Pre-Speech Jitters: Three Steps to Make Fear Your Friend

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My fondest wish is that this podcast will change someone’s life—maybe even yours.

If you’ve held yourself back from accepting speaking engagements because of nerves, it can make an immediate and obvious change to your career. That’s not a bad benefit, but the ideas I’ll talk about here will apply to just about any challenge you face in your life and even impact your physical health. Let’s start with the first and build up to the second.

Probably the single most important topic that I cover in my presentations classes is how to deal with stage fright, or pre-speech jitters. I’m sure you’ve heard the statistics that fear of public speaking is the number one fear in America. I don’t have exact figures, but I thought Jerry Seinfeld said it best when he said that, with public speaking being the number one fear and death second, you’re better off at a funeral lying in the casket than delivering the eulogy!

Unfortunately it’s not that funny to the many people who hold themselves back from expressing their full potential because they shy away from speaking in front of groups. I once coached a woman who had managed to rise to very high levels without ever having to give a speech until her latest promotion to EVP level required her to speak to an all-hands meeting of 500+ people. Although she had done very well in her career to that point without putting herself out there, one wonders how much faster that promotion would have come if she had.

I feel especially qualified to comment on how to deal with nerves because I have been there—probably about as bad as anyone else, and yet I’ve learned not only how to overcome but to use the stress that inevitably arises before a speech or big presentation. Some of it I’ve managed just by sucking it up and doing it anyway, some I’ve learned by experience through the years, and some I’ve picked up through deep research on the subject.

There are a lot of useful techniques such as deep breathing, power posing, or bonding with the audience,  but I’m not going to talk about those today. They’re all great, but today I’m going to go to the root cause of the problem: how stress affects your mind and your body, and what you can do about it.

Stress response

Most people will tell you that pre-speech jitters are a form of the fight or flight response, and that’s partially true.  It’s psychologically intimidating to have multiple sets of eyeballs staring at you—throughout human history that has not usually been a good sign. When danger looms, the sympathetic nervous system gears up the body to fight or flee a physical threat, releasing hormones such as adrenaline, cortisol, endorphins  into the bloodstream. The heart rate rises, pumping blood to the major muscle groups and away from the extremities and digestive system, which is why we get cold feet, dry mouth,  and butterflies.

But fight or flight is incomplete and self-limiting. It’s more appropriately called the stress response, and that’s an important distinction because your mind and your body react to stress in more than just those fighting or running away. In her book, The Upside of Stress, Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal tells us that besides the well-known fight or flight threat response, we can also have a challenge response or a tend-and-befriend response. Although both those other possible responses are equally important to well-being, my focus in this episode is on the challenge response.

What is stress? According to McGonigal, “Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake.” That’s a broad definition that comprises thoughts, emotions and physical reactions.

Is stress bad for you? Most popular literature tells us that it is, but reality is actually more complicated. Stress can help you grow stronger; can make you happier; can stimulate your protective and altruistic instincts. In fact, it’s hard to conceive of personal growth without at least some stress. In short, stress can also be good for you.

But here’s the key point of this entire podcast: science shows that you can choose your response to stress, and that response has a direct impact on your performance in the moment and your physical and mental health in the long term.

Whether you think stress is bad for you, or good for you, you’re right. Your attitude toward stress can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The best way to fulfill a positive prophecy is to accept it, reinterpret it, and embrace it.

Accept it

Feeling nervous before a speech is completely natural. In fact, it would be extraordinary not to feel that way at least some times in your life. And I guess that’s the first point: you need to realize that you are not alone.

It has certainly been natural for me personally. In college, I would get nervous on the first day of a class when we had to introduce ourselves. When my friend tried to get me to come to his Toastmasters Club meeting, I kept giving him excuses until he challenged my manhood. Jumping that first hurdle was a great start, but even after making my living by standing in front of audiences for the last 35 years, I still occasionally get nervous and have to apply the same ideas I’ll cover here.

If there were people for whom stage fright were not natural, it would certainly be actors and singers who perform on stage in front of huge audiences. Yet even the best of them suffer from jitters, even long after they are established in their careers.

Adele has admitted to being terrified in front of huge audiences, and has even vomited on stage. Carly Simon actually passed out. Barbra Streisand once forgot the lyrics to a song while on stage in 1967, and stayed away from live audiences for 30 years!

Since you know it’s inevitable, it doesn’t make sense to try to fight it. Instead, you need to look at it differently.

Reinterpret from a threat to a challenge

The difference between the threat response and the challenge response lies in our estimation of our ability to meet the situation that faces us. When we’re fearing for our life, our body does the sensible thing: it goes into defensive mode and sends out hormones that cause a lot of changes; one of the most important is that it constricts blood vessels around our heart, because it might reduce blood loss in the event of severe injury. When we’re not in fear, different hormones cause the blood vessels to relax, which allows for greater blood flow and more energy to rise to the challenge and drives better performance, not to mention being better for us in the long run.

Evoking the challenge response does not reduce stress, but it does make the stress work in our favor. In studies, it has been shown that simply informing people that stress can help them perform better, can lead to improved performance on standardized tests, for example. One reason may be that the threat response narrows our attention and places greater focus on signs that things are going badly, but the challenge response opens our attention to more positive possibilities and opportunities. In numerous studies, those primed to generating a challenge response through prior education led to better performance. Even better, the benefits tend to last far beyond the initial priming.

So, evoking the challenge response will help you perform better, because you turn fear into excitement. But there’s a catch: physically, they both feel the same. Scared or excited, you’re still going to get the dry mouth and queasy stomach, so you need to consciously remind yourself that you’re excited. One study showed that people who told themselves they were excited felt better able to handle the pressure of a speech, but crucially, the audience perceived them as being more confident and competent. The reminder becomes the reality.

Embrace the nerves

The most important thing to keep in mind is that the stress response is designed to help you. We’ve all heard stories of people who’ve lifted cars off loved ones when under stress. But it helps beyond those life threatening situations. McGonigal cites numerous studies that show how stress can actually improve performance in such areas as taking tests and of course delivering speeches.

In fact, if you try too hard to relax, it can actually harm your performance, because stress can improve your focus and your excitement level. Many times when I’ve been totally at ease, I’ve delivered a flat performance.

Once I saw stress as positive, I came to welcome and embrace it. I used to think: “Wow, I’m really nervous; does that mean I might bomb?” Now, whenever the nerves act up, I always tell myself: “Alright, here it comes, right on schedule. Alright, I’m amped up so I know this is going to be a great performance.”

What’s the best way to defeat an enemy? Turn him into a friend. Next time you’re nervous before a speech, be thankful that you’re not alone. Your friend is here to help.