Zig Ziglar, longtime motivational speaker, defines fear as False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear is your body's physical response to something you perceive as stressful...in other words, it's totally subjective. You and I could look at the same situation and one of us could find it exhilarating while the other found it nerve wracking.
Yet for any of us who have been in the throes of presentation anxiety, it sure seems real! Palms sweat, breathing gets shallow, mouth gets dry and words pile up like a chain reaction accident on the Beltway. Here's a brilliantly funny video showing some of the things we worry about.
WHAT TO DO
Just prior to a presentation use these techniques to manage the physical manifestations of your nervousness:
- BREATHE...it increases oxygen to your brain and minimizes the light-headed, shaky feeling. To see if you're breathing deeply from the diaphragm, do this diagnostic: Put your hand on your chest and breathe. If your chest moves up and down, you are breathing too shallowly. Now put your hand on your abdomen and breathe from there. Your chest shouldn't move.
- Move around to release nervous energy. Walk up and down some stairs, walk around the block a couple of times, march in place.
- Open your mouth widely and then close to relax your jaw. Do this several times.
- If you suffer from a dry mouth, create saliva by lightly biting the inside of your cheek (be sure to do it lightly!), visualize biting into a lemon or press the tip of your tongue into the top of your mouth.
- Limit caffeine, replace sugar with protein to keep your energy high (ditch the candy bar and substitute some nuts or cheese) and eat at least a couple hours ahead of your presentation to give yourself time to digest.
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