My wife Clare, confidently standing on the top of the world aka as San Francisco's Twin Peaks in 2015. One of my favourite pictures of her. She is taking her space!

I have a wonderfully weird gig coming up in May. I’m talking to a group of women who are focussed on empowering women about public speaking and self-confidence. So it’s an interesting challenge for me to tackle - mansplaining or what? So a part of me is a little scared, not of the public speaking, but of taking that space.  I once appeared in front of a women’s committee at my Student Union in the late Seventies. They were fairly radical feminists and it didn’t go well. I should have been better prepared. I was only 19.

So this Bank holiday weekend I’ve got myself a pile of books on women and confidence and started to make notes.

Tara Mohr’s “Playing Big, A Practical Guide for Brilliant Women Like You” is a great book. What I find compelling isn’t just about women and confidence, because most of what she says also applies to men but she’s really opened my eyes to a “new old” way of thinking about fear.

She writes about how the Hebrew Bible uses two different words for fear. The first is Pachad: this describes the fear of what might happen, the over-reactive irrational fear, which we know as anxiety. Our lizard brain is reacting. Most of us know this fear well.  We want to avoid taking emotional risks. It’s one of the main reasons why people come on my courses.

The second word is “Yirah”and we don’t name this very often, if it all. And this is where it becomes really interesting.
“Yirahis defined in three ways:
1. The feeling that overcomes us when we inhabit a larger space than we are used to.
2. The feeling we experience when we suddenly come into possession of more energy than we had before.
3. What we feel in the presence of the divine.”

So it’s the fear of standing tall, of moving into a new space or way of being. The feeling of “OMG, am I really here to do this?” The fear of moving towards something you really want. The fear we experience when we step into our own power.

Tara writes “Yirah is the fear that shows up in those moments when we uncover a dream, access our real feelings about an important situation, or contemplate taking a big leap toward a more authentic life. We feel sacred awe, which has a kind of trembling in it.”

Of course we often experience Pachad and Yirah together but it’s worth unpacking them.
So how do you do that?
Tara writes
“1. Ask yourself: what part of this fear is pachad? Write down the imagined outcomes you fear, the lizard brain fears. Remember they are just imagined, and that pachad-type fears are irrational. 
2. Savour yirah. Ask yourself: what part of this fear is yirah? You’ll know yirahbecause it feels different. It has a tinge of exhilaration and awe –while pachad has a sense of threat and panic. You can savour it, knowing it’s just a signal that tells you are touching sacred ground within. You can keep leaning into – even looking for – the callings and leaps that bring yirah.”

There is a spiritual language here that I wouldn’t normally use, but I think it is a  really helpful way to re-think fear. I see this fear quite often on the second day of my courses. 
A participant might say:  
“Damn you, if I’m no longer scared of public speaking then I have no excuse, and there is nothing stopping me from doing what I want to do. That’s differently scary!”
Now I can put a name to that fear.
It’s Yirah and it’s a fear we need to move towards. And I will be standing in Yirah for my speaking gig in May.
Wish me luck. 

Are you one of those people who keeps avoiding facing up to difficult things?

If you’re avoiding public speaking and presentations because they feel too scary then you might not be surprised to hear that avoidance actually grows the problem. 
Dwelling in fear for any length of time  isn’t the answer. 
Maybe if we could look at avoidance right between the eyes we could see that it is trying telling us something really useful. 
My experience of teaching this over 18 years tells me is that if we face our fears in the right way, by taking the small steps outlined below, we CAN face that fear, we can liberate ourselves and we can live full, meaningful lives. 

You probably know that by now that human beings are strange creatures. As a human being myself, I also do strange things. I’m not proud of myself. For years, I have actively avoided doing my tax return from September onwards. I say "active" as it’s always lurking at the back of my brain,  I know I should being do it. 
Shortly after Jan 31st deadline I pay the £100 fine for a late return. Then on March 1st when the pressure is too much, I spend a week preparing to do my tax return. So I sort out my papers, tidy my desk, organise my music collection, and then on the 8th day of March I get down to doing it. Once I get started it's actually much easier than I thought it would be and two days later I’ve done it. It has only taken two days but I’ve been thinking about it for at least 9 months. And I also have to pay the late fine and any interest and possibly further penalities. I say to myself “next year will be different”. And of course for years nothing changed. 

So I know from both personal experience and from 18 years of teaching that avoiding things we find challenging really can really get in the way of our leading full and happy lives. It can affect our relationships and our self image. Take this kind of email that I get quite often:
“I have managed to avoid presentations most of my life but I have recently started a new job where I have to undertake presentations regularly. My first presentation is in two weeks and I already can't sleep and feel sick at the thought of it.”

Or this from another client
"I have always had an intense fear of public speaking and have always made every effort to avoid it at all costs. I even struggle with less formal things like giving updates in team meetings.. This fear really hasn't served me well over the years in terms of work opportunities and job interviews, but I've just brushed it under the carpet, suffered in silence and tried to just accept that it's how I am. 
However, a couple of weeks ago I completely fluffed a presentation at work and it really, really shook me. I've therefore decided to finally try and do something about my intense anxiety in the hope that I can one day no longer have the horrible, intense fear and physical symptoms I experience in the run-up to and during a speaking event."

Yet another client  I worked with  never attended university because of the fear of collecting her degree at the degree ceremony. 

Sometimes the strength of that avoidance can be brutal. Three different course participants are talking here about how strong their feelings are
“I'd rather have a snake thrown in my face than do public speaking”
“ I'd rather be in the Congo, with armed guards than doing public speaking”
“I’d rather fight the Taliban than do public speaking”

So it’s not just me that is struggling. We seem to want to avoid experiences that are difficult. Even when the avoidance is costly to ourselves. Ironically or perhaps tragically we are spending our lives dominated by the very anxiety, we are trying to avoid. How mad is that? The grim truth is that avoidance doesn’t take the anxiety away, it just makes it bigger. 

We avoid discomfort. And that has a profound effect on our lives
“the more we try to avoid discomfort, the more we base our actions on how we feel, rather than on what is most important in life. In other words, we avoid doing things that are important and life-enhancing because we are unwilling to make room for the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that show up. And the more we choose action that gives us short-term relief from discomfort, rather than doing what enriches our lives in the long term, the smaller our lives tend to become.”
Dr Russ Harris

What if we could change our relationship to avoidance?

What would happen if we became curious about the fear of public speaking rather than avoiding? Pema Chodron. a Buddhist teacher, has perhaps a surprising view on avoidance.

"Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But for people who have a certain hunger to know what is true - feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are."

What if we moved from the idea that fear is a signal to stop everything to the idea that fear is the signal to start exploring. It’s actually time to be curious rather than to hide! Fear then becomes a teacher. Telling us where we are stuck and where we need to do some work.
But to be clear I'm not suggesting we  jump straight in at the deep end. 
We need to tackle this in small steps, by breaking a complicated thing such as public speaking into small chunks. Then it’s very possible to learn new ways of approaching it. The smaller the steps, the more possible it is to change something you have been worried about for years in a surprisingly short time. 
We can move from threat to connection. From not wanting to be looked at to comfortable making eye connection with the audience. We can move from panic to ease.

A quick guide to avoding avoidance….

