How Do You Take The Fear Out Of Public Speaking? Post 2 of the Speaking TODAY! on Tuesdays series

A couple of years back now, I was competing for a place in the semi-finals of the World Championship of Public Speaking when, no more than 30 seconds into the talk the microphone started playing up and cutting out.

After a few seconds of confusion – during which the mind was going over what my options were as I continued with the speech – the microphone started working and cutting out and…. you get the picture.  

Fortunately there was an emergency microphone on stage just for this very event. I worked my way to where it was and grabbed it – and the same thing started happening with that one. Now the rules don’t allow you to stop and re-start the speech once the problem is fixed. You just have to keep going.

I can tell you, when the second microphone stuffed up, my mind was going a hundred miles an hour. I knew I had no chance of winning. I knew I had to keep going, I couldn’t stop. I was trying to figure out where to put the now useless microphone while at the same time trying to make it a natural as possible movement. And I was thinking how am I going to close the speech now, especially as originally my ending was a very softly spoken, emotional part of the speech.

Solution? Get back on track. Speak louder. Finish on time – so at least I wouldn’t be disqualified. And get ready now for next year; and I wasn’t even finished on stage yet!

I know that if that is the worst thing that ever happens to me than the rest of my speaking career is going to be easy!

As discussed in the last post, the things that we fear about speaking are all things of the mind. And the mind can be managed.

Now, you may never experience failure in an environment like that. You may never experience an audience member telling you and everyone else in the room that they hate motivational speakers. You may not forget a major chunk of your speech or bomb a speech in front of a major client, or express an opinion that people don’t agree with or discover midway through your talk that your fly is open. I have.

And guess what? I’m still alive. I still have major clients. I still compete. I’m still speaking.

Often the worst things that we could ever imagine happening, don’t. But we spend so much effort, time and nervous energy worrying about them. What I discovered is that no matter what happens I can handle it. And there is always next time.

Before a talk I always spend a bit of time focusing, mainly on the opening and how I will feel afterwards.

I find that once I’m into the opening all else will be fine. After all, the audience don’t know what I’m going to say and even if they have heard the talk before, if it goes off on a slightly different track, because my addled mind forgets the exact wording or two, so what? The audience won’t know, as long as it all makes sense.

When asked by a previous world champion who was MC on the night of the microphone malfunction how did I keep going, I said it was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of the other and just keep moving on.

The mind game in speaking is being ready to just keep moving on, no matter what happens. You can do that when you know your topic well enough to not matter.

So, no matter what happens – it just doesn’t matter. Ninety nine times out of one hundred your audience won’t even notice. And that one time they do, they’ll either think it was part of the speech or will forgive you.

And why do I focus on the afterwards? I find focussing on how I’ll feel afterwards relaxes me. I know I’ll have enjoyed the talk. I know I’ll have made them laugh, delivered a message and made them think – even before I give the talk.

It’s not arrogance, it’s a quiet confidence that tells me all will be OK – now go enjoy the moment.

What size audience do I do that for? Any size.

It’s just a mind game.

Learning to handle the internal voices is key to your speaking future. When we conquer the mind we conquer the world!

Inspire The World With Your Words

Colin

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