Public Speaking Fear: How Breathing will Help
Public Speaking Fear: How Breathing Will Help Think about public speaking fear and breathing: this may be a topic you resist. You may think you’ve heard it all before, or you’ve tried working with your breath and didn’t find it helpful. That certainly used to be my experience, and I’ve had a client recently who […]
12 Essential Truths About Public Speaking, Fear and Growth
12 Essential Truths about Public Speaking, Fear and Growth Speaking in public is a complex activity with a lot of moving parts: especially when fear is involved, as it so often is: it brings up vulnerability and challenges for so many of my clients (and before I learned how to work through it in the […]
Three Factors Which Reduce Public Speaking Fear
How to reduce public speaking fear; as it’s always such a popular topic, here are 3 ways to help reduce your anxiety: Increase your sense of control Get annoyed! Be willing to act The first way: Increase your sense of control. Feeling a sense of control in a stressful situation is really important in making […]
Navy Seals Teach Us About Public Speaking Fear
[Updated 2020.] As you’ll know if you’ve been around my work for a while, I used to suffer real anxiety around presenting to people (and music performance anxiety before that – it was a long road!). And when I work with clients on reducing public speaking fear, I use lots of different tools and techniques, depending […]
When your Negative Voice Gatecrashes your Presentation
Have you ever had the experience while presenting of looking out at the audience and seeing only a sea of blank faces? You look at them and immediately get discouraged; the negative self-talk kicks in: “John looks bored, this must be really bad” or “that woman’s just looked at her watch again…I’d better speed up!” […]
8 Reasons Why you Feel Anxious about Public Speaking
There are very real reasons why public speaking is so uncomfortable for most people, both because of how our brains are ‘wired’, and also in how we relate to the outer world. Today I’m going to share with you some of the reasons why we feel anxious about public speaking. Firstly, let’s look at what […]
Two Great Ways to Open your Talk, Especially if you’re Nervous
The opening of your presentation is often the part where you’re most nervous or self-conscious. You’re faced with pairs of eyes looking at you, the audience feels like it’s one big stare, and you’re not enjoying the sudden attention. What can you do to take some of the unwanted focus off yourself, and create an […]
Increase your Self-confidence in Public Speaking
Imagine that you’re looking for advice on how to increase your self-confidence in public speaking. You want to build self-worth in that part of your life, so you come to see me as a client. You tell me that you’re afraid of failure (aren’t most of us?); that your confidence fluctuates – or is totally […]
Which Music Can Make you Feel More Powerful Before you Present?
Updated October 2019 We all know that music can have a strong effect on our emotions (I’ve only ever met one person who claimed that music didn’t affect her at all). And there was a study done back in 2014 about which types of music can make you powerful before you present, and lead to […]
7 Ways NOT to Open your Presentation
The opening of your talk is crucial: your main goal is to capture your audience’s attention and show them why they should listen to you. It also sets the tone and direction of your presentation. This is often the time where you’re most edgy, and the audience is most focused on you, so you don’t […]