How To Present Without Being Scared

We are at call number 98 pro, call number 90 eight, that's another open agenda call, and for David Koch's suggestion for his suggestion, what I'm going to do is not just leave it to the future Titans to determine the topics OK, because some people can't make those calls. And they're feeling left out. I definitely don't want that to happen. So we're going to go back. We're going to go inside the Facebook page. Where are we? Here we go. And then I'll deal with the future Titans topics. Ok? and let's just have some dialogue on this. So I'm scanning through this. One of the problems with Facebook is I can't sort via the votes, so I just have to do it visually. And it looks like, let's start with Abby. Abby, are you here? Abby? Debbie, Hello. Hello I'm here. Oh, I'm getting ready to move on. You all right. Really beat the buzzer. I was like, OK, I'll be fine. We're going to move on. So Abby writes, I have a question, right? How? how I learned to present, how do I learn to present better and without nerves? I like to teach and do some public speaking in the future. I'm a confident person usually, but as soon as something goes wrong isn't expected, I go to pieces. OK, that's pretty clear. So, Abby, I think you were recently in our style scape, of course, and you present it right, if I remember correctly. All right. I'm not going to see now. Not yet. OK, now how did you feel when you were presenting in the soundscapes group? And I felt really excited to start with, but then when I started actually presenting, I got really nervous. And tripped over my words a bit. And then my keynote wouldn't work and it just kind of made me a bit flustered. So, yeah, I felt afterwards I felt good that I'd done it. But during I must admit, I did feel a bit kind of all over the place. What was the internal dialogue like for you? Shit, shit, shit, I'm getting it wrong, basically. Well, it's going to begin with this. Let's not say those things in our mind because whatever we focus our attention on us, what we're going to get right? Yeah, Yeah. Your state will affect how you view the world and it'll affect your behavior and how you speak. So what we need to do is to have different expectations of ourselves. I think it begins with we've talked about this before. Ira Glass has spoken about it on This American Life is that we have this imagined future version of ourselves. And we're constantly holding ourselves to that standard, which is impossible because in your mind that person can make no mistakes is smooth, is charming, as witty, it's lovable and all these kinds of things. But we're just human. And sometimes we can't find the words, and that's just totally OK. I'll give you a little tip that Joel Hilgert uses now, I don't totally recommend this to everybody, but if it helps you in your public speaking, then use it. What he'll do is he'll take uncomfortably long pauses during his speech, during his speech or his talk. And the reason why he does that is sometimes he forgets what he's going to say. And if he purposely puts in dramatic spaces in the parts that he remembers when he's trying to remember what he was going to say in the other parts, it'll all look the same. So that's his style, that's his technique. And at times, I remember when he was speaking on stage, I was listening to him like, Oh my god, I think Joel lost his spot and then he continues on and the audience is like, oh, it's OK. And then there's times I genuinely think he forgot where he was going to be in his talk. So I think the idea that we have to talk wall-to-wall end to end nonstop without missing a beat, always finding the perfect words, saying exactly the right phrase. That's an impossibly high standard to live up to. So that's number one. I think if you go in and just say today, I'm going to do the best to represent who I am, my thoughts, my feelings, my passion and I'm not going to be perfect. But the work that I do. Will win the client over at the end of the day or when the audience is over or the research or what I've written is important, it's worth sharing. And everything else, you'll be OK. my natural state is to fill every gap when I'm nervous with words, so I need to just take a breath and probably stop. So Yes. Can I share something with you? So I was at Digital design days in Geneva. I was sitting in the audience. I'd like to sit-in the audience from time to time because I want to gauge the reaction of people to next to me, right? And somebody said, Oh my god, I'm just glad that person spoke like that because everybody else was rushing. And it felt so nervous. It gave me anxiety. I could feel their nerves. So what's happening is each person that gets on stage has something really important that they want to share with people. But because they're in their head, they're thinking, Oh my god, Oh my god, I'm a screw up, I'm a screw up. Well, I forget for that's being transmitted to the audience, and that energy probably is like kicking in the reptile. Part of their brain is saying, oh, I just feel really weird. Will he or she be able to do this? And then they don't even remember the words that you said? So it's OK, slow down. Be OK in the uncomfortable silence. And you do just fine. And over time, as you master public speaking because you've done it 1,000 times, those gaps get shorter and shorter. You'll be smarter with your words and you'll be on. Tip number two, if you're going to do public speaking, a lot of people say this is to physically drain yourself before you go and speak. It gets rid of a lot of the nerves. So go for a run. Do pilates, do something where you're sweating and you're just got you're just releasing all that stuff. So when you're on stage, your muscles relax, you're done. You're not wound up and you're not tight. If you watch, I'm not your guru with Tony Robbins. He does this whole crazy thing behind the scenes, like he's jumping around like an animal. Then he goes on stage and he's just bursting and he's ready to go. That might help you, OK, but I think for me personally, obviously, practice helps out a lot, but letting go of the image of who you think you are. And just to show up as you and that you on your worst day, you're still going to deliver tremendous value to people. And if they don't like it, tough. Yeah, OK, good advice. Yeah, that's it. I mean, what else can you do? You can't change who you are. No, I'm getting better at there. So as I get older, actually of actually liking myself more and kind of being myself more. So, yeah, an awful lot getting older and I free one of the only things. Not so much. Yeah yeah, everything else goes downhill, right? But that's the one thing like, you start to know who you are, and you start to love yourself a little bit more wrinkles. You? no. Yeah, Yeah. No problem. I don't call them wrinkles. They're character lines. Yeah don't say because of my filter. OK, how many of you guys have your filter on? OK, right. I do have to say that, yeah, you love yourself more. But you also hate other people more at the same time, like the little girl. Oh, I don't feel this with that negativity. I know those little kids with at the front on my front lawn. I want to take the hose to those guys like nobody's business. Get off my front lawn shitheads. No, no, no. That that guy in this is that guy. All right. Thank you very much. And if anybody has a follow up question or a more nuanced version of this that they're going through, let's ask it now so we can move on.