Overcoming The Anxiety Through Public Speaking

Do you struggle with fear, doubt, and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmeads. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast.

Welcome back to Speaker Nation Q and A sessions. I love doing these Q and A sessions because, you know, I know what you want to know because you told me. And so we group these three questions in one category that really have to do with overcoming the anxiety of public speaking. And this is something I know a fair bit about because I had to do it. So the first question, which is very, very common, and we've had it in a variety of different forms, the first question is, what are the most effective techniques to overcome stage fright? So this is a big topic, but we're gonna touch on it really powerfully right here and now. What happens for most people when they're invited to do a talk when they're nervous is they immediately change their breathing patterns. What do they do? Well, you go, oh, would you do a talk? One sharp intake breath. The problem with sharp intake breaths is that they communicate to your entire body that you're in danger. Cause it's the exact same breath you use when you walk around the corner and you see a lion or a grizzly. And so it immediately begins to stimulate some adrenaline and cortisol. And those chemicals do not improve your intelligence. They actually make you slightly less intelligent. And they reprioritize your thought processes towards survival and not possibility. Then after your sharp intake breath, then we move to what we call shallow prey breathing, which is like this very quiet, shallow breaths in the top of the lungs that continues the adrenaline production and the cortisol production. So one of the very first things we want to do when faced with that feeling is to slow down and take deep diaphragm breaths. In Wildfit, my company that does health coaching and nutritional anthropology, we talk about something called five by five breathing. And you breathe like this. You breathe in for five, hold for five, and then release for five. And you'll find if you even do that once, you'll feel better. It's really important to know that breathing has a huge amount to do with the way you feel. So you can change the way you feel by changing the way you breathe. Another really important thing to understand about the anxiety or phobia or fear that people have about public speaking is that, well, they call it nervousness, but A very powerful distinction I want to share with you is that nervousness and emotionally are basically and chemically the same emotion. They're precisely the same. They create the same sticky palms, the same feeling stomach, the same fogginess in the head. They're basically the same emotion with one big difference, and that is the outcome that you expect. So it could very easily be said that nervousness is simply excitement combined with a negative expectation. Or you could do it the other way, and you could say that excitement is nervousness with a positive expectation. So one of the things you can do to make yourself feel better immediately is to force fantasy of it going well. Unfortunately, fantasies of things going well are a little bit harder than fantasies of things going badly. Why? Well, the truth is that it's safer to imagine things going badly. It's safer to imagine danger and survive it than it is to imagine possibility and stumble into it. But in this case, if you can force yourself to see it going well, imagine the audience laughing and raising their hands and being engaged. You're going to have an entirely different experience. Next question we get very often is, how can I build my confidence as a speaker? Well, I'm going to give you two answers to that. One is really simple. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And if you want to uplevel that practice with really supportive feedback, practice with feedback from people who know what they're talking about to help you make each iteration even better. The very best place that you can do that, by the way, is at Speaker Nation. Here at Speaker Nation, we have practice clubs where you can go and practice and get feedback from people who have been trained in our technologies for doing feedback in a way that supports your development and your incremental improvement. Here's another one, though, and this is a bit trickier. To really improve your confidence as a speaker, never ever, not ever tell the audience or demonstrate to the audience in any way that you're nervous if you do that. If you show your nerves, if you tell them, oh, I'm really nervous about this, all you're really doing is inauthentically asking for sympathetic praise. You might not recognize that's what you're doing. It might not feel like that's what you're doing. But the truth is, we all learned it in school. If we make things look harder than they really are, we get more credit for doing them. And so in this case, what I want to suggest to you is, if you walk on stage and act nervous or tell them you're nervous, here's what's going to happen, they're going to come and give you praise and you're not going to believe them because there's a part of your brain going, you know damn well they're just saying this because of how nervous you were. On the other hand, if you start your presentation, if you start your presentation by saying, I'm about to give a presentation that I think is going to change your perspective about X and Y and that you're going to remember this talk for years to come, I mean, you might not want to come out that strong, but if you did, wow. When people come up to you afterward and say, that was fantastic, sure, there might be less of them, but when they do, you're going to believe them. I remember walking on stage for an event in Mykonos, Greece, at a mindvalley event. The talk was called the Hindsight Window. And I didn't even mean to do it, but I walked on stage and I said almost that you can go and watch it on YouTube right now. I said, I'm about to deliver a talk that I think you're going to remember for years to come. You know what? People came up to me after that talk and told me it was life changing for them, that it changed their perspective about life in a multitude of ways. And I totally believe them because I did not act nervous and I did not feel nervous. Next question. Very common. Can you please share some tips for making sure your first speech goes well? I can, and I'm just going to make it very simple in this case. Don't overcomplicate your first speech. Don't try to teach some super complicated idea. Sure. Maybe you're all about some wonderful scientific process that you really want to get to people, or you're heavily into crypto trading and you want to explain how the blockchain works. I don't know what it is, but what I'm saying is, for your very first talk, keep it sweet, keep it short, keep it simple, and use stories. Everybody is a natural storyteller. I know that might not sound right to you, but the truth is everybody is simply waiting for permission to tell a great story. And so if you want to make sure that your first talk goes well, keep it simple and make sure that mostly it's about telling engaging stories that captivate people's attention and share important value with them. As always, I really enjoy answering the questions that you send us. It makes me aware that I'm on point with what it is that is really going to support you best in your journey. So please keep your messages coming. And if you know people who are climbing this public speaking mountain, if they've got a little bit of nervousness, they have a speech to give, please share this episode with them and let them know about the Speaker Nation podcast. They can always find it at www.unforgettable.show.

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