The Psychology of your 20s - 249. 5 tips to master public speaking

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Public speaking is one of our biggest fears as a species - some 75% of us list public speaking as our biggest and greatest fear. In today's episode, I want to discuss why that is and where this fear stems from, socially, psychologically and evolutionary, but also how we can transform our attitude to public speaking and excel, including tips based in psychology such as:  Creating a persona and modelling a hero Embracing flow rather than a need for structure  The power of slowing down  Anxiety and pacing  Anchoring yourself to your audience  Listen now if you're ready to master your next speech or presentation!   PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/755841/person-in-progress-by-jemma-sbeg/  Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]    The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, we are going to talk about one of the most valuable skills that we can learn and that we can perfect during this decade, and that is mastering public speaking, mastering how to hold a crowd, how to get your point across and be convincing in our professional lives, in business when speaking about the things that we're passionate about, essentially knowing

how to walk onto a stage or into a room and just nail it and just leave people thinking, this person knows what they're talking about. It is a rare skill, but a really, really important one, you know, from having to defend a thesis or pitch to investors or to a new employer or talk at your best friend's wedding. Public speaking is such a great opportunity to really impress or entertain a lot of people and hopefully be remembered. But it's something that is, quite terrifying. I think the scary part of public speaking is the possibility of not only being remembered, but of being remembered in a way that is not favourable, of being judged or noticed. That is where our fear of public speaking really comes from. You know, as social creatures, it's a bit of

a natural fear because humans are very paralysed by the notion of doing wrong or making a mistake, especially in front of a large group of people whose opinions we care about most. In fact, our biggest collective fear as a species, it's not death, it's not spiders, it's not clowns, it is actually public speaking. 75% of us have this fear according to the National Institute of Mental Health. It's otherwise known as glossophobia, such a pretty name for something that can be very paralyzing. And I think it really comes down to not just confidence, but trust. Trusting ourselves and knowing that whatever happens, we are going to be okay. We trust ourselves to do well, to perform

well. And sometimes that trust is nowhere to be found. I used to be so terrified of public speaking back in the day. I remember pretending to be sick when we'd have to do speeches or like debating at school, any kind of performing. I just couldn't do it. And I actually went to a school that was really focused on music and performing arts. So you can see how that was going to be a bit of a problem. I remember having to do like a singing performance, not quite public speaking, but a performance nonetheless. And I held the microphone so far away from me that no one was even able to hear me because I was so scared that people would listen or hear and be like, well, that's, she's just not very good. And although these days I do spend most of my time talking behind a microphone in my studio alone,

I also have to give a lot of talks and speak to huge rooms of strangers to perform keynotes, presentations, inspirational speeches, whatever you can imagine. Nowadays, I get a real energy from it. And I find that it is a great part of what I do. I'm excited by it. I love reaching people. I love talking to them, convincing them, maybe inspiring them, I can hope. And with that practice, with that exposure to public speaking that I've had,

I've developed a number of skills that have taken me from someone who was very, very anxious in doing so and really did avoid it to someone who can, you know, kind of see it as a walk in a park and who feels very confident now in my ability. So I want to speak about it today. I want to speak to our natural fear of public speaking and provide you all with my guide for overcoming that fear and for stepping into your confidence, for stepping into your power when you are in the uncomfortable position that a lot of us find ourselves in of having to hold a crowd, hold an audience, persuade an audience, present at work, whatever it may be.

There are so many tips that could help you, that have helped me, that I want to share today, so many small mental mindset shifts and hacks to get you to a place of feeling confident. So without further ado, let us get into the story of how I got great at public speaking and how you can as well. Why exactly are we so afraid of public speaking? You know, we all have to do it at some stage. We all know that people probably won't remember us after a week or after a month. and yet we are united in this very common feeling of anticipation in the moments or even days or weeks before we get on stage, this tingle in our fingers, this nervousness in our bellies, this nausea, this anxiety. And like I explained before, what it really comes down to is A, a fear of judgment

and B, our fear of being perceived. From an evolutionary perspective, and I speak about this a lot, so I'm sure you have heard this speech of mine before, but we as humans do have a very innate fear of rejection, because in early societies, being ostracized from the group could threaten survival. It meant less food, less opportunities for shelter, less safety. Speaking in front of an audience triggers this fear, even though it feels like a very different activity to what would usually threaten our survival. it still has the same ability to activate the brains amygdala and initiate a fight or flight response. The same way that we would experience if we were facing a physical threat, public speaking is interpreted as a social threat.

