An irrational fear of public speaking is called “Glossophobia.” It is an anxiety disorder that causes powerful physical and emotional symptoms. These can stem from many causes including childhood trauma, varied neurological issues, and transference from other issues. If you feel that you may be in this group, professional help is needed immediately. That is NOT what we are qualified to treat here, and I make no pretense to be the best one to walk you through that. However, that holds for perhaps 2 – 3% of the public, and if you are one of these folks you almost certainly know that already. I am speaking to the other 97-98% of folks in the gen pop.

Surveys have consistently shown that between 75 and 85% of the public has some meaningful level of fear of public speaking. In fact, some research has shown that fewer people fear death, than fear public speaking. All of this is to say that if you feel some level of fear, anxiety, apprehension, hesitation, or general uneasiness with this activity – not only are you not alone, you probably wouldn’t be normal if you had no nervousness at all. I am going to give you 4 big tips along with a few smaller ones to help you work through speaking related anxiety.

Point 1: Your anxiety will be much easier to manage once you realize that your job is to be a lighthouse speaker – not a spotlight speaker.

A spotlight speaker is a person who enters into the activity with the objective of getting the spotlight to shine on them. If your objective is to have the attention directed to you, you probably should be anxious, because you are the only one in the room with that agenda. Everyone else in that room is there because they need something that they hope you can give to them. They did not come there to stroke your ego. They have a need – and pray that you can help to fill it.

A lighthouse speaker is one who’s aim is to be a beacon, or a ray of hope that others can follow to move in the right direction. This is not to say that the speaker knows everything, or has a perfect view or approach. It is only to say that you have a good reason to think that you have a clue about what the right direction is. I don’t know the entire road to paradise – I only know which way is up and my job is to show you that, and let you take it from there.

When you shift the focus from trying to be in the spotlight, to working to be the lighthouse, you change the internal dialog from what you came to get, to what you came to give. You also move your attention away from what mistake you might make, to what you can do to overcome the mistake after is happens. Miles Davis famously said, there is no such thing as a wrong note in jazz, because the note that you play after that note is the one that makes it right or wrong.

Point 2: You are not here to show that you memorized your speech – you are here to BE your speech.

Joseph Campbell was a famous philosopher of comparative religion He used to tell a story about being in a conversation with a Professor of English Literature. The English professor had a theory that all works of fiction are answering one of 9 seminal questions. He then asked Professor Campbell agreed. The professor said – “Not really. As far as I can tell all works of creativity are seeking to answer only one question – Who Am I?”

Your speech is not an act – it is not a performance. It is the embodiment of who you are. Your memory is not nearly as important as you think. What you believe, is 10 times larger than that message or quote that you tried to memorize. When you memorize a speech that you wrote last week, you are trying to be the person that wrote that a week ago. That person no longer exists. It is  natural for every delivery to be different because the person delivering it is always different.

AI can read your speech in the voice of Barrack Obama, or MLK. The only thing that it cannot do is to be truly human. That is what you bring that I cannot get anyplace else. That is your value – missteps, stutters and all.

Point 3: What you feel has multiple dimensions and you can lean into the one that matters.

Before you speak – your heart races, your blood pressure rises, your muscles tighten, your eyes dilate, and the adrenaline flows. But this isn’t just anxiety. It is also excitement. The step show is about to begin – the ball is about to be tossed up. This is going to be fricking awesome – and you know it. The problem is that the body can’t really tell the difference between anxiety and excitement. If you can lean into the idea that part of this energy is excitement and I am going to embrace that, you will be a lot better off.

Even fear has multiple dimensions. It exists because it has an evolutionary value. It keeps you from doing something stupid. It also tells you that you are doing something that you care about. It’s not there to be overcome. It is there to be channeled. You do not win because you defeat fear – you grow because you figure out how to make it work for you. If you want to grow – find something that you are afraid of that can’t kill you and do it with intention, preparation, and feedback. That’s what public speaking is. It will be a struggle, but as Frederick Douglas told you – if there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Point 4: The greatest antidote to anxiety is preparation.

There is no doubt that you have heard the old saying that “Practice makes perfect.” That’s a prime example of what I like to call “Male Bovine Excrement!” In hospitals I often heard people say “Perfection is the enemy of the good” and we are here to do as much good as can be done. When you fixate on perfection, your mind can only get there with a complete focus on the “act”. This is a deadly mistake, because you are not here to put on an act. You are here to manifest your very being and that can only happen with space and freedom. A perfectly scripted speech that includes all of the needed gestures, vocal inflections, pauses, and steps is not a speech – it’s a robots orgy. I can hire AI to do that. We need you here for your humanity.

Speaking is like life. It’s not a race – it’s a dance. The one who gets to the end first with no mistakes is not the winner. When you dance, you are not looking to get to some specific spot on the floor. You are there to experience the dance itself while you are engaged in it.

Yes, you practice. My last contest speech was done at least 100 times before setting foot on the stage, but it was never the same speech twice. If it was, I would have gotten bored after about the 4^th iteration. I practice while walking down the street, driving the car, riding the bicycle – anywhere. Not because I want it to always be the same, but because I want it to be muscle memory that is not affected by minor distractions. If you are thinking about every mechanic involved in hitting a free throw – you will probably miss it. You maximize the chance of hitting it by focusing on a single aspect of it, like your balance or follow-through. You let the rest run on auto-pilot and by not thinking about it at all. Unfortunately (if you are lazy) that means that the amount of practice that you think that you need is probably about half of what you really do need. You simply practice as much as possible, to let this sort of “muscle memory” set in.

Here are a few more smaller, behavioral tactics that will help in the short term, since it takes time for the big points to sink in.

• Visualize first 30 seconds going perfectly (An old trick from the sports world)

• Get there early and walk the room
  • Stand at the podium
  • Sit in a chair
  • Feel the acoustics

• Know the audience   (This makes it feel more like a conversation)
  • Reducing uncertainty reduces anxiety
  • Work the room (Helpful distraction)

• Breathe 
  • Silence is your friend
  • Pause on Purpose
  • Warm up the voice

• It’s not a monologue – it’s a conversation 
  • Start with a question
  • Use conversational language
  • Use the word “You” 5 times as often as you use the word “I”

• You don’t look as nervous as they feel
  • The audience doesn’t see it
  • The audience is rooting for you

• The spike of nerves lasts about 60 seconds
  • Its ok for some of that time to be spent in silence

Let me leave you with one last exercise that you often hear from old folks like me. If you write down what you are afraid of, you can ask, “What’s the worst that could happen?” If you do this, you can wrestle with the ultimate question – “So what?” Whatever that worst case scenario is – it is still not as bad as going through life feeling like a coward. You become something else – not by overcoming the fear, but by working with it anyway.