TJ Walker traces communication anxiety to a single embarrassing childhood moment and argues you don't need to relive it. Instead, shift focus from your past failures to helping your listener by offering value. This reduces anxiety and uses skills you already have from everyday conversations.
Chapters
How do you identify the root cause of your communication anxiety? Well, for some of us, it was that time in middle school, seventh grade, the teacher called on you, you stood up and maybe your voice cracked and everyone laughed at you. And from there on out, you were nervous about speaking. You want a flashback to, oh, I'm going to embarrass myself, I'm going to humiliate myself. People are going to laugh at me. I've seen grown men, women, 50, 60 years old, and it all goes back to that one moment when you were embarrassed when you were 12, 13 years old. It could be something like that. Here's what I really want you to think about. You think anyone else remembers? Do you think anyone else cares? Stop worrying about it. There was a point for all of us when we pooped in our pants because we hadn't been potty trained. But does that mean we never put pants on the rest of our life? Does that mean we don't go out of the house because we're worried about that? And forgive me for being overly graphic, but I hope you see the point. We all make mistakes from time to time. We get over it. Every great baseball player struck out thousands and thousands of times. You can't focus on mistakes. You have to focus on doing better. So maybe I'm not the warmest and fuzzy therapist and psychologist to make you feel better about surfacing your childhood feelings. I apologize for that. But what I'm really interested in is your success. And if you've ever had one single interesting conversation with one friend, with one colleague, just sitting down over coffee, then believe it or not, you already have all the skills you need to be great as a presenter, as a communicator, as a speaker. Once you realize that, your anxieties will melt away. What's making you anxious, what's creating this nervousness is this sense of, oh, I'm going to go back to that failure point where I was 20, 30, maybe 40 or 50 years ago. You don't have to go back there anymore than you have to go back to that time when you used a taper. You don't have to go back there. Focus on your strengths, focus on doing well, and it won't really matter what the root causes of your anxiety are. What will matter is your focus on succeeding, on doing well, on being successful. That happens when you focus on the person you're speaking with. What makes you anxious now is when you're thinking, oh, what about me? How am I doing? Are they judging me? Are they laughing at me? Do they think I look silly or stupid. It's the selfishness. Now we're all selfish from time to time. I'm selfish. Every human being is. But if you want to get over your anxiety, then you need to focus on the other person or people you're speaking with. When you're so focused on helping them, giving them some new insight, helping their career, helping finances, helping them figure out a technique for gardening more effectively, you won't have the luxury of dwelling on the past. You won't be thinking about, gosh, I hope this isn't one of those times when I mispronounce a word and everyone laughs at me. Because it won't matter. You'll be focused on helping other people, and that way your anxiety about your communication skills from the past will stay where they belong in the past.