Understand:
•  that avoidance is normal. You are not unique.  It’s what humans do.
•  anxiety makes us self-conscious and self focussed. And it distorts reality, not in our favour. 
•  the Evolutionary component of public speaking . We are evolutionary biased towards noticing threat. We needed that skill for survival. And we are very good at it. 
• that is nothing wrong with you if you are fearful.  70% of population have fear around public speaking. Fear is normal
• that you really don’t know what people are thinking, even if you think you do. You do not have that super-power.. They are as worried about themselves as you are about yourself. So you are special but NOT that important. 
• that it’s us holding us back. Me stopping Me. It’s 97% about our own thinking and we have the power to change that. 
•  the idea that confident people don’t feel fear is a myth. Confident people have a different relationship to fear but they still have fear. They may call it excitement or they know it’s just part of the deal.
•  confidence is something you need to practice rather than it just arrives. Confidence is really about trusting ourselves more.

Reframing
See the bigger picture – take the focus away from being centred on you
•  focus on how life could change if you could make these steps. What’s more important than fear? I have had clients who took up dancing again, or became teachers, change their jobs, or ask their partners to marry them
•  Move the focus away from yourself. Move your focus on to serving people. Be more interested in a cause or the issues than yourself.

Deeper Learning
• Learn about Mindfulness. Learn about how we are NOT our thoughts and that we don’t need to get entangled with every single thought. That we can say “thank you but no thank you to our thoughts”. Books and courses

• Learn about Public speaking. Find a course where the emphasis is on re-thinking the psychology around public speaking. That includes my courses, naturally but there are other people around the world. I can't be everywhere!
I’ve been running these courses for 18 years especially for people who have been avoiding public speaking.
We can do this in small steps too;
Read my website, Talk to me and ask me questions (that’s why I run 30 minute free sessions). And then the whole course is broken down into small steps as you can read in these two bits of feedback.
“The course made me realise there are steps to achieving more confidence and the way they were broken down was really achievable and encouraging”.
Rachael

The course somehow seemed to challenge me without it feeling like much of a challenge. I had a brilliant group who were very supportive, which made me want to step outside my comfort zone. You are never pushed to do anything and it is hard to believe how such a gentle approach can be so effective. Sometimes small steps are massive...
Angie

Finally
I can’t make you stop avoiding, that’s completely down to you. 
But I want you to know that it’s very possible for anyone to change and take their place fully in the world.  You really don’t have to live in fear and avoidance.  

Take a small step today.
Coaching appointments can be made here
Or ring me on 01225 45300
Or email me here

(Yes, I’ve sorted out my stuff about tax now. This year I didn’t even pay the late fine! I’ll never be an accountant but I’m on top of things now)

"If people really knew what I was like they would find out that I’m fraud"
Ever had a similar feeling that you are going to be found out? That you don’t really deserve your job or to be standing in front of an audience? Or even if you really know your subject somehow you know far less than the audience?
"Everyone else" we seem to think "is better than me"

In every group I run on public speaking these feelings are expressed by lots and lots of people

In her book Presence, Amy Cuddy expresses like this;
It’s not simple stage fright or performance anxiety; rather it’s the deep and sometimes paralysing belief that we have been given something that we didn’t earn and don’t deserve and at some point  we’ll be exposed”

When I was on a leadership course some years ago with 60 managers from the public, private and voluntary sector that I was amazed to find that every single manager talked about this feeling. They were going to be found out. 
The trouble is with the impostor thinking is that it can undermine our confidence massively.

However the research quoted in Amy Cuddy’s book shows that 70% of people experience this feeling. This impostor syndrome is incredibly common. It’s so normal  that it should be renamed as the “impostor experience” . And lots and lots of people  have it. So relax, let go of that worry unless you really really truly are a fraud!

I got some really nice feedback today about last week’s course on re-thinking presentations
“What I liked best was that you exceeded my expectations yet again and proved to us that WE are the presentation and that allowing ourselves to be vulnerable, rather than hiding behind a PowerPoint presentation, gives the talk more power and really engages the audience”
Of course it’s lovely to get such feedback but this blog is not about showing off. I really want to pick up on Petronella’s point that it’s the person not the PowerPoint that matters in a presentation.
When presenters start to really engage the audience (which surely is the point of a presentation) they tend to use less and less technology. Or even no slides at all!
I’m not totally against PowerPoint but having too many slides can get hugely in the way of your relationship to your audience. And standard slide presentations often constrain a speaker to a fixed path rather than being able to respond to what the audience wants.
My wife was in an audience as one nervous presenter  said “As the previous person has run over and taken nearly all my time, I will have to show you my 120 slides in 20 minutes rather than 45 minutes” And off he went at high speed, showing the audience his slides in record time. In the process he completely lost his audience. He had delivered his slides but he didn’t get his ideas across to the audience. He hadn’t communicated.
Presenters should really serve their audiences rather than being subservient to their slides. Of course it takes confidence and a bit of creativity to think differently about presentations but for the audience’s sake it’s really worth it.
When presenters have the courage to allow themselves to be fully seen and to bring their authentic selves to the presentation then very powerful things can happen.
It’s not the polished presenters that audiences really want, it's real human beings that they can trust.
We have to stop thinking that all presentations just equals slideware
And start thinking that our job as a presenter is to make our ideas really stand out and to really connect with our audience.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves around delivering presentations and public speaking. The more pressure we put on ourselves, the more uncomfortable we feel.
In my public speaking workshops I regularly come across five really common beliefs about presentations that really don't help. And some rethinks are in order.

1. I've got to know everything about a subject before I can present
   If you had to know everything then every presentation would take 17 years to prepare (just a guess - not scientifically proven). That's plainly ridiculous! And to be honest there is far too much information in the world anyway. 
   So what do you do?
   Well, I'd love you to see presentations as your contribution to the subject. This is your particular take, your own angle rather than the whole encyclopaedic explanation.
   Your job  is to digest the information in a way that the audience gets it rather than  overwhelming your audience.
   You might have a massive report to present on. You could frame it it like this: “ It's really important for us to concentrate on, is this bit of the report, it will have profound impact on our department…
   Or maybe you could see your presentation as starting the debate rather than being the complete answer. So you could do a quick presentation and then start a group discussion! So less material to handle, less to remember and better for your audience.
    
2. I've got to tell everything I know about presentation in order to give my audience value
   You open your laptop, fire up PowerPoint and the first question you ask yourself “What do I know about this subject?”. And it all goes on your slides. Your 120 slides!
   What you have forgotten is what it's like to be in your audience receiving all that information. It's tough to stay awake. 
   Presenters seem to forget about audiences. Presenters give too much information. If you say 10 things in your presentation you're probably not saying anything at all. They won't remember it. 
   So the radical re-think question is “What is the ONE thing you want the audience to take away or to act on?. That's right, just one thing.
   
   Part of your job is to rebuild your one idea in their brains. In order to do that you need to work out why they should be interested in your idea and speak to their interests.
    
3. If I pause, they will think that I’ve dried up and/or about to collapse
   Pauses seem to be a real stumbling block for presenters. Nervous presenters think if they deliver their presentation really fast then they will get off really quickly and perhaps hopefully no one might notice them. Pauses for them are full of panic. But I'd love you to do a rethink about this.
   The most powerful part of the presentation is the audience thinking process.
   They need to be able to think about what you're saying. If you give them a machine gun delivery there are no gaps for them to think.
   
   Audiences need pauses.
   
   And you can see pauses as thinking time for you.
   
   So I'd love you to move from panic pauses to Jacuzzi pauses, pauses where you can relax and think. (I know this will take practice but good pauses are about putting your audiences needs first)
    
4. I can't make a mistake
   The flipside of I can't make a mistake is I've got to be perfect. Anxiety around public speaking is full of excessive pressures on ourselves. This combination one is a biggie!
   
   Organisations that have really good customer service know that they are going to make mistakes so what they do is get better at recovering from mistakes. They will treat you really well, they will apologise and remedy the situation quickly and maybe even give you something extra.
   
