Three simple tips for hypnotic, poised and present communication
Overcome performance anxiety. Speak with confidence, gravitas and... love?
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Have you ever opened your mouth to speak only to find your pallet dry, voice quavering and mind, well, blank? Performance anxiety can leave us in such a bind: we're anxious because we want to deliver information in a calm and effective way, but the anxiety itself seems to want the exact opposite. Thankfully, there are ways around this.
Three simple tips for poised and present communication
In this article, I'm sharing three simple tips to help you stand on a stage – or present over Zoom or even chat to a date – with calm, confidence, and poise.
If you have a talk coming up, you may want to check out my previous two posts as well: the first of which covered preparation and writing tips; the second, how to tackle learned fears, such as stage fright, at the (quote-unquote) root.
Tip 1: Frame your performance as an act of gift-giving
First, frame your performance as an act of giving.
When preparing for any kind of presentation, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of assuming that we need to imagine ourselves giving the performance of a lifetime in order to prepare for success. In an attempt to calm our nerves with a confident mindset, we might try daydreaming about a perfect version of ourselves standing on stage, looking fine, and doling out wisdom like some kind of superstar.
As Caroline McHugh discusses in her super inspiring TEDx talk, "The art of being yourself", in reality – for most of us, at least – imagining “all eyes on us” is probably more likely to exacerbate our anxiety than alleviate it. As human beings, we are wired for connection and have a fundamental, evolutionary need for inclusion and acceptance. This means that the possibility of publicly making a fool of ourselves can be terrifying. Therefore, framing a performance as a situation where we are the centre of everyone else's attention is only likely to heap on the pressure.
In my therapy practice, I'd often tell my clients something like this: whether you’re going to be telling a story, performing some art or educating your audience, be careful to remember that you are giving a gift. An audience doesn't care about you or your nerves anywhere near as much as they care about gaining something from their time sitting in their chair. They are ready to receive.
Think back to the last time you gave a birthday present to a close friend or family member. In the moment of handing that gift over, were you focused on yourself, or were you paying attention to them? By and large, it'll be the latter. When we give a gift, we want the receiver to feel good about it first. And as a result of their pleasure, we get to feel good about it, too.
Preparing for a talk is much better when we put our ego to one side and think of what the audience has to gain. So, rather than seeing yourself “nailing it”, imagine the audience absorbing the information you’re sharing. See them nodding and emoting as they make their own connections. If you’re relaying a sad story, visualise them welling up. If you’re going to crack some jokes, see them laughing as they enjoy the humour – as they receive their gift.
Put simply, the key is to remember that your performance is really not all about you. And that’s a good thing.
Tip 2: Grounding tools
Step two: grounding.
When it came to the day of my talk, I was nervous. I still am before speaking – this isn't magic. But the anxiety I felt that day just wasn't that crippling, paralysing fear that I'd felt up until that point. Before speaking, I used some breathing techniques and things like finger tapping to manage my emotions (I won't go through them here because you probably know them already), but my main goal, on the day, was to make sure the first few moments of my talk would feel grounding and connecting for the audience as well as me. Here's how you can plan for that:
Visualise your act of gift-giving
First, find a way to visualise your act of gift-giving. For my talk, I imagined a beautiful golden light flowing out and away from me, and into the audience. This got me in the right mindset for the presentation.
Smile (with your teeth)
When the time comes, as soon as you're up on stage, smile with your teeth. A wide smile is engaging and inviting, and like opening up your body language, it tells your own mind that you're OK, too. This might feel forced when you’re nervous, but the audience won’t know that.
Start with a pause
Then, start with a pause. The temptation is to rush into it – to just get going – but that does nothing to settle the nerves, and until everyone is sitting comfortably, quiet and waiting, the room isn't really ready. In a way, you haven't got their consent, or their respect, yet.
Pausing long enough for the room to fall dead quiet solves these problems. And it's surprisingly empowering, too. For my talk, I got on stage and I waited until I could hear a pin drop. It was probably about twenty seconds but it felt like an age. During that time, I made eye contact with as many people as possible to help myself feel connected with the audience, and them with me. When I started speaking, I already felt like I knew these people a bit, and like they were on my side.
Ground yourself by feeling the floor
Another thing you can do in that time is ground yourself, quite literally. Feel the connection between your feet and the floor, and notice that it's holding you. That you're stable.
Start slow
Once you begin speaking, start slow. I'm a naturally fast talker and I go even faster when nervous. Before a speech, I'm well aware that if I go at my normal pace from the outset, I run the risk of leaving people behind. Besides, speaking slowly grabs attention, and it helps your audience to fully process the words spoken, as well as make an emotional connection.
I talked about the importance of practising in the first of these three articles, and that includes this little grounding routine. You're unlikely to remember to use a visualisation, smile with your teeth, start with a pause, ground to the floor, and begin speaking slowly unless you've rehearsed these things. So, I suggest you run through the first few minutes of your talk, taking all of these steps in sequence, a number of times before the day. With just a little practice, this routine will be not only easy but also comfortably familiar when you use it, meaning you start in a state of confidence, feeling like you know what you're doing. Because you do.
Tip 3: Give yourself an enthusiasm pass
Last, but not least, give yourself permission to show your enthusiasm. No one comes to a talk hoping to see a lifeless person speaking about a subject so boring that even they can’t muster an ounce of excitement. However, many of us are tempted to downplay our enthusiasm because we’ve been conditioned to confuse it with naïvety or foolishness. Think back to your teens. If your school was anything like mine, then those in the "in group" were probably desperate to prove that they just didn't give a crap about anything. Apathy was cool. But just imagine one of those kids on stage giving a talk. Do you want to listen to that? Absolutely not.
It’s a vulnerable thing to share your passion, so it takes guts. But it’s worth it because enthusiasm is contagious. Feel free to geek out about the gift you're sharing. Let it ooze out of you so even those in the audience who might not have chosen this topic for themselves just can't help but pay attention.
I'm making this post because I believe that anyone who chooses to stand on stage and speak from the heart will relish those moments when their audience leans in to receive the offering. I had no idea before that first big talk that I could enjoy public speaking as much as I did.
But my enjoyment wasn’t the retrospective type: the kind that comes after something like a parachute jump, only once you're standing on solid ground. What I experienced on stage that day was a present-moment, connected and purposeful kind of joy. Speaking was affirming, not petrifying. And it can be for you, too.
Thank you for reading!
We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.
