
How I learnt to cure stage fright - Lightning
http://blog.bufferapp.com/what-happens-to-our-brains-when-we-have-stage-fright-the-science-of-public-speaking
======
rikacomet
Umm, there were two things missing, in what happens during the stage fright, a
lack of vocabulary happens quite often, I have seen, that when I have stage
fright, I forget the rarely used connections, and only use the ones I know
like the back of my hand. Stammer, is another one of the things associated
with dry mouth.

One of the ways, to cut the stage fright short is the 'Standing Swing' where
we instinctively move in hips in, hips out position, like kids reading out in
class. Its a way to trick the body into thinking we are in the fecal position.

Secondly, stage fright can be overcome with that rare pause, where after
finishing a paragraph, you take in a deep breath, amateurs rarely do it, and
intend to carry on, as if they would miss the train.

Thirdly, the tempo matters a lot, often, people try to go faster then their
normal speaking speed, to which they are not accustomed to, leading into a
unneeded stress on the brain to connect, produce and understand faster,
leading to a mental stamina drain.

A good way around the first time stage fright, written in books is the "talk
to your friend in the crowd" technique. Always, you would find that kind soul
in the crowd, looking dead into your eyes, and giving you a validation nod,
each time you speak, very often, this is someone you have a good relationship
with, a friend, family or admirer. Just look into his eyes, and start talking,
forget the rest of the crowd, as he agrees to everything you say, you would
find it easier to deliver your speech.

A side technique, that requires preparation is to keep the contents of your
speech simple, and short. Don't use words you are not familiar with, use the
words, you most often use, even if you have to be a bit repetitive, your first
speech needs to do a good job, don't aspire to be JFK on your first shot.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
"don't aspire to be JFK on your first shot."

Thats interesting. Public speaking advice from politicians would be awesome.
They have to deliver moving speeches and be able to respond intelligently on
the spot to questions they haven't heard before. I'm sure they would have a
lot of great advice on how to deal with stage fright and think clearly in
those situations.

~~~
zalew
Such random advice won't work because it's training and practice. One of my
clients back in the day was an ex bigcorp spokesperson who trained polititians
and management teams. On the course of the training there were simulations
with cameras, strong lighting and pro journalists involved. One weekend of
such training costs a few thousand per person, but after that they are sure
they won't shit their pants when 20 journalists and cameramen jump them out of
their office door asking why their product just killed 30 people.

Besides, polititians have teams who prepare everything regarding their image,
speech, questions and responses, so they can focus on performing.

------
RyanMcGreal
I used to be terrified of public speaking. I was also terrible at it - I mean
really, truly awful. I spoke too fast, jumped around, interrupted myself - I
cringed as much at the thought of what the poor audience had to experience as
at my own anxiety.

I didn't do anything fancy to get over my stage fright. I simply took every
opportunity to speak publicly that came my way. I knew I was going to suck,
but I also decided that the only way to stop sucking was to force myself to
get better at it.

Each time, I tried to focus on one specific area of concern, e.g. talking too
fast. I would practice giving the talk very slowly and record myself talking.
That turned out to be very helpful, because I realized that I was actually
talking _a lot_ faster than I thought I was talking. Repeatedly doing this
helped me to recalibrate my perception of how fast I was talking.

Over the past several years, I've noticed a few things:

* My pre-speech anxiety has declined from full-on trembling hands, quavery voice, nausea and so on to a mild nervous excitement that I can manage with slow, deep breathing. Once you've actually experienced giving a terrible talk, you get a more realistic (i.e. less catastrophic) sense of how bad it is.

* My talks themselves definitely suck less than they used to. I'm still not what you could call a _good_ public speaker, but at least I look and sound reasonably comfortable on stage. I've gotten slower, though not slow enough, and I am generally able to stay on message.

* I tend to use my slides as cues for what I want to say at each point. This occasionally backfires when the stage is set up so that I can't easily see them.

My goal is to be a _good_ public speaker. Maybe in five or ten years I'll get
there. In the meantime, it's a work in progress.

------
sohamsankaran
Improv. The only way to genuinely cure (as opposed to merely assuage) stage
fright is performing improv, completely unprepared, in front of an unfamiliar
audience repeatedly. Eventually, you'll be as or more comfortable on stage as
you are within a person-to-person conversation.

