Need HELP with your public speaking?

Need HELP with your next presentation?

Here 'tis!

 How to Tame that Fear Monster!

Heart pounding! Dry mouth! Nearly fainting! Is it a horror movie? No, worse: real life horror, having to give a presentation. The public speaking fear monster strikes again.

You have to present a report in front of the whole department. Or your club wants you as their president, meaning you’ll stand up in front of everybody to run the meetings. Office and personal life frequently present such challenges. The only trouble? You’re terrified.

You don’t have to let your fear hold you back. There is a way to tame it. With preparation and practice you can turn your fear into excitement. And do a good job, too.

ADVANCE PLANNING PUTS THAT FEAR MONSTER INTO A CAGE

How do you start taming that red-eyed, yellow-horned presentation fear monster? Advance planning is the first step. Then you work on special techniques. Practice and more practice cements your gains.

It’s so easy to worry about your fears and problems that you tend to forget audiences have their own. As a result, an audience rarely sees or hears, much less remembers, a slip you think screams out loud. 

Plus audiences actually want a presenter to succeed. It’s no fun watching someone in agony. And they’re thankful you’re the one up there, not them!

Think about it. Have you ever sat through a presentation and wished the presenter would be nervous? miserable? terrified? Of course not. You as an audience member want that presenter to feel free of terror so she can get on with the message.

Make a list

Before you present, make a list of all of the worst things that could happen. Will they shoot you? If so, quit today! You might feel faint, your hands might sweat. 

But since people are generally more interested in what you have to say than how you say it, probably the worst possible thing is: your ideas don’t fly. 

Well, so what. You’ll get another chance. No matter how awful you think you are, you won’t die. And you’ll still have your job, too. (In many clubs you'll have trouble getting rid of your job!)

The most probable worst thing that can happen? Nothing. No result. No sale. Nothing. In that case, you're just as you were before you started. You haven't gone forward or backward. Just stayed the same.

Now, toss that list. Not just into the trash can! Get it as far from you as you can. Because it has nothing to do with you any more.

See yourself as a success

Now, take a tip from successful athletes and practice visualization. Visualize yourself right now—and as soon as you know you’ll be presenting—as the most successful presenter anyone has ever seen. 

Picture yourself walking confidently to the front of the room, cleverly introducing your topics, smoothly handing your notes. Watch the audience nodding in agreement. Observe your boss coming up to congratulate you afterwards.

Can this really help? Yes. It really helps prize winning athletes and it really can help you. Your mind can hold only one thought at a time. If you fill it with thoughts of success you won’t have room for any others. 

Bring this success picture to your mind each and every time you even so much as think of your presentation. If you're walking down the hall and your presentation pops into your mind, immediately associate it with a success thought.

As a person thinks, so is she or he.

TECHNIQUES TO LOCK THE FEAR MONSTER TIGHTLY INTO ITS CAGE

OK, you’ve got the fear monster into the cage. Now you need to lock it in tightly. And the first way you do that is to reclaim the breathing technique you had when you were first born— breathing from the diaphragm. 

Your mind goes blank and your hands tremble when presenting because your brain and muscles are hungry for the oxygen they need. Diaphragmatic breathing takes care of that. It also gives you a base for a voice that carries well without a microphone.

Fear is excitement without the breath.

When fear hits, you tend to breathe in short gusts using your chest muscles instead of your diaphragm. Often, your shoulders will move, alerting you to the problem. You have barely enough breath to speak a few words, to say nothing of sentences. Breathing with your diaphragm will counteract this.

You’ll find your diaphragm in the middle of your body’s trunk. Put your hand on it now, and take a deep breath using only the muscles in that diaphragm area. 

There! That’s all there is to it. You breathe that way when you’re asleep: this is nothing new to your body.

You can’t just wait until the hour before you speak to start this: you’ll forget it in your anxiety. Rather you have to practice always using your diaphragm when speaking, even when on the phone. Then you’ll be ready for presentation time.

Relaxation exercises

You can now turn your diaphragm breathing into a de-tenser by exhaling slowly, to the count of one-make-lots-of-money, two-make-lots-of-money, up to five or six or more counts. 

Then hold a count or two, and inhale to the same count, or whatever’s comfortable for you. Don't push to get in more counts! It is supposed to be relaxing, not creating more tensions!

You’ll be amazed what three or four deep diaphragm breaths can do for you, especially just before you speak.

To help you get to sleep the night before your presentation and to keep you from tensing up while you wait your turn, here’s another technique. Take your right hand and make a fist just as hard and tight as you can. Hold it for one count, then let your hand go limp. 

Then make a fist half as tight as you did the first time. Hold it for a count and let it go limp again. 

Then make another fist half as tight again, hold, and let it go limp. Do this with your hands if you’re in public. At home in bed you can do it by tensing and relaxing any muscles.

A good way to get to sleep is to start with your shoulder muscles and work your way on down.

Help there’s cotton in my mouth!

When you can’t even say the first word because you feel as if your mouth holds the entire world cotton crop, never drink water. That just makes the problem worse by washing away the saliva you need. 

Instead, get your own saliva flowing. One way is to take the tip of your tongue and press it against the roof of your mouth. Or you can bite (ever so gently!) the sides of your tongue. 

If neither of these appeal to you, try thinking of a cut ripe mango, orange or peach—anything that will get your juices flowing.

THE FEAR MONSTER WILL GET YOU UNLESS . .

The fear monster will attack you anyway, unless you practice these techniques along with your presentation! There’s no such thing as too much practice when that monster is about to grab you by the throat. 

