A short YouTube talk by Robert Summa (Public Speaking Cure) explaining how to reframe public-speaking fear by shifting from an anxious, singular mindset to an excited, team-oriented mindset. Summa compares pre-talk nerves to sports adrenaline and asks viewers to mentally place themselves in a locker-room/team scenario—replacing self-focused worry (all eyes on you) with a team mentality aimed at winning engagement and having fun. Practical takeaways: view presenters as part of a team, reinterpret physiological symptoms as positive excitement, and adopt a playful/competitive locker-room mindset before speaking.
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Hey, friends, welcome back to public speaking Cure, the one and only platform dedicated to helping you get over your fears and phobia of public speaking. So today I want to talk a little bit about mindset, right? Because when it comes to the nerves of public speaking, it's an adrenaline rush that causes it, right? And basically it's very similar to the same adrenaline we get before, like being in sports. You play sports and going out and playing and getting the adrenaline rush. So the whole shift in mindset here is basically to go from an anxious mindset to an excitement mindset. So how do we do that? Well, I'm going to try to help you with some analogies that I usually use with some of my one on one clients. So when we have the anxiety of public speaking, which is going up in front of people, we have high anxiety, we have anxious, we get the heart beating, the sweating, the loud anxious voice, you know, basically the quivering voice, all these different symptoms that we associate with speaking because it's a phobia and that is the high fears. How do we get ourselves to more of an excitement and fun, right? So I want to use an analogy and just think about sports. And even if you don't play sports, just pretend you play on a football team or a basketball team. Now when you're in the locker room with the coach, right, and all the guys around you, you're part of a team and you're getting ready to go out into that crowd. If you're a football team, that crowd could be 50,000 people. Or for your basketball, it could be an arena with like, you know, 15 to 20,000 people. And that is sort of like public speaking, but it's more performance related, right? It's not really speaking, but you're performing, but you get the same adrenaline. So when you're in the locker room, you see a whole team of people going, oh my God, we can't go out there, let's forfeit. Oh my God, we're too afraid. No. What are they doing? We're like, let's go out there, let's go beat that team. We're gonna do it. We're going to show them who know who's going to rule this house. Do you where that is a big difference between public speaking and being in sport. So what I want you to do is go from your 1.0 version of yourself today, which is the high anxiety and shift to a more fun and excitement. So from now on, before you go on stage, I want you to do one thing. Think of yourself as Part of a team. Don't think of yourself as a one on all. When you put yourself as a one on all, that definitely is going to bring in a lot of anxiety because you think all eyes are on you and everything's about you and you have to perform really great. And that's just not the way it is when usually when you present you're part of a team. Whether it's the department you know you're presenting to is part of your department as part of your organization, you're all a team. Or even when you're with clients, typically you're with, you know, your team and with clients. But, you know, think of yourself as part of a team. And when you do that, think of yourself as going out there to win something, right? And where you're trying, trying to win the engagement and trying to provide great value to your customers or to your organization or in whatever setting you're doing. It could be even an interview with an interview panel. But don't think of yourself as anxious. Think of it as exciting. Go back to that locker room. Pretend you're in that locker room about to go out and you're part of a team and you're going to win and you're getting all pumped up and you guys are all excited. That's the adrenaline we are shooting for here. We want that adrenaline of like a team sport and not the adrenaline of an anxiety attack of that, oh, my God, I hope I do really good here. What if I mess up? A lot of those things all come from the shift in the mindset. So I really just want to create this really quick video to go over. How do we kind of shift that mindset? So go from that, that singularity and go to a team. And also don't go from, you know, you want to go from that, you know, high anxiety and anxious and nervous to more of excitement. Like a team going out into arena and ready to go play a game and have a lot of fun doing it. It's all about fun. Presenting should be fun. It should be exciting. You are going to have the heart beating, right? You might have a little bit of sweat, but it's in a good way. And that's how you have to shift the mind. That mindset that this is an exciting time to go out and, you know, share your vision, share value. These people are rooting for you. Nobody's against you. Nobody wants to see you have a bad performance. Everybody wants to do great because you are part of a team. So think of yourself as part of a team. Think of yourself as part of that locker room that's going to go out and do great and do great things and be confident. So I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope this has helped shift a mindset from a singularity anxious brain to a team. Excitement, fun, adrenaline rush. Thank you.
