L3P2 How to overcome your stage fright ?

Hi Dear fellow toastmasters and most welcome guest, good evening. I am Nikko.

Let me ask you a question before I get started, will you feel nervous when you speak in public? Raise your hands please. Thank you. Let me tell you my story, This is my10th speech in toastmaster club, but I have to confess that I still feel nervous. I am suffered from this issue quite a long time and I am eager to know how our brain react and how I can fix it. I do some research regarding to brain Science and I found there are 2 interesting characters who working in our brain, Let's understand how they are working TOGETHER.

The smart guy:

I am the Prefrontal Cortex, I am the smart guy in our brain. I can help to consolidate and analyze the information which collected by sense, then I will make a thoughtful decision for you. Back to Nikko: When we deliver a speech, the smart guy will help us to organize the whole process and deliver the correct information to the audiences, but there is another guy who will jump out and sometimes caused us some trouble. Who is he?

The jumpy superhero:

I am Amygdala and I have another name is the jumpy superhero, I react instantly when people are in danger.

Back to Nikko: For example, you will skip a cable on the ground to prevent yourself from felling off, this is because Amygdala react quickly when it detected any danger, at this stage, the prefrontal Cortex will delay Its response.

So here comes another question for your guys, when we feel panic to speak in public, who will react first in your brain? Think about it and I will introduce the flow first.

When the information flow into our brain, the hero will react immediately and determine if it is dangerous, then pass them to the smart guy.

But the jumpy hero can’t see a difference between real danger and something stressful. For example, public speaking. The jumpy hero will try to rescue you, although public speaking won't kill you. Take another example, the jumpy hero is the boss, when he is working fine, you can work as usual, if your boss make some mistakes or losing his mind, the whole team suffered.

Now we are pretty clear that how these 2 characters work together and react in our brain. The key issue is How to comfort the jumpy hero and convince him public speaking is safe and sound. Here comes some useful tricks.

                1. Deep belly breath and relax

you feel nervous, your heart is racing, you found that the wording you prepared before were totally forget. The best way to handle this is cooling down, take some deep belly breathes, focus on what you are doing. If you don't know how to take belly breath, you can consult with J, she is a perfect Yoga Teacher. To avoid the long pause, you can smile to the audiences or walk a few steps to allow yourself back on track ASAP.

    2.    More rehearsal to audiences

         Here I have some insights to share from my last speech, I invited my husband and 2 of my colleagues to listen to my rehearsal and I adopted some of their advices, you know what, they works fine. So I suggest you can try this way when you are preparing. Even Steve jobs would practice more than 100 hours before delivering his important presentation, always remind yourself ”P(pán)ractice makes perfect”.

    3.   Lean in

         Besides of toastmaster club, I also engaged with some other activities which allow me to present myself in front of different groups of people.  I try to schedule my speech plan more frequently to get used to the routine show and practicing my speech muscle. Don't hesitate, just try more.

To conclude my speech, the old saying goes ”The biggest enemy is yourself”, it is damn true, I also realized that the best way to beat your enemy is to know him better and find out his weakness, my revolution to get rid of stage fright is not yet succeed, but I already have an action plan to overcome and control this little monster inside my brain. This is my resolution plan and How about yours?

Personal IE: 好像真的是這個(gè)演講過(guò)后，我就真的克服了自己的舞臺(tái)恐懼癥。后來(lái)我給自己分析了一下，其實(shí)是你的開(kāi)頭非常重要，首先你要真的跟你的觀(guān)眾有連接，要暖場(chǎng)。真的非常重要。暖場(chǎng)暖場(chǎng)暖場(chǎng)。講三次?。。。?chǎng)子暖了，你就會(huì)給自己強(qiáng)大的心理暗示，咦，自己還不錯(cuò)哦?；蛘咦院冢蛘咦员?。八卦一下自己，引起大家注意力聽(tīng)下去，這點(diǎn)很重要！

當(dāng)然你要分享的是你的故事，但是你希望的是你分享的東西對(duì)別人是有用的。別人可以從你的演講中，收獲并有take away。如果你一味的曲高和寡，最后就是大家不buy in 你，7分鐘的時(shí)間，大家完全沒(méi)有共鳴。這完全就是浪費(fèi)大家時(shí)間。

所以，講一個(gè)大家都能受益的故事，或者幽默，感人，或者分享一些你的技巧和故事。讓大家可以跟自己的生活有交集和共鳴。最后call for action,可以帶走一些經(jīng)驗(yàn)，并且用在自己的生活里或者解決自己的問(wèn)題。這就是這7分鐘，最大的意義。