A cure for speaking stress: mindfulness

Under cheers, Hollywood director Michael Bay walks onto the Samsung stage during the Consumer Electronics Show 2014 in Las Vegas [Watch the clip here]. As he shakes the moderator's hand, he throws his leg back somewhat curiously. He looks nervous. Before he is well and truly in front of the audience, he interjects, "My job as a director, is I get to dream for a living." He falls silent and seems to realize that although that sentence was already on his teleprompter, he really should have said it only in response to a question from the moderator. From that moment on, his nerves turn to panic. He struggles with the chaos in his head for another minute, before finally fleeing off the stage. Painful to watch because it is so recognizable.

Most people experience nerves during presentations, often healthy tension and impeding stress are close together. We look for ways to deal with that feeling of vulnerability. Michael Bay literally walks away; more often, as speakers, we take a figurative approach. We depart from the here and now and try to disconnect with our feelings, thoughts and with the audience. With the opposite effect: as if in quicksand, we look for a foothold, grab hold, which increases stress.

Mindful presenting

The solution is not a trick but training: staying present. Returning again and again to the here and now. With mindfulness, you train not to fight or push away your feelings and thoughts, but to notice and experience them. By looking the beast in the mouth, the fear of it becomes less.

Besides a greater awareness and connection with yourself, mindful presenting also ensures that you show more of yourself and that presenting becomes more fun to do.

Three tips for presenting more in the here and now:

1. Work on awareness.

If you feel tension before or during presenting, try to be aware of this tension. You are not the tension, you have tension. Don't let it go, but let it be there. Go to it in your body, perceive it and welcome it.

How this works tells this nice animation:

2. Feel what you are saying.

It can happen when you improvise and are too preoccupied with what you are actually going to say. But it can also happen if you are extremely well prepared. In either case, you can become disconnected from what you are saying. You don't feel it. You are preoccupied. Ask yourself: what am I talking about and what feeling does it evoke in me? Because it is precisely in connecting with your story that a key to relaxation lies.

What happens when you are out of touch? Kimberly Guilfoyle gives a wonderful example with her speech at the Republican National Convention 2020. It's a "crescendo of disconnect," so watch it all the way through:

3. Go to your breathing.

Breathing is a bridge to what we are feeling in every moment. Your breath is always there. So a base that you can always go to. By noticing that your attention has wandered and bringing it back to your breathing, you will find that your thoughts will calm down.

Watch Stacey Schuerman's TED talk here, in which she does 5 minutes of simple, powerful breathing exercises with the audience: