Glossophobia is the fear of public speaking. According to Psychology Today, approximately 25% of the population shares this fear, which can keep you from optimizing your professional potential.
Every day I coach financial advisors on conquering this debilitating fear. It surprises most people to learn that I know what it feels like to be terrified to get up in front of a group of people to speak. In fact, my own paralyzing fear of public speaking is what motivated me to overcome that fear and teach others to do the same.
Criticism of my public speaking 36 years ago still stings
In the fall of 1983, I was 14 years old and just entering the ninth grade. The teacher of my acting class was Mr. Smith, a balding man in his mid-40s who was really intimidating. One day in class, Mr. Smith said, “Deirdre, Jennifer, come up here and read this scene.”
I was scared because I had never read for him before, but mostly I was excited because I really wanted to show him what I could do. I had been taking acting classes since the fourth grade and usually got pretty good roles. My crowning glory came the previous year, when I was cast as Scrooge in our eighth-grade musical performance of A Christmas Carol. I beat a number of girls, including Jennifer, and four boys for that lead role!
So I was pretty confident about my acting ability when Jennifer and I read the scene. When we finished, Mr. Smith looked at Jennifer and said, “Well done! You could be the next Meryl Streep.” Back then, Meryl Streep was the “It Girl.” No one was a better actress.
I was thinking, “If Jennifer can be Meryl Streep and I beat her for the lead in Scrooge, who is he going to say I can be?!” I couldn’t wait to find out.
What came next shocked and devastated me.
Mr. Smith looked at me and said, “Deirdre, that stunk.”
Whoa. I wanted to crawl under a rock. I was so humiliated. Do you know that feeling? It feels like someone has taken your heart out of your body and stomped on it. It hurt so much that I didn’t take the stage again for 24 years. No acting, no speaking to groups, no nothing.
Now, it would be easy for me to blame Mr. Smith for not taking the stage again for a long time. And I imagine it would be easy for you to blame the Mr. Smiths in your life. We all have them. But Mr. Smith is not to blame.
The blame lies mostly in our relationship with fear. See, I allowed fear to keep me locked in an emotional prison for 24 years. I’m the one who listened to fear when fear said to me, “Deirdre, just wait until you feel more confident, and then you can take the stage again.” It never happened.
The worst part is, fear doesn’t usually stay contained to one small area of our lives. Over the years, I started noticing that lacking confidence became my go-to excuse for choosing not to step out in faith, take risks, and live up to my fullest potential. Can you relate?
About 17 years ago, I got sick of letting fear run my life. So I went on a relentless pursuit to what I now call “Fire My Fear.”
Firing your fear does not mean you learn how to be fearless or to never be afraid. It’s part of the human experience to experience that emotion. Firing fear is more about being courageous enough to no longer let fear be the chief decision maker in your head.
A lot goes into the process of firing your fear, and I can’t cover it all here. But read on to discover four strategies that work wonders in easing the career-destroying effects of glossophobia. Strategies 1 and 2 are internal mindset actions you can use to change your mental view of, and approach to, public speaking. Strategies 3 and 4 are practical strategies you can use while preparing your talk that will help you overcome your fear.
I love these tools because I know from personal experience that if you apply these principles to your life, you’ll be able to make decisions that move you forward in your life rather than hold you back. When that happens, life becomes a great adventure in possibilities rather than a sea of limitations.
1. Change your perception of fear
As with anything else, overcoming stage fright begins in your mind.
An underlying principle of firing your fear is that you must change your perception about what it means to be afraid. For most people, the initial feeling of fear that washes over them comes in the form of an automatic thought that pops into their minds: “Oh, no! Something bad is going to happen. I’m going to look stupid. I’m going to fail. People are going to reject me.”
When messages like that enter your mind, it drives your next action, which is often to shut down and be silent.
What I have found over the past 17 years of using this material with myself and also to coach others is that 99.9% of the time, gloom and doom is not what lies on the other side of fear. Instead, great growth and opportunity lie beyond fear, but the only way to access the growth is to lean into the fear.
What if you were driving on the highway when, all of a sudden, a car came careening off a side road and almost smashed into your car? You would probably be frightened, upset and angry at the other driver’s recklessness. But then what if you found out that the driver was rushing his wife to the hospital because she was in labor? That would change your perception of his reason for driving the way he did.
The way to change your perception about fear is to recognize that it’s perfectly normal to feel fear.
There are two types of fear: healthy fear and unhealthy fear. Healthy fear keeps you from running out into traffic or putting your hand on a hot stove. We need that fear to protect us. Unhealthy fear, on the other hand, holds us back and keeps us from optimizing our potential. When you are afraid, it just means you’re afraid; it doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen. That’s a really simple statement, but the first time I heard it, I felt like I was set free.