   What public speakers need to do is to get better at making mistakes and more especially recovering from mistakes. This probably means being fully present and dealing with what's happening in the room. So when Steve Jobs’ presentation clicker failed during an apple presentation, he came up with a story about the beginning of Apple whilst someone got a new clicker for him. 
   
   The research shows that if an organisation handles a mistake well, then the consumer often has more trust in that organisation afterwards. I think it's the same for public speakers. The audience will relax if you take mistakes in your stride. Have the courage to be imperfect. It certainly helps me!
    
5. I won't be able to answer people's questions (see bonus tip below as well)
   Maybe you won't.
   I was in the audience for a lecture by Daniel Pink in Bristol awhile back. Some very clever person (i’m being polite) asked a very clever question. He paused, he thought and his reply “mmmm, I haven't done the research on that. Has anyone else here done the research on that?"
   
   He look around and waited.
   
   No response
   
   “We don't know, none of us knows. Next question please”.
   
   He didn’t fluster or bullsh*t. He wasn’t rude to the questioner.
   
   It’s okay not to know, in fact it's far better to be honest. You can always add "Normally I would know but I've got my stage fright head on. Talk to me at break"
   
   I found another elegant addition to this approach in Simon Raybould’s blog. He gave a formula for answering a question you don’t know:
   a. I don’t know, but it’s a good point
   b. so I’ll find out
   c. and if you give me your email address I’ll get back to you about it
   d. by lunchtime on Thursday
    
6. Bonus tip about questions is one that I use all the time.
   When I ask an audience “Have you got any questions?”, quite often no one says anything. So I wait. Audiences are slow to do most things. I'm not blaming them, its just what audiences are like.
   And then I say "normally at this stage I get asked this question” I have a couple of questions up my sleeve and that gets things rolling. It also gives the audience time to think about questions.
   
   It's very simple, it's very useful.

My two day  re-thinking presentations course is coming up in early November. I only run two of these a year and I really enjoy doing it. If you want to re-think your presentations have a look at the course here. This course is not for people who are very scared of public speaking (like my normal courses). It's aimed at people who want to connect better with their audiences

Quite a lot of you may have come across the top five regrets of the dying before. These were compiled by Bronnie Ware when she worked with terminally ill people in a hospice:
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I didn't work so hard.
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish I had let myself be happier.

I was on a public speaking conference last weekend and some friends of mine Koos Wolcken and Jennet Burghard  talked about what lessons we can learn from them?

They turned the list upside down. It’s a very simple but powerful re-frame so the list now becomes an  encouragement. Which one resonates for you?

1. I have the courage to live my Life True to myself
(instead of the life others expected of me)
 

2. I spend my energy in a good balance with what is truly meaningful for me
 (instead of working too hard and spending so much of my life on the treadmill of work existence
 

3. I have the courage to express my feelings
(instead of suppressing my feelings in order to keep peace with others)
 

4. I stay in touch with my friends and maintain contact
(instead of becoming so caught up in my own life and that golden friendships slip by over the years)
 

5. I let myself be happy
(instead of getting stuck in old patterns and habits )

I’m learning that I have to get a lot better at number 4. Staying in touch with friends.  And number 2!

Why the photograph of the young girl? 
When I run my public speaking courses I work with a lot of adults who are scared to to be seen. Sared to speak up. Apologising for taking their space.
So I love this young girl's energy and the "don’t mess with me pose!” aka as the I have the courage to live my Life True to myself pose. 

I took this photo in  New York this summer visiting my wife who is working there for awhile . She has a job offer that she couldn't refuse (but not from the Mafia!) and although I miss hugely we are both seeing it as an adventure.
if you want have a look at my other photographs taken in New York and Northern United States have a look at my flickr album here
 

I often ask my participants; “What makes a good speaker?” 
I get replies which include; 

• being self assured, 
• comfortable in their own skin, 
• good with eye contact, 
• a speaker who respect the audience’s time (and thinking process),
• not overly slick,
• a sense of humility, keeps the ego in check!
• engages the audience - the speaker tells us some something new, 
• the speaker is relaxed about recovering from making mistakes (rather than worried about making mistakes),
• they are conversational (and not formal), 
• they have the ability to be present, in the moment and deal with what's happening in the room,
• good with pauses/silences, they use stories (often personal stories), 
• and they are not scared to talk about failures or to reveal something important about themselves - what they are passionate about.

What they are really talking about is authenticity. They want the speaker to be comfortable being themselves. 
And the audience want to be able to trust the speaker.

So then the advice that is often given to speakers is “just to be you”. 
But the trouble is with that advice is that it involves being me. I don’t mean just be John Dawson, one of them is surely enough! I mean it involves being really ok being your version of  “me” in front of others. And that ’s what gets in the way. Massively. People are really, really good at throwing obstacles in front of themselves. Over the years through working with 6000 people who are scared of public speaking I have seen really clear patterns emerge.  Below is a list of how we sabotage ourselves. So I’m not saying all of this is true for you but it might be a good chunk.

The obstacles we put on ourselves around being “me":

1. We put excessive pressures on ourselves (I’ve got to be…. inspirational, eloquent, dynamic, profound, perfect, someone else, I’ve got to perform, etc.). It’s too much pressure and that really doesn’t help. 
2. We don’t want people to see us fail in some way (go red, stutter, lose our place, shake)
3. We talk to  ourselves in really harsh terms (I’m terrible, I’m crap I’m not good enough, they will find me out). We wouldn’t talk to our friends like this. 
4. We think we know what the audience is thinking - and it’s all negative. 
5. We don’t like to be looked at.
6. We let fear be a signal to stop rather than accepting it as a normal part of public speaking.
7. We give ourselves a hard time about having a hard time

The work to do is to let go of these pressures (it's usually us doing it to us) and learn that you are enough. And learn just to BE in front of a room Yes, that needs some work but not that long, to be honest. I saw this process work really well last weekend on a two day course, although the self-talk can be tougher to work on and takes practice. (Learning to be kinder to ourselves is one of the biggest gifts we can give ourselves)

When people get around themselves and stop worrying about who they are, they emerge as authentic speakers. They start to take their place in the world without apologising for doing it. THEN you can then simply say to them “just be you" without them thinking "oh no."

I am deeply moved by the Manchester bombing. I have a 16 year old niece in Manchester so it feels very real. I'm teaching in Manchester in a week's time. 
So I've decided to give my profits from the course to the relatives fund when it emerges. Taking our place in the world means having the courage to face our fears and to lead lives that reflect our values.
Yesterday before the bombing I found this quote:
"We don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a wonderful victory"
Howard Zinn

I know that’s a strange title but bear with me.
I see part of my job as a public speaking trainer is to think about how I can break the problems of public speaking fear into small enough parts so the complex knot of problems actually becomes simple to solve. So my teaching is full of tiny steps.
What I've noticed is that lots of people who come on public speaking courses are not actually that scared of the speaking part of public speaking, they are really scared of “public being”.  Public being is the most basic stage of being in front of a group. It may sound obvious but you'd be surprised how much fear it provokes.

For 16 years I had been teaching about presence.  Then I came to realise that presence is a wonderful concept but it’s hard to grasp if you are really anxious - and I work with a lot of people who are very anxious around public speaking.

Amy Cuddy defines Presence as “the state of being attuned to and able to comfortably express our true thoughts, feelings, values and potential”. (Presence by Amy Cuddy 2015). Koos Wolcken and Jennet Burghard define presence as “the ability to be fully present in the here-and now when communicating with someone else”. (Present – the Essence of Authentic Presenting, 2015)

Presence is a great thing to aim for, but when you are overwhelmed by fear these concepts can appear too abstract. If you are anxious, things need to be simple otherwise you can’t take them in. Anxiety makes the brain smaller!

