Outsmart your fear of public speaking

When you’re creating the life you want and pursuing success (whatever that means to you), there will be things that are outside of your control. But there is one make-or-break thing that is entirely up to you, and that’s whether or not you get in your own way.

The biggest thing that makes you get in your own way and undermine your own success? FEAR.

I teach public speaking and communications. In other words, I teach people how to do a thing that terrifies millions despite being, objectively, very safe. So you can bet I see this all. the. time.

In my line of work, success is when I’m out of a job because you’ve gained the confidence to believe in yourself, to connect courageously with other people, and to seek out opportunities to put yourself out there rather than holding yourself back.

But before you can do that, you need to understand how fear works and how to outsmart it. So let’s talk about that.

First of all - when was the last time you said to yourself, “Oh, this fear is totally irrational” and the fear just went away?

That’s not going to happen, because  that’s not how it works. Fear is a survival mechanism. It’s more ancient and more primal than logic, and it digs itself into your brain before your rational mind even realizes what’s happening.

So you don’t talk yourself out of fear. You train yourself out of it.

You need to really confront the fear and teach yourself, on a deep level, that you’re safe.

Fears are stories that you don't know you’re telling yourself. They latch themselves deeply deep inside the psyche and start sending out alarm signals. 

At first it’s hard to tell where they’re even coming from. It's almost like when you’re in a meeting and a noise starts going off - maybe it’s your phone that’s buried inside your purse, or some annoying notification on your desktop. You’re frantically trying to figure out where it’s coming from so that you can turn it off, and it’s interfering with your ability to do anything else.

Fear is a lot like that. You’re about to give a presentation, or you have something important to say in a meeting, and suddenly this alarm inside your head starts blaring. Why is it happening? There’s no logical reason for it. But it’s there. It’s real, and it affects you in a real way.

A couple years ago I went on a backpacking trip and I set an alarm on a digital watch so that I could wake up, break camp and get an early start every morning. When I got home and unpacked my gear, that watch fell behind my couch with the alarm still activated.

Every day, that alarm would go off – BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP – for a full minute, driving me bananas. And because I couldn’t reach it behind the couch, I just left it there and let it happen. 

This went on for months – BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP – until I finally pulled out the couch, found the watch, and disabled the alarm. It instantly improved my quality of life.

That fear alarm is the same way. Ignoring it won’t make it disappear.

In fact, it’s worse. Eventually that watch would have run out of batteries, but fear doesn’t. It sticks around until you find it, engage with it, and do something about it.

That sounds pretty daunting, and it does take some time and intentional effort. But it’s very doable.

The first step is to ask yourself, “What’s going on here? Why is this thing creating a fear response?”

I find it helpful to phrase this question as, “What am I afraid is going to happen?”

Chances are, your first answer to that question is going to be pretty surface-level. A really common one in public speaking is “I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake.”

Ok. That’s a reasonable worry. Mistakes happen. I made a mistake cooking soup last night - I forgot to add salt.

Guess what? I put in some salt at the end, the soup tasted fine, and the world moved on.

Mistakes happen all the time, and they’re usually far from catastrophic. So the possibility of making a mistake, on its own, doesn’t explain why you’re filled with dread.

Our go-to answers tend to be superficial, but the REAL answers are not.

So the next thing you need to ask yourself is why making a mistake is scary. “What am I afraid will happen if I make a mistake?”

The answer to that might be, “Well, I’m afraid that would make me look stupid in front of people I respect.”

Then you need to keep drilling down: “Why am I afraid of this? Well, why am I afraid of that?”

As you go deeper you might get into fears like “If I look stupid in front of me, I won’t advance in my career.”

“And if I don’t advance in my career, I won’t be able to provide for my family.”

And so on.

You know you’ve completed this process when your answer throws you back in your seat and makes you go “Oh DANG.” (Or some other 4-letter word).

The fear resides way, way down at the emotional root of it all.

This process can feel intense. So be kind to yourself, and make sure you have access to any support that you might need.

But the reward is that once you pull that fear out from behind the couch, you can begin the process of deactivating it.

One of the first things that will probably happen is that you’ll realize that you’ve been putting absurdly high stakes on the whole experience. Because usually the story underneath it all turns out to be something along the lines of “I’ll lose everything” or “Nobody will love me” – or both.

And when you lay bare exactly how disproportionate the fear is to the risk you’re actually taking, then you can learn to identify that narrative, say “yeah, cool story” and just set it aside.

Then you go and do the thing you’re afraid of, and nothing really bad happens. Then you do it again. And every time you do that, you’re teaching your brain that in fact, this is very safe. That old story wasn’t true, so let’s write a new one about the connections and benefits that we get from this experience that used to scare us.

Your brain takes on that new story and stops screaming the old one at you.

So that's the process that we go through: questioning those stories and following them down the rabbit hole seeing where they lead.

Before you can take the rational approach, you need to be aware of all the facts. That’s why you ask yourself the tough questions and open yourself up to getting answers that may be a little embarrassing.

It’s like how something tiny and innocent can cast a big, scary shadow. You have to look at the thing itself to know what you’re dealing with.

Until you’re willing to look at your fears, you're not going to overcome them.

But once you do, you’ll be unstoppable.

This process works much better when you have someone by your side to support you and hold your accountability. Want me to be that person? Book a virtual coffee and let’s chat!