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Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking

Although there is a degree to which evolution has built into us a predisposition to presentation anxiety, you can overcome still it. We come into the world with all kinds of inclinations, but they are just a starting point. After all, evolution has also bred us to be afraid of high speeds but you can probably stand next to a busy road or fly in an airplane perfectly calmly. You have simply learned to be calm. You can do the same in overcoming fear of public speaking.

Understand

Your first tool in this is simply to understand what causes presentation anxiety. Knowing this shows you how to overcome it, without any of complicated psycho-babble.

Calm

Second, you will need to calm any scary speaking experiences you might have had in the past. As we saw, your brain can react with an instinctive learned fear of presentations faster than you can consciously think about it. That is why you might have told yourself time and time again you won’t get anxious but find yourself becoming anxious anyway. It is also why logic is only of limited help. It does not matter how much you know or how intelligent you are. If your amygdala perceives a threat, it can short circuit all your intelligence anyway!

But just as your amygdala has learned to trigger an anxious or fear response to presentations or public speaking, it can relearn it too. This is called deconditioning. You can use your natural flexibility to take the emotional ‘sting’ out of any past memories. You can still remember what happened, of course, but instead of being an emotional memory that keeps triggering off a new response, you turn it into what is called a narrative memory, like your memory of what you ate for dinner yesterday. You still know it. You have just calmed down the emotion.

If you find it hard to calm down, my Learned Calm deeply relaxing hypnosis recording will give you some great techniques to get you started.

Practice

Finally, you need some practice. But do not worry. You do not need to practice in front of an audience just yet! Instead, you can do what successful athletes and performers do and practice in your mind first. Once any past bad experiences have been calmed, this technique, called rehearsal, enables your mind to deeply learn new patterns and responses. Sign up for my free e-course Seven Steps to Presenting with Confidence in the box on the right to begin receiving the ten best ways to improve your presenting

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