~~~
natrius
While I highly recommend improv and consider it one of the best choices I've
made with my life, I don't think the benefits translate as easily to public
speaking as one might think. A huge chunk of improv is learning to turn your
brain off and do what feels natural and obvious. If you follow a couple of
rules and have played in enough scenes to get a good feel for it, you're
probably not going to create an unwatchable scene. I feel little to no anxiety
when I perform improv in front of a crowd, but if I haven't prepared well to
give a talk, sometimes the shakes set in. There's just so much more that can
go wrong.

Regardless, do improv.

------
epoxyhockey
A great way to hone your public speaking skills is to join a Toastmasters
group in your city.

~~~
rkidd
Agreed... go with Toastmasters!

------
curiousfiddler
Well, I'll probably use this thread to get some advice.

So during my graduate coursework (CS), there were a couple of courses which
required the class to review and present various papers. When my turn would
come, I would prepare really well, make good notes and I would say reasonably
fine slides. But then, when I would present, I would just lose the context
when going over the slides. Eventually I started keeping more text on the
slides and would end up reading off it, which is awful for the listeners.

Is this stage fright? Or perhaps poor memory? Or something else may be?

~~~
goblin89
I heard it helps if you select a few people who seem to pay the most
attention—better sitting at far end of audience to make sure you don't lower
your voice too much—and ‘talk’ to those few listeners, cycling between them.

I encountered this once and I suspect it was because I was thinking about
presentation, not focused on delivering my point to the audience, not caring
about it enough. Possibly also the audience that time didn't really care about
my point. (Hard to find origin, as factors seem to worsen one another: you
care less → audience cares less → … → your thoughts wander, you lose context.)

------
danielna
I am a pretty strong introvert, not in the sense that I have a problem
socializing with others or even communicating in a leisure/professional
setting, but rather that doing so takes a lot of energy. I don't actively seek
out opportunities to get up in front of people and be the center of attention.
Over the past year I've spoken a lot publicly for moderately lengthy periods
-- maybe 45 mins at a time -- and I agree with the sentiment that you just get
better/more comfortable with experience. If you feel nervous before you speak
you are the norm and not the exception. To quote Jerry Seinfeld: "“According
to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is
death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average
person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the
eulogy.”

I prescribe to Malcolm Gladwell's method of preparation [1] in that I write
out every single word of my talks beforehand and more-or-less memorize them.
It's not my explicit goal to memorize every word, but I go over the words
enough that that's essentially what happens. I actually end up memorizing key
sentences and phrases more than words. Even moments that I seemingly "ad-lib"
to the audience -- jokes, side comments, "random" anecdotes -- are written out
beforehand. That way when I'm in the moment I can focus on delivery and not
content.

I think the biggest driver to my anxiety of public speaking was the
possibility of sounding stupid, but as long as I have the confidence that I've
written out a good argument beforehand then that goes out the window. I stick
to the script because I know the script will work.

As far as mentality goes, there is no better feeling than looking out into an
audience of people and see them staring back at you, listening to every word.
No smartphones out and no sleeping, just attention. While I still get a little
nervous, it's nowhere near what it once was, and I actually look forward to
connecting with those whom I've been invited to speak with. My excitement for
that connection has started to trump my nerves.

Clearly I'm not in the camp of "don't prepare and just go wing it, it'll be
more natural" because it really opens up the door for panic-induced disaster.
And I really hate sitting in a talk that the speaker is clearly unprepared
for. It's unprofessional and disrespectful. If people are going to give you
the respect of their undivided attention, give them the respect of real
preparation.

[1] [http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/2011/01/26/public-
speaki...](http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/2011/01/26/public-speaking-for-
introverts-tip-1-courtesy-of-malcolm-gladwell/)