Nine months ago, I changed my teaching and started to explain the importance first and foremost of “public being”. It’s the stage you need to get comfortable with before you worry too much about the speaking bit of public speaking.

I often define “public being” as a series of questions

Can I be in front of people with ease? (For some people it will be at the level “Can I actually exist in front of people”)
Can I breathe in front of people?
Can I look and be looked at?
Can I be silent?
Can I just stand in front of the audience?
Can I take my space?

Really fundamental stuff.
And this also expands what we can tackle on a public speaking course. It’s not just speaking.....
A woman came on my course who hated walking across the office because she thought everyone was looking at her. Another client didn’t enter a church cake competition in case she won and had to go up to collect the prize. And then there was the doctor I worked with recently who hated going into a meeting by herself and would wait for a colleague before she went in. So the fear of being in public is often at the root of this fear.

If you can get more at ease with public being then
1) you start to get your brain back.
2) you start to calm the threat response down (the adrenaline surge)
3) you realise that actually the audience is not out to get you
4) you are starting to practise that you don’t need to put on a show, that you are enough

The response to this change in teaching has been a significant change in people’s own understanding of their public speaking fears. Below I’ve taken the liberty of sharing some of the feedback from course participants I’ve had since changing my teaching.

Here's how some of my course participants have taken to the idea of tackling 'public being':

I think you hit the nail on the head when speaking about ‘public being’. That is exactly what I need to be more comfortable with to achieve what I wanted from the course. The course made me realise there are steps to achieving more confidence and the way they were broken down was really achievable and encouraging.
Rachel 

Something profound happened to me in your course which I think was your message about 'public being' rather than public speaking, alongside your modelling of vulnerability and connectedness - simply sharing yourself with your audience. I did feel slightly nervous on both occasions, but then relaxed and stayed with myself throughout the sessions - I even enjoyed it!
It's been a revelation and has stayed with me in a simple but very experiential and immediate way.
Emma

You understand it like no-one I have met before and realizing it is the fear of “public being” and not speaking was a revelation to me.  Enlightenment!
Rebecca
 
The course started out from the most basic stage of being comfortable with Public Being, which so many other courses completely overlook. It didn't take much to make a huge difference, but taking things back to basics isn't feasible in normal life and your course did this in a safe, positive environment which broke so many barriers for me. By the end of the two days, I was looking forward to talking in public and really can't wait to stand in front of an audience. I never thought I'd think that.
Jody

Near the beginning of every public speaking course, I stop looking at the audience for a few minutes and speak to the clock on the wall at the back of the room.
I then ask the audience for their reaction:
“What words come up for you when I look away?”
Comments include:
 “You look arrogant”, “You look like you don’t care”, “ You look bored” , “You look rude” and “You look really odd and shifty!”
I then ask: “Do I look less or more confident than I did just a minute ago before I stopped looking at you?”
The answer is always “less confident”

All I’ve done is move my eyes away from the audience
But audiences find that strategy of looking above their heads distinctly unsettling. In fact they start to distrust you.
And that’s the last thing you want.
Because if audiences don’t trust you, they won’t let you in. Your carefully prepared presentation probably won’t work if you look shifty.

Audiences need to trust the speaker. And eye contact is just part of the trust requirements for a speaker. I think there are three aspects of trust that the audience wants.

Confidence – trusting the speaker can cope
Is the speaker confident enough to be there? Can I just relax and listen?

Integrity – trusting who they are
Is the speaker a trustworthy person? Do I believe him or her? Do I believe their passion or is it false?

Audience centred
Has the speaker thought enough about my needs, my position or are they just speaking about their own world? Does the speaker care enough about my world?

For a presentation to work well, you have to have a combination of all three aspects. So what are the behaviours/qualities that generate these levels of trust in a speaker?

1. Eye connection as we have already seen, is one of the fundamentals of building trust with the audience. And it works on all three aspects of trust. Eye contact shows confidence, integrity (liars look shifty – we think) and audience centred (do I feel included as an audience member)

2. Ability to uses pauses and silences with comfort. Pauses help the audience to reflect on what you are saying and give you a chance to think.

3. Being comfortable with yourself. Is it ok for you to be the centre of attention or are you apologising for being there?

4. Ability to be present in the moment. Can you handle what is going on in the room? Can you think on your feet?

5. Ability to handle mistakes well. Lots of people are scared about making a mistake in a presentation. Why not just get better at recovering from making mistakes? I make hundreds of mistakes a year in my training but I’ve got good at apologising if it’s really bad or just not being phased if I’ve messed up. Once you are relaxed about making mistakes you tend to make fewer mistakes. And audiences see that you are ok and relaxed if things slip up.

6. Authenticity – do you display a consistency between words and deeds? Is there are an underlying consistent you? Are you clear about your values and do you stand up for them?

7. Telling the truth really helps build trust. It should be self-evident but somehow its not!
So it's better to answer "I don't know" to a question than flounder or make stuff up.

8. Reveal yourself – get personal. Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Audiences want to know something about you. What makes you tick? What are your passions? We need to let the audience see who we are. That means taking a risk, for example, telling a story about your biggest mistake in professional life and what you learnt from it.

9. Humility.   Humility shows perspective, wisdom and sensitivity. Humility is appealing. But this needs to be balanced with the confidence to be fully present and hold the space. So it’s not the humility that is self-negating .

10. Audience focussed thinking. Have you constructed the presentation/speech with the audience in mind? Have you thought about the problems they might encounter? Be genuinely interested in helping your listeners. Does it feel like a conversation? And of course you can be friendly!

People have abused our trust in the past. We know too well that politicians lie. Even, or perhaps especially, in these days of Trump, I still fundamentally believe that public speaking remains all about integrity and trust and it has to be earned. Most of us, thank goodness, are not politicians. We can see that public speaking is an act of serving the audience’s needs whilst remaining true to your values.
Trust me!

A fast car driving late at night through downtown LA – goes against the traffic lights and nearly crashes into a truck. A wounded man gets out of the car and struggles up to his way into the office.
five minutes

An unconscious man is floating in the sea. Gets picked up by an Italian fishing boat, operated on to remove bullets and a strange electronic device. He wakes up, is confused fights and then collapse again. Wakes up, doesn’t know his own name. Stays on board boat for a week, still doesn’t know who he is but is speaking different languages, doing skilled things somehow without knowing how he is doing them. He is deeply puzzled. He catches a train to Switzerland, fights two policemen, enters a bank and then gets some clues from a safety deposit box. He uses the name he finds on a passport.
15 minutes
 
A young woman is being chased for her life in the woods.
A different woman wakes up with a start from a nightmare, she wanders around the house – you just get her name at 4.08 minutes “Lund” when she answers the phone
Lund arrives at the murder scene and is left alone to discover it. She’s in a very spooky basement where the lights have gone out. Finally, she realizes it’s a practical joke at 6:37.
7 minutes
 
Expert linguist, Louise Banks, is finding out how to speak to the aliens who have just arrived on one of the 12 “objects” around the world. She needs to find out what they want from us. Quickly.
It looks like a conventional start. But the format is reversed. You only really find out what is happening a lot later.
116 minutes
 
That’s a long introduction to a blog. I haven’t explained what I’m doing yet.
But neither did these films.

Double indemnity (1944)
Bourne identity (2002)
The Killing (2011)
Arrival (2016)

You have to wait possibly five, seven, or 15 minutes in, or almost the whole film, before you get some explanation of what is happening.
 
