I wish I could tell you to just chant positive affirmations, or picture your audience naked, or visualize a standing ovation, but none of those things will prevent you from giving a lousy presentation, so they should not help you prevent nervousness either.
I’d like to be able to tell you something comforting, like “it’s going to be fine!” or “”you’ll do great if you just believe in yourself!” But the reality is that you should be nervous. Chances are, you are going to bomb. I don’t say this to be mean-spirited or to mess with your confidence, but here are the facts: most speakers bore their audiences. Most presenters give unmemorable data dumps. Most speakers communicate absolutely nothing, if by communication, you mean what the audience remembers, not just what comes out of the speaker’s mouth.

So, at the risk of freaking you out, I really think that you and most speakers should be MORE nervous, not less nervous when you speak. The real reason that you and most people fear speaking is that you fear the unknown—you don’t know if you look or sound stupid, you are uncertain of how you are coming across. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. If someone forced you to get dressed in the morning in pitch black and without being able to look in the mirror once before leaving your home, would you be nervous about your appearance? Of course you would. You’d be worried that you missed shaving half of your face or that you put lipstick on crooked.

Of course you and most people always look at the mirror many times before leaving your home in the morning. Why do we do that? It’s not as if we have to look at our own face all day long. We look at mirrors because we want an accurate sense of how the rest of the world sees us. Most of us look at the mirror when we first get up. Then after we hop out of the shower. Then after we shave or after we put on makeup. And probably one more peek before walking out the door. We have an “editing” system for putting on our public face and clothes.

The result? When you show up at the office or in front of clients, you probably aren’t worried about your face or your hair. You might not feel you are perfect, but at least you are confident that you have put your best face forward—so you aren’t nervous about your looks.

But when it comes to our presentation or talk, how do we know we make any sense or are even remotely interesting? There is only one way: you have to look at your speech. I don’t mean stare at words written on paper. The speech is you actually speaking. There is only one way for you to do this and that is to video record your speech and then watch it (talking to a mirror is a complete waste of time). 

You must practice your speech while video recording it, and then watch yourself. The one thing clients ask me constantly is “TJ, do I really have to watch myself? I hate watching myself on video!” Sorry, but you do have to watch yourself, the same way you have to look at yourself in the mirror before you leave your home.

Is it painful to watch yourself? Yes. But this is less painful than wasting the time of people you are speaking to because you were boring or hard to follow. So grab a mini-video camera, a cell phone with video capture, a webcam, a camcorder or any other video device and record your speech. Then watch it.

If you are like most people, here is the response you will have after watching yourself on video, “Ugh, TJ, I hate my speech! I am so deadly dull it’s not funny. I never imagined I would sound so boring and monotone. I would fall asleep if I had to watch this speech.”

Well, at least now you know how your audience will feel. The good news is that you still have time to fix this disaster of a speech. When I ask my clients what they want to do to improve their presentations, their first response is usually “throw the whole thing in the trash can!”

That may be the best thing.

I can’t tell you what to say, but I can tell you that if you hate your speech, there is an excellent chance your audience will too. If you don’t like your speech, then come up with a new one. Then video record it. Watch it. Did you like it better this time?

Practice alone is not enough—especially if you are practicing a long, boring, abstract presentation. The key is to get rid of the bad, boring, abstract content from your speech and replace it with interesting examples, case studies and success stories.

Keep refining your speech and keep watching it until you reach a magical moment: that is when you can watch your own speech and actually love what you see. This might take you five minutes, or it might take you five days. Either way, your audience doesn’t care. They just want your best.

But here’s the payoff: when you are watching a video of yourself and you can clearly see that you look comfortable and confident and that you are expressing your ideas in an interesting and memorable way, a funny thing happens to your nerves—they completely disappear.
So that’s the solution: a lot of hard work, a little technology, and a focus on the perspective of an audience member—in this case, you as a representative of your audience.

Here’s what Jack Nicholson was quoted as saying in this month’s Men’s Journal:

You know, I’m phobically frightened of public speaking in a way that I find very unattractive. I get my household in a dither before such occasions. I call in everybody for their two cents.”

It’s not surprising that Nicholson is scared by public speaking. Speaking is fundamentally different from acting. Speaking is more personal and therefore more revealing. Nicholson deserves credit for admitting to a fear that afflicts most mortals.