• 1) Drying up’ or not being able to speak.
• 2) Forgetting what you are talking about your mind going blank.
• 3) Having the heckler from Hell.
• 4) Having someone in the audience who knows more than you do.
• 5) People noticing that you are nervous.
• 6) Having to run screaming from the room.
• 7) The presentation being so awful and embarrassing that your social/career relationships are forever ruined.
• The impossible to answer question from Hell’
• 9) The audience talking over you or walking out
• 10) Dying on stage (OK, so we made this one up to make it up to 10

What to Do About a Fear of Public Speaking

Firstly, let’s accept that we need fear. Without the ability to become very fearful no human beings would be here today – our ancestors relied on fear to survive bigger, stronger and faster predators.

When we become highly fearful, the unconscious mind takes over and we become primarily set up for physical action. In order to survive a physical threat we respond automatically for the sake a quick reaction. In certain situations, this can be a life-saver.

During this ‘fight or flight’ response, breathing speeds up in preparation for physical exertion, we may sweat to cool the body, or feel as if we can’t think’ Survival in very primitive conditions is primarily about action rather than thinking

How much anxiety is good for public speaking?

So we don?t want too much anxiety and we don?t want too much relaxation. We need enough tension to give us energy, and enough calmness for clear thinking and recall. We need the right balance.

Most of the petrified presenters that we train are doing the same thing!

Here’s the usual ‘pattern of fear’.

1) You have a presentation coming up.
2) You think about it, imagining things going wrong and so feel anxious.
3) Unknowingly, you build up an association between the thought of the speech and the feeling of fear.
4) You go into the actual situation and get a fear response!

Repeated often enough, this will cause the two to become very closely associated. This is ?negative mental rehearsal’ for the event. Not surprisingly, when you go into the actual situation you feel terrified!

Dogged by an Ancient Brain

As Ivan Pavlov showed, dogs who are repeatedly fed whilst hearing a bell can eventually salivate when just hearing the bell without food.

People who repeatedly feel fear coupled with imagining something find they feel fear when the situation arrives.

However, people can learn to associate tightrope walking, fighting in battles or defusing a bomb with a state of psychological calm.

You can learn to change an association.

- Do you feel that public speaking is just part of the routine?
- Do you respond to the challenge and wonder how you can make your presentation compelling, informative and inspiring?

Or, like most people do you feel you would rather die than stand up and be judged by the hard unforgiving scrutiny of your fellow man and woman?

- Is it possible to be an average presenter and learn the skills to become an inspiring and entrancing speaker?
- Is it possible to be totally terrified of the mere thought of public speaking yet learn to relax and even enjoy it?

Without a doubt, the answer is YES!

Public Speaking on the Increase

It’s a cliche to say that we live in an information culture. But it’s true! Never before has so much information been so readily available. The rate of change and development is so fast that we have to work constantly to ?stay ahead of the game’

More than ever, people are having to present information to others as part of this constant up-dating. People are being increasingly called upon to present publicly their information to co-workers and other departments.

To get ahead, you have to present!

But how often are we taught how to present? There are 2 main areas of skill:

1) Skills of effective presenting; use of teaching aids, use of the voice, structure and so on.

2) Self-management; the ability to remain calm and composed in front of an audience.

Learning these skills make a huge difference not only to the quality of your public presentation but also to your enjoyment. Truly fantastic presenters are quite a rare commodity, but that’s only because most people never took the time to learn.

Being an excellent presenter will enhance your career, social life and your enjoyment of work in general.

Great presenters can transform almost any subject into one of interest or even inspiration. A friend once told me that the most entertaining and thought provoking presentation they ever saw was about print processing!

Do you know much about yourself? Or do you just think you do?

When you refer to your ‘self’, do you mean the self that relaxes in front of the TV, the self that dreams at night, the self that gets angry, sexy, curious – or all of these combined? Do we all have multiple ‘selves’ that get wheeled on and off again as circumstances require, obscuring a truer, more timeless ‘self’, as the mystic G.I. Gurdjieff, for example, believed? And what about the ‘average person’?

We get ourselves wrong

The average person doesn’t think they are average. On average, people claim to be more disciplined, more idealistic, more socially skilled, a better driver, better at leadership and healthier than? the average person. Logically, this is impossible. The average person is not ‘above average’. Average and above average people also believe themselves to be worse in many of these areas than average. So low self-esteem is really just misperception. If you really are as bad as you think you are, then you are ahead of most people, because you really do know yourself.

How do you really know someone? How do you really know yourself? Would you eat your best friend if you had to?

How to really know someone

After you meet someone for the first time, you might tell me “Wow, they were nice!” and I would want to know: How do you know? Have you been shipwrecked and stranded on a desert island with them, had to go into battle and trust your life to them, had to share your wealth, or be sold into slavery with them?