At the weekends, we watch films that often use a mystery/suspense opening.
We seem to love them. All these films/box sets had massive box office receipts.
But hours later, we go to work and put a different head on.
A work head.
So, when we do a presentation we forget all these techniques of grabbing people’s attention.
We think we have to do some combination of the following:

1. Give a three/five slide introduction to your company before you get onto the meat of your presentation
2. Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them."
3. Tell them everything you know in chronological order about the subject – and it ends up being two hours (I kid you not – that is a recent conversation I’ve had with a presenter) 

And we wonder why we don’t grab the audience!
 
A while back, I was working with an executive in a big organisation and I tentatively suggested: “Your opening could be a little more dynamic. Have you thought about starting with a story?”
He replied: “I can’t possibly do that, no one starts with a story, it’s not the right thing. You have to start with the company history slides. I don’t want to do anything new”.
So, this blog is my slow reply to him.
This is not new. Hollywood has been doing it for at least 87 years. But as human beings we’ve been telling stories for well over 20,000 years. We humans are hard wired for stories. Stories grab us. We remember stories far longer than we remember statistics.  (Chip and Dan Heath’s study showed that 6% people remember stats and 67% people remember stories)
 
Let’s just take one example. Simon Sinek’s presentation.

He starts with a story without explanation.  The audience might be wondering: “Why is he telling us this story? Where is he going with this?”
The opening story drives his presentation – it’s a fundamental part of the whole presentation. In fact, he tells five stories by the end of 12-minute presentation.. My guess is that Simon is always on the look out for stories he can use in his presentations. Presentations are often far too abstract, so stories make ideas more concrete. They help the audience get what you are talking about
So if we want the audience to be engaged we can learn a lot from what we watch at the weekend.  As Simon shows you don’t have to have a budget for car chases or explosions. But you need the courage to try something different. The rewards could be far better audience connection and engagement.

There is a very simple answer to why we are scared of public speaking.
We feel threatened.
This may be a conscious or non-conscious thought.
Our brain looks out for threat (real or imaginary), or remembers previous threatening times and kick-starts the flight, flight and freeze system and we get that sharp mix of physiological and emotional responses.

So, the simple answer to lessen the fear of public speaking is to reduce what we see as threatening.

And in order to do that, you need to

• change your thinking
• focus far less upon yourself
• have a different relationship to fear
• understand audiences differently.
• To understand that there is a lot of myths around public speaking that can trip us up.
• With this understanding and learning on the way, you gradually expose ourselves more and more to public speaking in small steps and in a safe space. Please note this is not the advice of practice, practice, practice – which can lock in the fear.

What I’m doing in this blog is to explore a little deeper into the reasons we feel scared. By reading this it may give you some clear pointers on what to change. Of course, this article is not the whole answer but I hope it’s a very useful starting point.

Another reason for writing this blog is that I want you to get the idea that it’s not just you who thinks like this. I’ve been running my trainings for 17 years. Last year I ran 60 courses. This is NOT just you. You share these feelings with lots and lots of people.

1. What thinking do we need to change?

How we think about public speaking makes a real difference. We put a huge amount of pressures on ourselves. We often think it’s just an irrational physiological reaction however in my experience there is always some problematic thinking going on behind that reaction.  

A. We have a harsh inner critic
We give ourselves messages like “I’m boring”, “I’m crap, everyone else is ok” “I’m not worth listening to”. It's a really common thought.

You can feel yourself  lacking so you may  think
“I’m not ________ enough” (tall enough, good looking enough, prepared enough, intelligent enough etc.)

We compare ourselves.
“Other people are better than me”

We apologise for ourselves because we don’t think we are good enough.
“I’m sorry that I’m wasting your time”

After you have done the speech, you may beat yourself up for months about how bad that was. So, the next time you do a presentation, no wonder the brain goes into threat alert.

B. It’s just me who is broken
You can think there is something just wrong with you.
“It’s just me who is especially scared, other people don’t feel like the fear, like I do”.
“My fear is really obvious where everyone is calm”

For some it may lead to feelings of “I feel so alone”.

C. Impostor Syndrome
Thoughts like “They will find me out, I don’t deserve to be here, I’m a fraud”
 (70% of us have some sort of impostor syndrome according to Amy Cuddy’s book on Presence)

D. The lack of compassion for ourselves
We are generous to other people, we give them space, we encourage others but we often have really harsh rules for ourselves. If you spoke to your friends like you speak to yourself, would you have any friends?  
Just notice how easily we allow everyone else to be the centre of attention and how tough it is for ourselves.

E. We become overly self-conscious
Many of us don’t like to be the centre of attention. We feel vulnerable, exposed and potentially shamed. When we are anxious, we often think that everyone is thinking about us. So, self-conscious really means “I’m aware that other people are noticing me”. Maybe you think that people are noticing your every fault. “They’ll notice my quivery voice, my big feet etc.”

So, the focus is all about you.  But not in a good way. (see also section 2)

F. We put unreasonable pressures on ourselves
We seem to be great at placing excessive demands on ourselves such as …
“I can’t show that I’m nervous” or “I can’t be red” etc

A common if slightly ironic pressure you may put yourself under:“I should be relaxed”. Pressurising yourself to be calm when all you feel is chaos! That’s tough when our bodies are naturally reacting to the adrenaline surge. It’s what bodies do and yet we are war on ourselves. We give ourselves a hard time about having a hard time

Other unreasonable pressures include
“I can’t make a mistake”, “I have to be funny”, “I have to be dynamic”,” I have to be professional”, “I have to perform.”

We are fundamentally saying to ourselves “I have to be somebody I’m not”.
It’s no wonder we feel uneasy.

People who write a lot often put pressures on themselves such as
“I have to be eloquent” “I have to speak like I write” “

“If I’m really prepared they won’t catch me out”, “
I have to know everything”, “I have to be an expert”.
So, people can spend weeks preparing everything but actually seem to be adding to their woes rather than feeling better.

You may also have a brain that is drawn to disaster
“One mistake and that’s me done forever”

And a final excessive pressure adds more misery
“I’m not allowed to pause”, “Other peoples’ pauses are fine, mine are hideous”

G. Avoiding previous threats
You may have been shamed as children or in previous jobs. And our threat system remembers those events really well and drives us to avoid repeating any shameful experiences in the future... 

H. The Fear of fear
Fear is meant to be a signal to avoid or fight. That is its biological purpose. It’s meant to be unpleasant. But we develop of fear of fear. So, we want to avoid it all costs. We don’t want to shake or go red. We don’t want the anticipatory fear or that sense of doom.

But that means we are planning everything around avoiding fear. “What happens if…. there is a presentation” So in many ways we are dwelling in fear most of the time even though we are trying to avoid it

As Michel de Montaigne said
“He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears”. 
Read that again, it does make sense!

I. Consequences of failure
You want to avoid the shame of failure, especially in front of your colleagues.

J. Mind-set
Maybe you have a mind-set that tells us that “People can’t change, it’s too late for me to learn, I will always be a bad public speaker, Always scared of public speaking”

K. Perceived threats from the outside
Somehow, we think we know what everyone is thinking about us. And this is without any proof. And it’s always negative.

So, we know that the audience is bored, hostile and doesn’t like me. All the eyes are on me. (See the section below)

You may think that there are pressures to succeed from the outside
“People have great expectations on me” “I have to be a professional presenter to fit in”

And of course, we also have perceived unwanted supported from the outside!
“I don’t want people to feel sorry for me”

L. Your brain in general
The human brain is really wired for struggle and survival. It’s still fighting stone age battles. We over- see threat – that’s how we survived in the past by anticipating dangers. But as a result, we try to predict our future by what has happened in our personal past. We only see 10% of reality so we are making a lot of what we see up. So, we see the world not really with our eyes but with our brain. And if our brain is full of fear – guess what we see? Large dollops of fear and threat!

