Outsmart Your Nerves 

Public speaking is one of the most common fears - in a study by the National Institute of Mental Health, 75% of people ranked public speaking as their number one fear. 

For anyone like me who gets nervous before presenting here’s a trick I learned from a presentation class by Simon Sinek:

Tell yourself you’re excited to share your work.

Tell your team/clients (out loud) you're excited to share your work. 

It seems kind of silly. But by labeling your feeling “excitement” instead of "anxiety" you play a mind trick on yourself that can help you present better. 

Because fear/anxiety/nervousness have the same physiological cues as excitement (increased heart rate, sweaty palms, quickened breath) you can actually trick your brain into interpreting a negative instinct that makes you feel like running from the room and hiding under blankets into a positive one that makes you feel more confident and motivated. 

From Adam Grant’s Originals: 

“To overcome fear, why does getting excited work better than trying to calm yourself down? Fear is an intense emotion: You can feel your heart pumping and your blood coursing. In that state, trying to relax is like slamming on the brakes when a car is going 80 miles per hour. The vehicle still has momentum. Rather than trying to suppress a strong emotion, it’s easier to convert it into a different emotion–one that’s equally intense but propels us to feel more confident and step on the gas.” 

It seems crazy but it actually works - in a study, a researcher had a group of people get up on stage and sing a Karaoke version of Journey's “Don’t Stop Believin’”  into a Nintendo Wii program that measured their vocal performance for accuracy on a scale of 0-100. 

“Before they started singing, she randomly assigned the students to say “I am anxious” or “I am excited.” A control group who said nothing prior to performing averaged an accuracy score of 69%. Labelling the emotion as anxiety reduced accuracy to 53%. Calling it excitement was enough to spike accuracy to 80%.”

Hope you find this helpful for your next presentation (or Karaoke night)