Posts Tagged nervous about speaking

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.

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