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Dealing with Stage Fright - Part I
By Dr. Carol Fleming

I know three and a half ways to greatly reduce or eliminate altogether your stage fright and I guarantee them. Do I have your attention?

The discomfort (humiliation, terror, anxiety) of stage fright has brought an awfully lot of people to my door, so the ‘ways’ I mention above have had a lot of practice. People can learn to how to use their cognitive abilities to ‘tame’ the more primitive impulses. Proper preparation, symptom management, and appropriate breath work are learnable and can make the difference people want.

I know you want some’ quick tips’ (the famous silver bullet) that will solve all your problems. So I will start with the ‘quickest’ of my ‘tips’, meaning this is a matter of insight and attitude, not lengthy practice. When you ‘get’ it, you’ve got it. This is the “1/2 way” mentioned in the first sentence, since there are important exceptions to these generalities.

You suffer under the assumption that people have nothing better to do than to study you; looking for something to criticize, ready to find the hole in your presentation and preparing to humiliate you in front of the group. You may even have some history here. This could well describe your experience in the 6th grade when you had to do an oral report to the class on the exports of Argentina. The teacher was, in fact, grading you, the nit-pickers were counted ‘uhmms’, and the guys in the back were making rude pantomimes. These are excruciating experiences and they can leave nasty memories with subsequent vows of, ‘Never again!’

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My friend, Dr. Dan Amen calls the residue of these experiences ‘ANT’s: Anticipatory Negative Thoughts. You are expecting to continue to have the same dreadful experience whenever you speak.

So, here you are again, having to present to a group - colleagues, clients, church members, community groups – and the old internal uproar starts again. Your perception of the situation and your psychological/physiological response is the familiar ANT from your past. But, this is not the 6th grade. You are an adult and your audience is probably composed of grown-ups who wish you well. The situation and the psychological atmosphere have changed enormously. New truths describe the average audience:

For the most part:

NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU
NOBODY IS LISTENING TO YOU
NOBODY GIVES A DAMN ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY

That was the sound of one hand slapping. Now, turn the other cheek and consider this:

YOU ARE BEING SELF-CENTERED
YOU ARE THINKING LIKE AN ADOLESCENT

Do I have your attention now? Good! Now you can see that speaking in public is not like presenting to the 6th grade or a solo turn in a ballet. THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU and this is not about you performing for others. It’s about communicating with people. This is about service and giving and really trying to help other people.

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Dr. Amen told me about his “18-40-60” rule:

At 16, you care very much about what people think about you
At 40, you don’t care about what they think
At 60, you realize that they’re not even thinking about you at all!

Consider your own behavior as an audience member. Do you not sit there composed, nodding and smiling, apparently listening to the speaker…but with your mind on the beach in Maui? Confess! We fake listening all the time. We are very good at it. It is so much easier to daydream than to actually listen to someone giving new information.

So if people are not paying attention to you, what are they attending to? You know the answer: their own stuff. (I’ve got to return that phone call. I’m hungry. My rash is acting up. I wonder if that pretty lady is single. I wish that man would stop riffling through paper. I wish I could beat the traffic, etc.) They are absorbed in themselves, in their own issues, needs and daydreaming.

Are you poised to pounce on a speaker’s lapses? Probably not. You are actually hoping to learn just one thing that might be helpful to you. If you assume that this also probably describes your audience, you’ll be headed in the right direction.

You will have to use your head – your cognitive skills – to determine what the presentation requires to be maximally useful to your audience. You need to do some investigating into the needs and character of the audience so you can make a sensible offering. What do they already know, what do they need to know?

Because your audience attention is so fragmented, you have to be much more energized and clever in demanding their attention. They need your help to orient to the topic and to see how it might of interest to them. You could use some of that, “Step right up!” energy of the circus barker to gather the crowd.

When you are concentrating on the delivery of service (information, inspiration, etc.) and the needs of your audience, you are NOT dwelling on your scary memories and anticipations and your general preoccupation with yourself. You are assuming a service attitude and you are determined to be as helpful as possible to your audience. This saves you from setting yourself up for a poor presentation and, most importantly, from the pain of stage fright.

This attitude will pull you through whether you are dealing with the average
passive audience, and when you a reporting to a Very Important Person
and it Really Does Matter.

Remember:

This is not about me
I’m here to serve them
The more I focus on service, the less I experience fear
I guarantee a more comfortable, successful experience.

Contact us today to discuss how our workshops, coaching and training products can improve your Personal Professionalism and Communication Impact.

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