Dealing with nerves before stepping onto the stage
Giving a presentation is right up there with some of the most scary experiences that can happen to you, so it's going to be very important to deal with nerves.
Dealing with nerves before stepping onto the stage.
What you need to know is that, under pressure, three things will happen.
- For one, you will start to speed up
- Two: you will forget to breathe properly, breathing down
- And three: you will unconsciously adopt negative body language
You know, body fidgeting all, all that sort of thing, twitching and mumbling.
It's very important that you go into your presentation in a relaxed state.
So, prepare well, you know.
Give yourself plenty of time. Make sure you get there on time so you're not sort of flustered and very nervous.
Give yourself time to shake, have a shake out just to disperse the adrenaline. Take some time to do some breathing exercises.
Just breathing down so that makes you more calm and relaxed.
Breathing is really important, to take a breath.
Because under pressure you will start speeding up and and everything starts to go and then you have to breathe in the wrong place and it's going faster and faster. You're not getting enough breath and it's sort of getting higher and higher pitch and everything's going. And of course this is very difficult to listen to like, whereas if you pause.
And take a breath before the next sentence. You can immediately hear that in the change of the voice, it relaxes you and most important of all, you're able to think clearly.
Now you may feel you're slowing down, but it's not. It just feels natural. You can still vary the pace, you know, vary the pace.
Think 'musically'.
You know, so that you're slowing down, sometimes speeding up other parts, going up in pitch, down in pitch. Loud, soft. There's a whole variety that keeps them going.
So if you're about to go on stage, just remember:
- Have a shake out.
- Breathe down.
- Relax and make it about the audience, not about you.
- And give them [the audience] a good a good time.
So they're going to enjoy that presentation. And then paradoxically, you will enjoy it yourself.
