Speaker 1: The famous writer and public speaker Mark Twain once said that there are two kinds of public speakers. One, those who get nervous and two, liars. Getting nervous before and during a presentation are completely common and you don't have to let it affect your performance. So in this video we're going to talk about some mindsets and realizations that you should have going into presenting and also some practical tips to help manage that nervousness. Coming up. So let's talk about some realizations and then some practical tips. The first realization is that you do not look as nervous as you feel. I was recently coaching some presenters and one of the speakers finished and she said, oh my gosh I was so nervous. Now she had done a good job but I didn't realize she was nervous. So I said to her on a scale of 1 to 10 how nervous were you? And she said 10 out of 10. I was freaking out. And I asked the people watching, the other participants, how nervous did she look? And they said about a 2. So she felt 10 out of 10. Top of the scale in nerves. But we couldn't tell. She looked totally composed and normal. She did a great job. So just this one realization alone I think is really powerful is that you do not look anywhere near as nervous as you may feel on the inside. And that alone should, I think, relax you. The second realization is just because you're nervous, it doesn't mean you're not doing a great job in that moment. So another presenter said after a recent coaching session, she said, oh my gosh I blacked out. I totally don't remember even what I did. I don't know if she actually blacked out but that's how she described it. She was detached from what was happening. Even though she felt detached, she did a great job. Total home run. She did the best I've ever seen her. So just because you feel nerves, they may be getting the best of you, it doesn't mean that you're not actually performing excellently. Keep that in mind. The third realization is that nervousness and excitement are really two sides of the same coin. Bruce Springsteen, a famous musician, talked about how early on you get very nervous. A lot of stage fright before he would perform. And then he realized, wait a minute, this is like excitement. This is the same thing as I'm excited to go play music for a huge crowd. It gets me going. And so public speaking is a lot like that. You should be a little excited. It doesn't have to be thought of in your mind as I'm really nervous. You know you say, hey you know what, I'm excited. So you can even take a little control over your thoughts in that way. So those are some realizations. Let's get now to some practical tips. First practical tip is to practice like crazy. And here's why. In my experience, and I've been coaching professional speakers and coaching students to do presentations for about 20 years now, 95% of the results that you get during your presentation are worked out during your practice time. So if you practice like crazy and really prepare well, that presentation is most likely going to go very well. About 95% of that is all worked out. So even if you're nervous, even if a couple little things go wrong, it's almost always going to come out pretty much the way you practiced it. So that's a great understanding of the process and that, you know, hard work does pay off. And so you should make that practice as realistic as possible. Maybe even have a couple of distractions in there. That's fine. If you make a mistake, don't start over. Push through it. If you feel nervous, don't rehearse talking about to yourself or out loud how nervous you are because then you might do that during the presentation and that usually makes things worse. So work that out through practice. The second concrete tip is as you are preparing, you want to focus everything on your audience and your message. If you're at all focused on yourself, that's going to spike your nerves. So a comedian is trying to get people to laugh. They're working on their joke. They're not thinking about how they come across. They're working for their outcome. They're working for their good performance. If you're trying to train people, you should be focused on getting them up to speed so they really do know how to do this. If you're trying to share a message, focus on saying it in a way that's going to land and it's going to stick so that everybody gets the most benefit. Anytime we start thinking about how am I coming across? Do I look professional? Do I look nervous? Or are people going to judge me? It's going to lead in the wrong direction. You have to totally flip it and think about your audience and your message. The next tip is to visualize yourself doing it well, especially the opening moments. That first 10 to 20 seconds. Now when I say visualization, I don't mean anything weird or experimental or new-agey. I mean it the way athletes do it. In other words, before a batter comes up to swing, that batter is going to put himself in the right state of mind so that he visualizes himself hitting the ball well. Adam Venetieri used to be a kicker for the New England Patriots and in a 2001 Super Bowl against the St. Louis Rams, the clock was running down. They were tied 17 to 17. This is like high pressure situation for a kicker and he successfully kicked a 48-yard field goal with two seconds left on the clock. The clock was running. There was no timeouts. It was running and he did it and they won the game. And after the game, people said, you know, how did you do it? You know the most pressure that any kicker has been under ever. And he said, I have made that kick a thousand times. And he meant it in his life, in his mind. In a kicker's life, that is the moment they live for. And he had visualized himself doing it successfully a thousand times so that in that moment it felt like he was just doing it one more time. So when you're picturing yourself in the room setting up your visual aids, getting ready, and that first 10 or 20 seconds of the presentation, you're picturing it happening successfully, picturing the steps it takes to get there, and you're going to be set up for success. So those are the tips I have for not being as nervous. I recommend you use them in your next presentation. Look forward to your comments below and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. God bless.