The fact is you can’t know someone just from socializing with them. The closest bonds are forged in extreme circumstances. There will always be deeper and truer bonds between men who have fought in battle together, or between women who have survived against great odds, than the flimsy superficial associations that come from mere socialising. In extreme times the outer layers of self are peeled away and a truer self emerges. Connections with other people become more real. Team bonding isn’t just about drinking in the same bar.

But what has Plato got to do with all this?

Plato and you

Quite a long time ago the Athenian philosopher Plato (first known describer of the ‘platonic friendship’ between men and women – see beginning of article) famously told us, presumably in Greek, to: “Know thyself!” This injunction implied, of course, that most of us don’t and we really need to. Accurate self-knowledge is vital for real fulfillment. Since then hippies have gone to India to ‘find themselves’ without first checking behind the sofa. People go on ‘self development’ courses. What are they developing, exactly, I wonder? Do they know, or are they just after the warm fuzzy feelings?

All right, let’s get to the crunch. Do people really perceive themselves accurately? On the whole? Look around at the people you know. What do you think? Naaaah! Of course they don’t. Let’s look at what people think they are like and what they are really like. Oh, and when I say ‘people’, I include myself.

Research Plato would have loved

Strong emotion always clouds perception and so distorts it. Self-perceptions of character and abilities are often filled with high doses of bias, misconceptions, and vanities – leading to high self esteem – or conditioned feelings of inadequacy – leading to low self esteem. People routinely and grossly over- and under-estimate their own honesty, aptitude, courage and attractiveness to others.

Researchers Mabe ,West and Dunning found that self-perception of ability and actual ability have a very low correlation. I already mentioned that the average driver believes they are above average drivers! Most people think they have an above average sense of humour (including me). More worryingly, family practitioners rating their knowledge of thyroid disorders failed to show any insight into their actual level of knowledge [1]. Other people can sometimes see our situation clearer than we can ourselves. College roommate ratings are better predictors of which romances will survive than self-impressions [2]. Peer ratings among junior doctors strongly predict who will do well on a surgical exam; self ratings do not [3].

We get other things wrong too.

Not listening to Plato

People over-predict the likelihood that they’ll perform generous, ethical and kind acts. They overestimate the odds they’ll buy a flower for charity, vote, maintain a successful romantic relationship, volunteer for an unpleasant lab experiment so a 10-year-old girl won’t have to, and cooperate with one another when money is at stake. People consistently mis-predict themselves even though they are roughly accurate in predicting how others will perform in these areas [4].

It seems it is easier to know others than to know ourselves. This is why it is so important to have honest and fair friends and to listen to them. It’s not that people are entirely wrong about themselves, but they tend to exaggerate their flaws or abilities. One of the roles of the court jester during the middle ages was to tell the King things about himself that others dared not. The rich and famous are often surrounded by people who never give them straight feedback about themselves, so they can turn into prima donnas and lose sight of themselves altogether.

We don’t like to see ourselves as greedy, cowardly or unkind, of course, but surely any course in true ‘self development’ would need to provide a way of encouraging the participants to objectively observe these unacceptable parts of the self without tipping into self-chastisement, low self-esteem or self-congratulation? We need to know something before we can do something about it. Wouldn’t you rather know?

Bypassing self-esteem

To be more honest with ourselves we need to bypass the whole self-esteem question. If your self-esteem is the most important thing to you (and in our society you’d be forgiven for thinking it is the most important thing), then the need to feel good about yourself will always push you into defending your self-esteem, and thus warp how you actually see yourself. When we can a) spot our weaknesses and deficits and b) get to know them and know when they’ll arise and c) not be ruled by them, then we can start to develop real self confidence. Not the fake confidence based on refusing ever to look at ourselves and maintaining our self-deception.

The good old rationalisation

We use rationalisations all the time to explain away positively to ourselves and others why we did – or didn’t do – certain things. Rationalisations are biased creations of interpretation rather than the fruits of self-observation. Pompous people use rationalisations (and so do governments). Rationalisations can turn vice into virtue – for example, by describing lack of generosity as ‘being cruel to be kind’, or laziness as ‘thinking time’. Until we are clear about ourselves and what we are really like, we’ll go on repeating the same old mistakes and put it down to that other popular rationalisation ‘fate’, or ‘just my luck!’ When you know yourself more accurately you can be more effective and successful, as you won’t need to waste time and energy propping up your self-esteem though fabrication and self-deceit. Nor will you have to ‘work blind’, as you will know when fear, or selfishness, or whatever other weakness, is operating in you and allow for it, rather than pretending it isn’t there.