And when our brain is full of fear, we find it hard to think properly. We are concentrating on all the fear rather than the task in hand. So, we lose our focus, forget words and get flustered really easily.

M. The language that we use
Sometimes it’s simply the language that we use which triggers the flight and fight reaction.

“I’ve got a big presentation coming up”
“I’m in the spotlight”
“it’s going to be a massive event”

Sometimes it’s about self-fulfilling prophecies in how we speak to ourselves
“I’m going to be really nervous” – you are literally telling yourself that you are going to be scared. So, what does the body do – it becomes scared!

N. Conclusion to section 1
All this over-thinking means we are creating a really tough world for ourselves. We need to change our tendency to over-think threat. We need to calm things down.
Some of the solutions to all of this over-thinking is in section 2, 3 and 4. and the rest of the blog. It may also be about developing skills in mindfulness and how we interact with our own thoughts.  And part of the work to change your thinking could be done in a course.

2. We are too focussed on ourselves

Just look at how long the previous section is! And it’s all about our thinking about ourselves. Our anxious brain is busy trying to protect us but it’s often just seeing the world from our scared point of view.

I think this quote sums it well:
“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” 
― Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships

Good speakers understand that it’s not really about themselves at all, it’s about the audience or the subject or who they are representing. I’ve written a blog on how to shift our focus.

3. Our relationship to fear needs to change

We know that fear does unpleasant things to us. It may make you feel sick, your heart thumping so much that it hurts, your vision narrows, you get clumsy, need the toilet, you feel surreal, your words and knowledge go.   You may also shake and have shallow breathing.  Not surprisingly, we think that fear is wrong. In the previous section I talked about people wanting to avoid fear at all costs.

And it’s the completely wrong strategy.

We need to accept fear. Fear is a normal human being thing. It is unpleasant but its normal. It’s a myth that confident speakers don’t feel fear. What they do is change their relationship to fear. They accept it, they know it goes with the territory.

Nelson Mandela said: “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
I’m not talking here about the kind of fear that is overwhelming and panicky. We need to reduce that fear to manageable levels. To a place where we can function well. But the idea that physiological reactions can go away completely is a myth. But what confident speakers do is to accept it, re-label it and call it excitement or perhaps “in the zone”.

4. Not understanding audiences

Audiences can be tricky. They listen in a different way to people listening to us in a conversation. Conversational listeners are active. They nod, and make approving noises and often mirror your body posture.

Audiences however don’t do that. They listen passively. They looked bored. And they have blank faces. It’s normal but it catches us out. We think they are judging us. They are just listening. But our brain is good at threat so we often see them as hostile.

5. Misinformation don’t help

You can read the “fact” that “93% of all communication is through the body”. If you think that is true you are going to be worried about what your body is saying. By believing this, we again, become overly self-conscious and become worried about what bits of your body are saying. I have read that 200 ways to move your eyebrows! I joke about this but people can be really worried about body language.

Luckily that “fact” is rubbish. If it was true, we wouldn’t ever need to learn languages at all. (we’d only miss 7% of their communication). There is a very small, tiny nugget of truth here. The only time it’s true is in this example.
If I am a speaker and shaking and nervous and I say “I’m really happy to be here” the audience doesn’t believe the words.
So, when there is a mismatch between the words and your body then it’s true.
But please remember it’s only then.

The other myth “Public speaking is scarier than death” again is rubbish. It’s from a 1973 survey that just counted what people are scared of. More people put “public speaking” down on the survey than “death”. It was a poor survey. It didn’t get people to rank fears. It just counted more people were scared of public speaking than death without asking “which is scarier”. But now this survey has done its damage.  It’s a very sexy headline “More scarier than death” People now believe it and think they should be really scared. And I bang my head on the desk. It’s so frustrating. If there was just one story that all good public speaking trainers would like to banish from their part of the world, it would be this one.

conclusion

I started off with the simple answer to public speaking fear – to see it as less of a threat.
We’ve seen just how much gets in the way.

We need to make it far simpler

If we understand that:

• Your brain is geared to over-reading threat and you make a lot it of this up,
• Audiences are not really thinking that much about you, audiences are not doing all that nasty stuff you think they are. They are individuals worried about themselves and their mortgage/athlete’s foot/overdraft/sex/food.
• Public speaking is a conversation, a chat, rather than a performance.
• You need to accept the fear as normal human being stuff (having done the work to hugely reduce it by changing your thinking).
• You need to shift your focus away from ourselves. We are way too focussed on ourselves.
• To develop and practise these skills in a small ways, in safe places such as speaking courses and groups or small meeting

Then public speaking becomes more possible, less threatening.

I had a client, on one of my courses, was very scared at the beginning of the day. At the end of the day, when various pennies had dropped, she said
“Oh, public speaking……. It’s just normal speaking to normal people”.

That’s what I want everyone to experience.

My father who died ten years ago in April 2007. 

Recently I got this letter (I should really call it an email but I'm old fashioned)
“I am doing the eulogy at a close friend's funeral next week and I have been so overwhelmed with sadness that I wondered if you had any tips about how not to cry. I am going to do it but I'm struggling with crying”

Here is my reply... 

The day before my dad's funeral 10 years ago I spent an hour with him in open coffin. I did a lot of crying with him by myself.  I referred to him as daddy for the first time in 40 years. I cried buckets (I had missed my mum’s funeral, so in a way it was a double funeral for me. I was away in Greece when my mum died and the Greek police did not track me down)

So by the time I did the eulogy I was mostly all cried out but I did have a little sob. But I told the congregation “Don't worry about my tears, it's alright to cry – it’s a funeral and it’s my dad!” 
I was letting the audience know that although I was crying I could cope.

I do know a lot of my public speaking clients who didn't speak at their dad's/mum's/friend's funeral and they regret it because they were afraid of crying.  As Victor Frankl says “Courage is the realisation that there is something more important than fear”. Maybe we should change that to “more important than tears”

I do feel that tears are fine at a funeral. My first tip is about letting the audience know that you are ok with the tears, that you can speak with the tears and that crying is part of loving. And not to be ashamed by something so human.

I do know that when we feel vulnerable, the audience will often see our vulnerability as courage. 

My focus and intent at the funeral wasn't my personal grief, it was a speech about him, it was about representing the family and telling his story. So that shift of focus helped me the bigger picture. And that's the second tip, if you can, see the bigger picture at the funeral, you are speaking on behalf of the family or for his friends. Thinking less about you. But don't worry if you cry.

However I do know that if you tell the audience that you are ok with tears, you will get a huge amount of love and often comments about how moving your speech was.  The third tip is that I know it helps sometimes to have someone close standing next to you to gently support you.

My fourth tip is not to wait to the funeral to see your relative's coffin. My visit to see my father was my preparation for the funeral. A time for my private grief. By seeing him in his coffin, I knew it was time to let him go. He was no longer there.

We are humans. We are vulnerable. That’s who we are. We live short lives and the tears and sobbing are the price of living and loving.
I wish you all the best
John

About 10 years ago, I interrupted a burglary.

From my office window, I saw two men carrying things from a house in the distance and somehow I knew straight away that they were up to no good. I jumped out of my ground floor window (the door would have taken too long) and shouted as I ran towards the men ‘Burglars, somebody help me” very loudly three times. I have a very loud voice for emergencies. And a neighbour joined me in pursuit. The house being robbed was occupied by two women, an elderly mum and adult daughter and they had been worried about security. I didn’t sit back and think what happens if I confronted the burglars. I just ran towards them.By the time we had almost caught up with the burglars, we were chasing them into the church car park. The burglars got into a car and wildly accelerated their car towards us. We dived out of the way but my heart was racing out of my chest and it felt like a very surreal intense experience.We said to each other “remember their number plate” as the car left. I repeated it to myself two or three times.

