How to Deal With Public Speaking Nerves

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Steve Jobs has won plenty of praise in the media for his cool and confident presenting style. But even Apple’s Jedi master of public speaking wasn’t always 100 percent comfortable in front of the crowd. Don’t believe it? Check out this video of a young Jobs prepping for an early TV appearance. Apparently, the man was not always immune to nerves.

So if you’re more like young, somewhat awkward Jobs than the contemporary polished version, how can you learn to master your nerves and improve your public speaking? Blog Presentation Zen recently used Jobs’ anxiety as a jumping off point for a discussion of ways to calm your jitters before a big presentation, offering tips from psychologist Les Posen, including:

Chunking and exposure. Identify and break down your presenting challenges into small manageable chunks, and deliberately expose yourself to each of them step by step.

Self-talk. Anxiety grabs onto self-critical talk such as ��I��ll do a terrible job. What happens if the slide show fails. What happens if they don��t laugh at my jokes.�� Your task is not to feed your anxiety with this type of talk, but to change it into ��I can do this. I will follow my rehearsed plans. This is manageable.��

Arousal control via diaphragmatic breathing. Calm your brain��s fear center with slow, deliberate breaths with slightly longer exhales. Slower rhythm (rather than deep breathing) is helpful for fear management.

We’ve covered the topic of preventing your fear from getting the best of you when you’re in front of an audience before, including a long interview with an expert of the psychology of choking under pressure, but the Presentation Zen post offers a handy, bullet point distillation of the science, as well as links to further resources for those that want to learn more. Plus, seeing Steve Jobs as a mere mortal when it comes to presenting is cheering unto itself.

What tricks do you use to keep your public speaking nerves under control?

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