Let’s define practice. Practice is what you have to do when you’re learning to play the piano or hit a golf ball. You do it over and over again. And over and over again.

 Learn the individual techniques first. Then when you know you’ll be presenting, practice them along with the speech.

Now, practicing a speech isn’t sitting at your computer, reading over your notes. Neither is it just thinking about it. Real practice means standing in front of mirror, or in front of family or friends, speaking aloud. Go through the whole thing, and do it many times, until you’re comfortable. 

Knowing you know what you'll be saying can add a lot to your comfort. And help lock that fear monster in its cage.

The result of all this work? You will recognize and tame any anxiety you have about presenting. Without all that fear you find presenting so much easier and more rewarding. 

Once you've tamed the fear monster, the adrenaline rush you get before you speak will help you instead of holding you back from showing your worth.

This article has appeared in several different forms in four publications. This version is revised from Office Pro magazine.

Ever have a problem with hoarseness? You don't have to if you follow these ideas about

Your Presentation Voice

Do you make your business presentations with an easy-listening voice? Does your voice carry clearly to the back row? Without a mike? Are you free of constant "um’s" or "you know’s?" Can you speak all day without strain or hoarseness?

If you answered "no" or "not sure" to any of these questions, you need help with your presentation, or public-speaking, voice.

Voice problems are as common as colds. The difference is: you can cure (and better, prevent) most voice problems

Back to voices. The first step for anyone who needs to speak in business, over the telephone, one-on-one, or to gatherings—for everybody!—is to find your natural voice. 

Pushing your voice to sound higher or lower than suits your body is the source of both harsh sounds and hoarseness. You can even lose your voice! I remember a teacher who always had a sore throat by the end of the week until she started using her natural voice.

To get to your natural voice, just hum a tone that’s comfortable, to the sound of "ummm." Try it now. "Ummm."

Now, without changing the tone, say a word, "one." Then speak a sentence on that same tone. 

If you’ve been using your natural voice all along before starting this exercise, the words will sound in your ear exactly as they always have.

If they sound different, either higher or lower or just funny, you probably haven’t been using your natural voice. 

At this point, you can get a speech pathologist (also known as a speech therapist) to help you. Or you can try to remember to do your "ummm, one" exercise each time before you speak until your "new" voice comes automatically.

Warning! If you haven’t been using your natural voice your "new" voice will sound very strange to you. But as you use your "new" voice it ought to leave you with much less strain and hoarseness after you’ve been talking a lot. That’s proof you’ve hit on your natural voice. 

If you continue to have problems, a visit to an otolaryngologist is called for.

Making yourself heard

Once you’re using your natural voice, you want people to hear you. And you want to be able to speak an entire sentence smoothly, without having to pause for breath. The same technique takes care of both.

I myself used to have trouble singing an entire line in a song because, as I discovered, I wasn’t breathing properly. People may not enjoy listening to me more! But I enjoy singing far more now I’m breathing correctly.

That breathing technique is: use your diaphragm, not your chest. This is something else totally natural. 

When you were a baby you breathed with your diaphragm. You still do when you’re asleep—or reading the comics, watching TV or relaxing. However, so many of us have allowed tension to rule our bodies we’ve lost the best way to breathe when we start to talk.

Put your hand on your diaphragm—it’s just under your chest, above your belly button—and take in a good deep breath. Now as you exhale, see how long you can speak. (Or sing. Singing lessons start with breathing lessons, as I discovered.)

Breathing from your diaphragm combined with your natural voice will let you speak to fifty or more listeners without using a microphone or straining. The reason? You’re using your diaphragm to push your voice out, not your throat.

Too soft? Booming?

Two more voice problems: voices too soft and too loud.

What if your voice is always markedly very soft and "breathy?" If these voice and breathing tips here don’t help, you probably need professional help. Look for a certified speech pathologist to help you.

If your voice booms out so loud that it carries over every other sound, you may simply have come from a family of very loud speakers. 

Just as you learned to speak loud, so can you learn to tone down the volume. Simply being aware of the loudness will often take care of it.

Many too-loud voices, however, result from hearing loss. You talk louder to hear yourself! Anyone who speaks with a very loud voice should get a hearing test from a certified audiologist. If hearing is poor, it can be aided.

Nothing drives an audience crazier than a presenter who continually uses "uh" or asks "you know?" The only good way to see if you offend with either of these (or similar ones, such as "ah," "ummm" or "like") is to listen to yourself on a tape recording. 

Most speakers are completely unaware of these habits.

The cure? Becoming aware, then practicing. If you’ve rehearsed your material before you stand up in front of the boss or customers, you’re much less likely to fall into this trap.

Sometimes, a listener will respond to continued queries of "you know?" with "no, I don’t know: you tell me." If you weren’t aware before, you will be after that.

Stuttering can be a real problem for a presenter, and often the only help for it is professional attention. Now don’t let a little bit of occasional stuttering worry you. It happens to me when I’m answering questions. While a poised pause for collecting my thoughts would sound better, I don’t always remember to do that. Nobody’s perfect.

It takes concentration and practice and time to master all of the techniques of a good business presentation voice. The rewards, however, are many: Self confidence, warmer acceptance by others, and, just maybe—winning that contract.

END

Communication consultant Priscilla Richardson speaks & trains on taming the fear monsters of business writing & public speaking. For more information on how she can help your business or association reach greater productivity, email her at Guru@WriteSpeakforSuccess.com. 

Copyright 2000 All rights reserved.   Priscilla Richardson Guru@WriteSpeakforSuccess.com

You are free to use any of this material in whole or in part as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link and email link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.