But within minutes, I couldn’t remember the number plate at all, we both had vastly differing accounts of how many men were involved and what had happened. We couldn’t even remember what make the car was.

However for a couple of months I would remember the intensity of the chase and still be in shock. Unexpected tears would come. Not surprisingly we had gone through an extreme flight, fight, freeze reaction. The flight and fight reactions are instinctive, it’s a set of survival responses that primes the body to respond to threat, so you go through neurological, behavioural and hormonal changes and its accompanied by negative emotions such as anxiety fear and anger.

I teach lots of scared people to face their fears and to change how they see public speaking. So I’m fascinated by how we as humans react to fear and threat. I think it’s really worthwhile exploring how other groups of people deal with far more intense fear than public speaking so we can learn from them.

So let’s just imagine guns being involved in that story. What would what would have been my body’s reactions then. Last week I read about how American police react in a UOF (Use of force) situation and how the police can work better in high stress situations. (A Training Method to Improve Police Use of Force Decision Making, Judith P. Andersen, Harri Gustafsberg)

And I’m not talking a lot about the politics of their policing. How they react in extreme stress situations is of course very political, because of the amount of people that are killed by the police.

But here I’m just talking physiology.

When there is a real threat, or a perception of threat, our flight and fight reactions can start. Studies show that our perception gets massively affected as our heart rate increases.

We have changes in vision, sense of time changes and we hear less. Vision can be affected in three ways

1. Reduced peripheral vision (tunnel vision).
2. Distance only eyesight
3. And forced binocular vision.

All three have dramatic consequences when you add guns. Tunnel vision is caused by restricted blood flow to the eyes and eye muscle contractions. The eye focuses on the source of threat with increased attention to detail while ignoring near objects.

Peripheral vision can decrease by 70%. And when that happens it takes 440% longer to react. That’s scary. This starts to explain how the police (or anyone) start to make poor decisions when their flight and fight kicks in. The arousal also disrupts monocular vision, so a police person cannot close one eye to aim like they might do on the firing range. They can’t focus on the gun sight because they can’t do near vision. They can’t aim properly. They have slower reaction times.

During fight or flight, heart rate increases, people either hyperventilate or hold their breath which affects the brain areas responsible for our fine motor skills. We lose dexterity, we get muscle tremors and loss of blood to our extremities. So aiming a gun becomes even harder. However the blood flows to the large muscle groups which means we get stronger - ready for the fight so we can kick, punch and run better.

The more you read about what happens at high heart rate the scarier it becomes. For the first time in my life I start to have some sympathy with American police! It’s not surprising that the wrong things happen when we are operating at such intense heart rates and flight and fight reactions. “An officer may even look in the direction of the threat but not actually see what is going on or may repeatedly pull the trigger of an empty weapon, misidentify innocuous items as weapons or not see or hear innocent bystanders in the line of fire”.

So we really need people like Professor Andersen who research approaches to calm the flight and fight reactions and train police in calming themselves down in a use of force situation.. I haven’t been on her courses - I wouldn’t be allowed! (I am in correspondence with Professor Andersen so I will be fascinated to hear more of what she has to say).

The training for the police consists of education about stress, biofeedback and breathing techniques, group instruction about how to use mental focus and visualisation to enhance situational awareness, practise in realistic scenarios, slowly to begin with and then becoming more realistic. I don’t know her work in enough detail as yet but it makes a lot of sense when I compare how I train and what she does. But I don’t hand out guns during my training, sorry if you are disappointed! (I did have a military participant in one group who said "I'd rather fight the Taliban than do public speaking")

What really struck me is their work on focus.

A small but important part of my coaching is to get people to move from a hard fear-based intense almost laser like focus (getting close to the tunnel vision) which is what happens to a lot of people whey they stand in front of an audience (or they can’t even look at people) to a softer wider focus. So although you are still looking at people’s faces you are also getting a wider focus so you are aware of the periphery around them. We’ve known this helps people relax in stressful situations for 17 years. What the police research seems to show is that it’s counteracting what the brain instinctively wants to do which is to narrow focus when we are stressed. So part of the answer to public speaking stress is to relax our vision, with more peripheral looking you can help our natural flight and fight system to calm down.

 I’ve just been reading another book called “Deep Survival - Who lives and who dies” by Laurence Gonzales. And that’s all about how we react when things go wrong in the wilderness. He writes:

“Everyone begins with the same machinery, the same basic organism and when it’s threatened whether in pursuit of pleasure, for duty, for honour or by accident, the organism reacts in predictable ways. It is only by managing and working with those predictable inborn reactions that you’re going to survive. You can’t fight them, because they are who you are”

So of course public speaking isn’t as dangerous as police work or the wilderness (it might feel like it is). But we all need to manage, work with and accept our inbuilt reactions. We can think “it’s just me who is broken” and that makes us feel smaller. But it’s important and perhaps liberating for us to understand the big picture about fear. Fear is a human species story we all share. Fear is normal and we need to learn how to handle it better.

When I was 8 years old, I wanted to wage World War II with the help of my friend Michael up the road. (Like lots of boys at that age we were both loved guns.) Now it’s quite shocking to think that I was born only 14 years after that war ended in 1959. It meant that my weekly comic ‘Victor’ – there is a clue in the name - was full of war stories. Thankfully I’ve moved on, I am now firmly a peace lover but it occurred to me recently that lots of people see public speaking as some kind of battle with the audience and so when they present something they often employ warlike ‘defensive strategies’.

For example:
Raising a barricade – I will use a lectern as something to hide behind. It feels safer.
Guerrilla attack –  if I say my presentation really quickly and get off at speed and maybe they won’t even notice me.
Camouflage  -  by showing 70 presentation slides, I’m hoping they will look at the screen and not me. I can hide in full sight. They may not notice me.
Make myself smaller -  if I sit down I’m a smaller target and it feels safer
Not taking risks – if I do roughly the same presentation as I’ve always done, it will be safe. It might be boring but it’s safe. I don’t want to stand out.
Not making mistakes – I will use the powerpoint  - that is controllable. I shall read from it therefore I won’t forget what I have to say and won’t make any mistakes.
Psychological warfare  – Dominate the audience by imagining the audience naked
Big weapons in my arsenal – if I use big words in my presentation they will think I know what I’m talking about.
The Magic Armour – I want to ‘appear’ confident on the outside despite my personal hell on the inside.

But the trouble is that these defensive strategies are just about surviving in front of an audience. “If I grip tightly to the lectern I will get through the presentation”.
This defensive approach comes from our tendency to be overly sensitive to threat – it’s the flight-fight-freeze system kicking in. Defensive presenters are not really thinking about being interesting or different, they are simply focussed on surviving. No wonder we talk about bullet points being lethal!

Underneath this defensive strategy are thoughts such as “they are judging me”, “I have to be impressive”, “I have to perform”, “every one else is better than me”.  And it’s not really the audience doing this to us. It’s usually us getting in the way of us. We are putting huge pressure on ourselves. We are almost at war with ourselves.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. We can do other things. We can learn new strategies that move us towards a more peaceful existence in front of people. Towards a place of connection and calm. So I urge you to raise the white flag, come out of your bunker and stand up tall. It’s time to re-think public speaking.

There are thousands of tips about how to move away from public speaking anxiety.
“Prepare, prepare, prepare”, “Imagine the audience naked”,  “Know 100 Words for Every Word That You Speak. You must know 100 words for every word that you speak.”

