How to Handle Brain Freeze During a Presentation

What do you do if you're giving a presentation, things are going perfectly fine, and then all of a sudden, it happens. Brain freeze. You have a mental lapse. You're thinking, oh, no, everyone's looking at me. What do I do now? It's panic time. What is the best way to handle that? Well, for starters, realize no one in your audience knows the full speech. They don't have the full outline. They don't know when you're planning on starting or stopping. They don't know what you had planned to neck. So use their ignorance to your advantage. This gives you some leeway. Now you have two choices, really, when this brain freeze happens. The normal thing to do, what a lot of people do, is they react in a transparent way. They say, oops, this is all embarrassing. I forgot what I'm gonna say. Unfortunately, while you get credit for being a real person and being transparent, it becomes the most memorable moment of your entire presentation because you put a spotlight on your mistakes. And for many people, it's the most emotional moment of your entire presentation because you're clearly feeling embarrassed. That embarrassment is an emotion that overwhelms everything else you've said in your entire presentation. Because if you're going through a PowerPoint or a traditional business presentation, you're dealing with a lot of facts, perhaps numbers, concepts, all good stuff. Maybe not that much emotion. So if all of a sudden your speech is going down the tracks and you forget, and there's this huge moment of, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry, I forgot what I'm gonna say, the emotion becomes the most memorable part of your presentation. We don't want your mistakes to be the most memorable part of your presentation. We want your message to be the most memorable part of your presentation. You want your stories that amplify your message to be what people really remember in your presentation. So here's the key. If you're going along, you finished one point, you finished another point, you're thinking, oh, no, I just forgot my third point. What am I gonna do? You can think all that in your head. Don't show it with your face. Don't articulate. Don't tell anyone you forgot. Don't tell anyone you had a senior moment or a brain freeze. Don't even show it with your face. Sometimes people don't say it, but they're going along, they're speaking. All of a sudden, it's frantically looking at their notes. That's really just as bad, because your facial expressions are conveying to people that you're Hugely embarrassed. Here's what I want you to do. You've hit message one, you've hit message two. You're about to go to message three, and you realize, oh my gosh, I forgot. I want you to look like you're completely confident and relaxed. I want you to look like you're in no hurry. Inside, you could be thinking, oh, no, what's the next point? What's the next point? What am I going to say? You can be thinking all that, but realize no one in your audience can actually read your mind. So it's okay to think about anything you want to think about. Don't project it to your audience with your body language, your expressions. Don't project it with anything coming out of your mouth. Instead, simply pause. All great speakers pause regularly in their presentations. So pause. Give eye contact to one person for a couple of seconds. Look at that person like you just said something so brilliant they need a couple seconds to think about it. Do not look rushed, scared, hurried, or flustered. You look at that person and you're looking at them. You're not looking down at your notes the way most people do when they have a brain fix. You're not looking up for the heavens of oh my God, please give me your the proper message. You're looking at a human being. You don't really care about them in the sense that you're focused on them. You're using that time to think. Then you can look down, take a step, and say, this reminds me of. Or I'm often asked, go to another point, knowing you can do that without looking nervous. Giving yourself that couple of seconds is often enough time to help you remember what to say next. But even if you don't realize your audience doesn't know what the third point is, you can simply go into another direction, bring up another point you want to address. And this also brings up something that's critically important for most business presentations. Have a simple outline on a single sheet of paper with big bullets that you can read and glance at. So if you've been talking about something for a while, you forget maybe you finished it. You don't remember the next big point. You've looked at someone for a couple seconds. You have taken a step back or step forward, glance down at your outline. Now you can see the next big point. And without any apology, without any sense of hurriedness, you go to the next point. Is it possible 4 seconds go by without you saying anything, and it's a little bit longer than normal? It's possible, but here's the thing. No one will remember that if you look poised and confident and relaxed the whole time. And that is how you handle a brain freeze.