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Anxiety is often described as being stuck in the future. And when it comes to public speaking, anxiety often swirls around all the ways that a talk can go badly. I previously wrote about how practice can help to overcome fear of public speaking. Practice helps to desensitize the speaker to the experience. The fear itself might not go a way. But the speaker learns how to master it.

But there is another way of dealing with public speaking anxiety (PSA) and that involves consciously changing your mindset. The first step? Make your fears specific by getting them out of your head and physically writing them down.

‘What if my computer crashes? What if no one shows up? What if too many people show up? What if I completely forget everything I want to say? What if my content turns out to be a bad match with the audience? What if I speak too fast? Or too Slow? What if I lose my voice? What if someone asks me a question that I can’t answer? What if..?’

The process of naming or listing the things you are anxious about immediately makes them less overwhelming and helps you to realize that they are either highly unlikely or really not as bad as you thought they were. And writing them down allows you to write down next to them how you will deal with any of these problems.

Other than technical issues or content, another source of anxiety can be associated with how the speaker reacts to criticism or judgement – whether real or perceived. This anxiety reflects the fear of being embarrassed or humiliated and can be truly paralyzing. Again, making these fears explicit can help to master them. But another way of dealing with these more general anxieties is to change your thought process about why you are speaking in the first place.

If you have the mindset that the talk is a test or hurdle you have to jump over and a successful outcome is simply to get it over with, then it is not surprising that the feeling of being judged becomes dominant. You have set yourself up to feel that way!

Why not change how you think about the talk. Instead of seeing it as a test, why not see it as an opportunity? More specifically, the talk becomes an opportunity for you to tell the audience about your work and how it is relevant to them. The talk now becomes about the audience, not you. While you are delivering the talk, your focus becomes the audience and how they are absorbing what you say – not how you are feeling about the event. When you approach the task with the spirit of giving, you may find much of the generalized anxiety goes away.

Please like, repost or comment if you find this post useful. Feel free to give me feedback. And if you think I can help you with your communication challenges, please reach out here or at my LinkedIn site where I am cross posting.