Your fear cannot predict a future outcome. Also, being afraid is normal. I spent many years beating myself up for being afraid. When you are giving a talk, it’s perfectly natural to be nervous. Even the most experienced and gifted speakers get nervous every time they speak. Just accept being nervous as part of the process. To this day after speaking professionally for the past 10 years and having great success doing it, I still get afraid before I speak!
I believe that if you are not afraid, you’re not playing a big enough game. If you’re scared, it means you’re growing, and if you’re growing, it means you’re living.
You cannot experience growth and comfort at the same time. In fact, if I go through a few months of not being afraid—if I get really comfortable—I know it’s time to up my game. I start looking for ways to make myself uncomfortable. I suggest you do the same.
2. Get out of your comfort zone every day
Here is another mindset strategy that will help you fire fear from being the chief decision maker in your life: change your position from defense to offense. How do you do that? Every single day, make a commitment that you are going to do one thing that makes you uncomfortable—just one.
Instead of dodging whatever seems scary, face it head-on. It could be something as simple as taking a different route home from work. But you are not allowed to judge yourself based on your results or you will stop stepping out of your comfort zone.
When you do that daily, two things will happen:
- Your comfort zone will expand. In a couple of months, the things that scared you before will no longer be scary.
- You will learn how to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Wouldn’t that be amazing, to get to a point where fear is no longer in your decision-making criteria because you’re comfortable with that emotion?
You can start really small with this. Here is an example of how I started following this strategy. Back in 2005, I was suffering from excruciating back pain. At that time, I had a coach who was helping me along my journey of firing my fear. One day, I was in my kitchen. I was wearing jeans, and one of my pant legs needed to be rolled up. But I couldn’t bend over to roll it up because of my back pain. I could hear my coach’s voice in my head saying, “Ask your husband to do it.” I didn’t want to though, because it seemed stupid and weak. I mean who can’t roll up their own pants, right? After agonizing and arguing with myself over this for 10 minutes, I finally got the courage to ask him for help.
Of course, he did it for me gladly. It was a small, but significant step for me. A lot of emotion was wrapped up in that moment. But that small step encouraged me to take another step, and another, and another. Pretty soon, I got back on the stage to speak again. This is a ridiculously simple example, but a lot of times our fears are just that: Ridiculous!
The point of this exercise is to give yourself credit, to pat yourself on the back for getting out of your comfort zone.
Here’s how to get started:
Write down this sentence, and fill in the blank: “If I fired my fear, I would _____________________.” If you fired your fear, what would you be able to accomplish? Next, write down one action step you are willing to take within the next 48 hours. If you don’t do it quickly after reading this article, chances are, you’ll never do it.
3. Be prepared
Now that you have given your fear the boot through mental preparation, you can further increase your confidence with public speaking by taking some practical steps. The first one is to be prepared. Schedule time to write out and practice your presentations—never try to wing it!
Nothing will disrupt your delivery more than being unprepared. Write out what you are going to say, and then practice it, practice it, and practice it again until you internalize the message. Be able to deliver your message without looking at your notes much. When you know your message well, you can focus less on the words you’re saying and more on your delivery and engaging with your audience.
4. Make sure your talk is well structured
A second practical step to take in getting over stage fright is to make sure your talk is well structured. When you walk out onto the stage knowing your talk is engaging and easy to follow, you can concentrate on educating your audience—not on calming your nerves.
The average attention span of an adult is short. Very short. To keep your audience engaged, you must structure your content so the energy shifts every seven to ten minutes. Create an experience for the audience. You cannot just go into “lecture mode.” If you do, you will lose your audience to their phones, daydreams, and other distractions. The way to do this is to strategically weave stories, analogies, questions and activities through each point in your talk.
Years ago, I found a guru whose style I like. He taught me how to structure my talks. Over time, I developed my own system—the Crazy Good Talks® Blueprint—to help others with the very thing I struggled with. Take a look at my article “11-Step Guide to Converting Presentations Into Client Meetings” for a more in-depth description of how to structure your presentations.
When your talk is well structured, your audience doesn’t have to work hard to follow what you’re saying. Years ago, I gave a talk at a local networking group. A month later, I returned to that group’s meeting as an attendee. A woman came up to me and she said, “I just loved the talk that you gave last month. It was really easy to follow. I didn’t have to work to figure out what you were trying to say.” Amen.
I treasured that compliment, because it meant the talk was well structured. Make sure your key points are clear to your audience. You want them to feel enriched after your talk, not confused.
Fear is temporary
Most of all please remember “Fear is temporary, but regret is forever.” What action are you willing to take today so that you can fully step into the life you are meant to live and to avoid having regret tomorrow?