Yikes –that’s a lot of work and huge amount of pressure. But the trouble is that they mostly don’t get anywhere near the issues.

So after 16 years of teaching I want to reveal my ultimate tip for changing our anxiety around public speaking. Cue drum roll.

It’s the simple one; you need to change how you think about public speaking.

“Is that all I’m getting?” you might say to me.

It may not sound much but it’s a fundamental step. Or a series of steps. And it can be long lasting. The thing about re-thinking is that once you have got it – you don’t need to relearn it.

Tim who came on my one day course in 2011, wrote to me last month about a broken link in my new website. He’s a kind man. He also put on his email “I’m still hugely grateful for your help. Years later I still marvel at the change.”  So whatever happened on one day, five years ago, has lasted. What happened was Tim changed how he thought about public speaking. And it’s stuck with him.

Let’s take one step back and take a quick look at Dr Carol Dweck’s work on mindsets. Her research shows that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.

She talks about two different ways of thinking about ourselves:

The fixed mindset
We only have a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality and a certain moral character. Will I succeed or fail? Will I be accepted or rejected? Talent alone creates success—without effort. I have to limit risk

The growth mindset
Based on the belief that that your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate through your efforts. Everyone can change and grow through application and experience. A person’s true potential is unknown . brains and talent are just the starting point. This view helps to create a love of learning and a resilience to “failure” (it’s where we see setbacks as learning,  and not failure)

So a C+ in a student essay could be seen as a failure, or an opportunity to learn more and to understand essays differently, depending on our mindsets.
Dweck’s research shows that just that difference in thinking about what we believe about ourselves can make a huge difference to our love of challenges, belief in effort, resilience in the face of setbacks and greater success.

People coming on my course have a belief that is possible to change. It might be a very small belief at the beginning of the day. But it’s possible. And that’s where the re-thinking and the new learning starts.

So what other shifts of thinking do we need to do with public speaking? There are lots that we can make so here are just a few.

from struggle to learning
Imagine going from the fixed mindset idea "I will always struggle with confidence"
to
a growth mindset one of"I'm learning to be confident, it might take awhile and there might be some tricky times on the way but there is a whole bunch I can learn".

It’s only me to it’s normal
“I'm the only one who feels this fear of public speaking. I’m in some way abnormal and broken” to
“I'm a human being and fear is normal. It affects everyone else too. I need to learn how to be with fear, and how to think differently about it”.
Olympic athletes change their relationship to fear by describing it differently for example “I’m in the zone”.
Of course I’m not saying that is ALL you need to do around fear. There are a number of re-thinks around fear that are really important. This is what I write about in my other  blog entries.

Silence is terrifying to pauses are good
Speakers often think “pauses are horrible, full of panic and the audience must think I’ve forgotten the words”
to
Good speakers are really comfortable with silence AND they know that audiences need time to absorb what a speaker is saying. Pauses really help people think! So pauses are good and not a sign of weakness. Honestly!

Audiences aren’t doing what you think they are doing
You can of course see audiences as hostile. They have blank faces, they look bored, they are judging me. everyone is thinking about me and it's always critical
For example I was working with a man on a course last week who saw his audiences as giving him “a broadside”. For those who don’t know your naval history, a broadside is a ship firing ALL their canons on one side at you at once. Audiences for him were pretty devastating. 

Regular readers will know that I bang on about audiences a lot. The shift I want people to get is that blank faces are normal in an audience. It’s just how we listen in an audience. This shift in thinking that audiences are passive listeners rather than full of hatred/judgement is one of most useful shifts people make on the course And that they are thinking about other things other than you (e.g. mortgage, a row they have had at home, athlete’s foot cream or should I go shopping on the way home).

From disaster to recovering
From “I can’t make a mistake, I have to be perfect otherwise people won’t like me or it’s unprofessional”. That is a huge amount of pressure on anyone
to
“Mistakes are normal, most of the time audiences don’t notice them AND what I need to do is be less worried about making mistakes and get better at recovering from them”.

I’m sorry I’m here to taking your space
We might have the attitude that when we stand up in front of people  “I don’t deserve to be here, I’m sorry I’m here, I’m sorry I’m wasting your time, I’m just sorry”
to
an understanding of just how easily you let everyone else take the space when you are in the audience. When it’s other people’s turn we just let them take the space with ease. Everyone else is doing the same for you when it’s your time.

You are special but not that important – re-balancing self-consciousness
From “everyone is noticing everything I do”
to
“It’s not really about me at all, it’s really about serving the audience and focussing on the subject.”

The fear of public speaking is irrational to you have got a wonky brain – love it!
from “There is something wrong with me, I shouldn’t feel like this “
to
Actually human beings have only just arrived in civilisation – 98% of our brains were developed before we got language. We have been living as hunter gatherers for millions of years and within a quick burst of 10,000 years we are in cities.  A lot of our brain is still stone age and we are animals that used to be hunted! So let’s be curious about our human brain, the “software” is a bit wonky and you need to realise how it interacts with the modern world’.

Acting the part to having a chat
Change from seeing “public speaking as a performance, I have to be something I’m not”
to
See public speaking simply as a conversation, see it as chat,” At the end of a day's course, one participant saidwith surprise in her voice"Oh, its just normal speaking to normal people!". She'd made the shift.

Public speaking tips around anxiety are to be taken with a pinch of salt if they don’t include elements of re-thinking public speaking. Tackling public speaking anxiety is really not about just about speech preparation or taking sips of tepid water.

Let’s finish with Jane's experience on the most important day of her life...
“I attended your one-day course in Bristol in February/March last year (and it was so helpful in changing my mindset. I have benefitted a lot from it at work and I know it helped me be the centre of attention on my Wedding Day in July without panicking! I had one moment of negativity when I walked into the back of the church and saw how many people were there, but amazingly, instantly was able to tell myself that they were all there to support me, and the nerves vanished”
Jane

Jane had done the re-thinking needed to be the centre of attention, she understood audiences far better. She had said on the course "When I go to other people's weddings, I'm really happy for them".  At the church there was a twinge of negativity but the re-thinking shifted the fear.

 

I have had some bad news. Annie who has been utterly fantastic as my administrator is having to leave for health reasons at the end of November. I am very sad but I know of course that health has to come first.
So the irreplaceable Annie is leaving and I need to find another administrator.

background
I’ve been running a specialized training business for 16 years which helps individuals overcome their fear of public speaking. The work focuses on getting people to take their place in the world. I love the work and the feedback from my courses is excellent. I need skilled help with administering and growing the business. I previously was the founding of the spark magazine in Bristol and worked there for 15 years. Although the website is called speaking-infront, I formed a company called The Public Speaking Company Ltd. And that's the formal name of the business.

the job
The hours are part-time and flexible (handy for school hours) and likely to be around 10 hours a week. After the induction Annie determined her own hours and often worked when I was training.
My office is in Larkhall, Bath.  You need to be good with people, great on detail and able to run the business when I’m training so you also need to be dynamic and responsible.  Help with planning new courses, targeting new clients and researching new venues will also be needed.
You need to be at ease with systems, computers (I’m mac based), au fait with social media, help maintain the website (easier than it sounds) and be interested in growing the business and positive change. We use quickbooks for accounting and basic book-keeping and preparing VAT returns will be part of job. Training will be offered with quickbooks etc if necessary

Free attendance on a couple of courses would be part of the training for the job so an interest in liberating people and ourselves from fear would be useful

£15 an hour

So would you like to help others take their place in the world? Let me know. Send your CV and covering email to me by deadline 15th November. Any questions just email me on john@speaking-infront.co.uk

More about the business and me:
www.speaking-infront.co.uk