When they tell me that I always ask them two questions:

Who exactly told you that you do those things?
The answer is invariably ‘no one did.’

The second question is; what about the good stuff, what are your strengths?

The typical response to this question is a shrug of the shoulders accompanied by a blank expression on their face.

In other words most of the bad stuff is imagined and they have no idea what they currently do that works well for them today.
Before you make a commitment to feel sorry for yourself about how terrible a presenter you think you are, get some feedback.

Start with your strengths first.

Before we beat ourselves up about our ‘imagined’ weaknesses it makes sense to me to go out of our way to identify the strengths we have today and to harness those before we begin to work on the ‘bad habits’

5) Slow down

Have you ever noticed that the really nervous speakers tend to speak very fast?

It’s helpful to be aware that excessive speed is normally perceived as and associated with anxiety and a great way to deal with that is to make the conscious effort to slow down.

Try keeping your sentences short and to the point.
Before you leap head on into the next point take a moment to pause and breathe every now and then between sentences and key points. Practice finding a flow and a rhythm that works for both you and your audience.

6) Meditate

We each have tens of thousands of thousands of thoughts each day, most of them are repetitive, recycled thoughts and a great number of them are negative.

If you combine that with the fact that we live in an age of constant communication and information where the external noise is as incessant as the internal it’s no wonder we find it hard to speak when there’s silence and everyone is listening to us.

When a speaker takes the platform to share an important message or idea to an audience if they haven’t taken the time to spend a few moments meditating before- hand to calm and organise their mind its inevitable they will feel uncomfortable.

Practice meditating for 5 or 10 minutes every day and make sure you find the time to do so shortly before you stand to speak too.

7. Be an 8 of clubs

Imagine holding a deck of playing cards in your hands with all of the Royalty removed. Each card in the deck represents a level of confidence meaning if you choose an Ace that would represent a 1 giving you the lowest possible level of confidence and if you choose a 10 you would have the highest.

Imagine now being in one of our presentation skills training workshops and in terms of confidence you felt as low as a 3 or 4. I now hand you the 8 of clubs and tell you that for the next few minutes while you are presenting you are going to be an 8 on that scale of confidence.

After thinking I was out of my mind and with a little coaching you would realise that you know exactly what an 8 in confidence looks like and I can promise you that with the right mind-set and focus you could readily present to the group with the confidence of a level 8.
As ridiculous as it may sound it truly works; I know because I see it every day in our public speaking workshops.

Try it for yourself; the next time you present carry an 8 of clubs with you in your pocket or purse and remember to be that 8.

Please do share your best advice in the comments for helping speakers to reduce the anxiety they feel when presenting to help them to speak with authority, confidence and impact.