The feelings are well-known (and you’ve been there haven’t you?) and the usual solutions are well publicized, aren’t they?

We are, of course, talking about nervousness when it comes to public speaking.

Have you tried all the ‘gurus’ ‘solutions?

Remember – “practice, practise, practice”, and “prepare, prepare, prepare”, or “take deep breaths,” or” go for a walk”.

Did they work?

Maybe to a limited extent.

But has the nervousness gone away?

Probably not!

And it never will until we get at the root cause, which I’ll discuss in a minute.

As everyone will tell you: “if you’re not nervous, there’s something wrong” and so we are almost conditioned into believing that we just have to accept and live with nervousness.

And while it is true that a certain amount of controlled nervousness can do much to enliven our presentation, that really doesn’t help you when you think of the dry mouth, the shaking hands, the blank mind etc etc., does it!

In my courses I always ask the participants what it is that they think makes them nervous. And the answers generally consist of the following:

• I’m afraid my mind might go blank
• I’m afraid I might make a fool of myself
• I’m worried about people not understanding me or my message
• I keep remembering that occasion when ……. (some disaster or the other”)

But do you see what each of these ‘problems’ has in common?

I’ll give you a clue .. it’s one word with one letter in it. Yes it’s “I”.

And it’s “I” that’s the problem (even if that doesn’t sound grammatically correct).

As long as we are concerned about ”I” (ourselves) in presentations we will continue to be nervous and will continue to worry about what might happen.

But now shift the focus. Now think about “you” the audience and see what happens.

Concentrate your energies both in the preparation and, ahead of the presentation, on how much you want to share this information with the people who are coming .

You are giving this talk because either the audience need to know the information you are sharing (notice ‘sharing’ not ‘delivering’) or because you have something you want to share with them.

So think about ‘them’ – your colleagues, your customers, your suppliers .. whoever they are, and develop an overwhelming desire to want to share your material with them.

So all the reasons for being nervous now disappear, don’t they?

(Well, almost ……… being realistic and being human, we cannot expect to be 100% cool, calm and collected. But that gut-griping, fear-enhancing, throat-strangling nervousness will be a thing of the past.)