Of course, the ‘real you’, your ‘self’, isn’t in an ashram in India or behind the sofa or on a retreat – it’s inside you right now. Possibly wrapped in layers of bias, habit, vanity, fear and conditioning – but it’s there!

References

[1] Tracey et al, 1997; ‘The validity of general practitioners’ self assessment of knowledge’. Cross sectional study. British Journal of Medicine, 315, 1426-1428

[2] MacDonald and Ross, 1999; ‘Accessing the accuracy of predictions about dating relationships: How and why do lovers’ predictions differ from those made by observers?’ Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1417-1429.

[3] Risucci et al, 1989; ‘Ratings of surgical residents by self, supervisors and peers’. Surgical Gynecology and Obstetrics, 169,519-526

[4] Epley and Dunning, 2000, 2006; ‘Holier than thou: Are self-serving assessments produced by errors in self or social prediction?’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,79,861-875.

This article was written by Mark Tyrrell

Well basically, you do it and do it until it just isn’t scary any more! Hardly a deeply insightful answer, but true. Think of anything you have mastered that was difficult at first, and you’ll see that’s what happened.

Fear, or lack of confidence, is all about uncertainty, and once you have done something enough for the uncertainty to mostly disappear, the fear disappears too.

But that leaves a big problem. What if you’re so scared to do something you can’t even get started? Or what if it’s not the sort of thing you can practise?

This is where hypnosis comes in. Hypnosis builds a ‘bridge’ from where you are just now to your destination – doing what you want to do comfortably.

Time for an example I think…

Jane, a client of mine, was terrified of driving her car. She had been driving home from work one day when an angry driver had started harassing her by driving right up behind, swerving in front of her and shouting out of the window. She was very stressed at the time as her mother had just died, and she had a panic attack behind the wheel. When she got back in the car the following day she had another panic attack and was unable to drive. Now she had bravely got herself to the stage where she could ride in one if someone she trusted was driving, but she couldn’t drive herself.

Now, she could go no further in her career without a driving licence and so was in a very difficult situation.

So what to do? Jane has to drive, but is terrified of it. It’s the sort of situation that can make you feel pretty hopeless. But not if you know hypnosis.

Firstly, we used hypnosis to get Jane to feel differently about the road rage incident – so that she could remember it without panicking and – more importantly – so she didn’t experience panic when she got behind the wheel.

Then we had her rehearse driving over and over in hypnosis so she could ‘experience’ doing it while relaxed.

After the hypnosis, Jane said she felt more relaxed about driving, but how could she be sure it would be OK?

I told her she couldn’t be sure. You can never be sure until you do it. You can fool yourself into thinking it will definitely be OK, develop some powerful optimism, but you can never be 100% sure. Used in the right way, hypnosis reduces the feeling of uncertainty to tolerable levels, so you can go and do that thing that used to terrify you.

But when it comes down to it – it’s down to you to make the final leap. (It’s just that it feels more like a hop!

Jane made that final leap and things got easier and easier from then on. She didn’t do it because I ‘told’ her to – she did it because I helped her reduce the unpleasant emotions to a level where she could do what she needed to solve the problem.

Hypnosis builds a bridge over the chasm you have to leap.

If you read the Master Series essay on What is Hypnosis? you will remember how Mark Tyrrell described how hypnosis accesses the REM state to create a new blueprint for the instincts. These sessions create a more confident emotional blueprint for specific events.

And here are some more great reasons why you can be more confident…

As I said above, you can never be sure before you do something that ‘everything is going to be OK’.

But you can trust yourself that you’ll do your best.

And you can accept the possibility that you’ll surprise yourself.

And you can concentrate on relaxing so that your unconscious mind can help you.

And you can form a clear picture of your desired outcome so your unconscious knows what to aim for.

In summary

So to sum up, hypnosis works by re-educating the unconscious mind, giving you control over responses that you can’t control consciously, or by trying harder.

Roger Elliott

Catch 22?

Now obviously, what builds our confidence in the long-term is doing things that we are a bit scared of and surprising ourselves with our abilities. So is this a no-win situation? If we can’t do the things that we need to feel confident, how can we grow in confidence? Well, we can learn the strategies, approaches and thinking of confident people and, perhaps most importantly, how to mentally prepare ourselves for new or frightening events. Once we do this, it’s like rolling a snowball down a hill. The things that made us under-confident no longer do and we feel more able to tackle bigger things, which in turn raises our confidence levels.

What can I do to be more confident?

If you truly want to be more confident, you can learn how. How long it will take before you are as confident as you want to be depends on what stage you are at now. Very under-confident people are more likely to notice a difference most quickly when they learn how to be more confident. Those who need more confidence for particular situations only may only notice the difference when they go back into that situation.

Above all, to become more confident, we have to do something. It’s one thing thinking different, but that’s only one part of the picture.