Will they think differently of me? Will they think I'm less intelligent, less well spoken, less deserving? And therefore, will they ostracize me? All of that comes down to something that is very, very foundational and fundamental in our DNA as a species. Psychologically, many of us fear these kinds of negative evaluations. We worry about being judged, about being criticized, of embarrassing ourselves. And that's definitely made worse by the fact that in those moments where we are asked to speak publicly, to perform, to present, the stakes often feel a lot higher. we're often in a professional environment or in a situation in which we are being closely observed. We are being watched, judged, thought about.

Because of that, public speaking heightens self-consciousness and it leads to this phenomena that we know as the spotlight effect. So this is a term used by a social psychologist to explain what it feels like when we know that people are paying attention to us. but ultimately when we also overestimate how negative their opinions will be. We tend to think, you know, just because people can see us, they will automatically think of us poorly or negatively. Our brain likes to catastrophize, likes to put this pessimistic twinge or hue on these experiences. What I always like to remember in these moments when the spotlight effect is really taking hold of me when I feel a lot of eyes on me and they might not be kind eyes, is to think about my own experiences on the other side. My own experiences as an audience member when I watch a live performance or a speech,

a keynote, whatever it is, how much do we actually truly pay attention? Be honest with yourself right now. You know, if someone's on the stage at work, how closely really are you listening? How much do you actually tend to be zoning out? think about the last time you saw someone perform. Could you tell me what they were wearing? Could you tell me the moments when they were nervous? Could you recall where they studded?

You know, could you recall where they forgot a slide when something went wrong? You probably can't. All these details that we obsess over in ourselves, we tend to never see in other people because of the spotlight effect and the fact that we often, think about ourselves much more unkindly and negatively than anybody else is ever thinking about us. And that spotlight effect is often linked to social anxiety and perfectionism. Social anxiety, meaning that we feel a lot more worry and a much more heightened emotional state and anticipatory state

in relation to what other people are thinking, but also perfectionism in the sense that if it's not perfect if it's not exactly as we want it and how we imagined it, how will we survive by knowing that we've left a poor impression? Essentially all of these psychological mechanisms, what they do is they work to take something that should be quite normal and quite harmless, like speaking in front of other people, and they create and make it into this highly, highly, almost stressful experience, this high stakes experience, this experience that feels intrinsically linked to all these other parts of us and all these other parts of our lives that we care about, belonging, being accepted, being respected. I also think it typically comes down to

how we store embarrassing memories. Some people will walk on stage and like you can say they do not care. They do not care what you think about them. They have this aura, this confidence, this like magnetism. And I think that's because the way that they store embarrassing memories is very different to ours. You know, for me, after a week or two, my emotional attachment to something embarrassing tends to lessen. And by about two months, I tend to kind of forget, I don't really care about it anymore unless someone else brings it up. For others, these memories, don't last longer than a day, and then there are people for whom they last a lifetime. Their mind might hold on to these moments for years, even decades, because of how individually

important they feel, and that individual perception of our memories influences how they are stored, for how long they are stored, and how easy it is for us to access them. So if you are someone who stores embarrassing memories quite well and has it so that they're easily accessible, when you step into, you know, an opportunity to public speak when you're in that situation, you can very easily reflect on a time when it didn't go the way that you want. It may also be linked to how, you know, fixated we get on these negative moments. Some people can brush past these moments easier than others. That's just part of life. It's linked to rumination. It's linked to sometimes even depression.

and anxiety. And so those prior events where you felt judged, awkward, cringe on stage, even if nobody said anything, even if everybody thought you did amazing, for you, that is an important kind of warning sign. That is an important thing that you remember and that influences your further experiences of public speaking, making it so that it's quite scary, it's quite anxiety-inducing. All of this is basically to say that if you fear public speaking, if it's your worst nightmare like some 75% of us. Firstly, you are not alone, which is always comforting. Secondly, this is something that your brain is doing to protect you. It's just getting confused because there is no dangerous life-ending threat that could ever be attached to a work presentation

or a speech for your debating class. But thirdly, I think it's important to remember that we think about our actions and our words and our performances are way more than others do. We scrutinize ourselves way more than others scrutinize us. This is really what I want to hone in on. You and I are going to be a lot meaner to ourselves than others will ever be to us. We say things so nasty to ourselves that if someone else was to say them, we would never speak to that person again. We believe far less in ourselves than anyone else would. you know your boss your friend your co-worker believes in you probably more than you believe in

yourself so when you feel yourself getting nervous when you feel yourself you know being concerned about the natural fear of judgment think about what level of judgment or embarrassment you expect what do you expect to encounter divide it by a thousand divide it by a million and that is a more realistic level of what we are likely to experience or receive. Regardless, a fear of public speaking can manifest in avoidance, which we know initially feels safe, but actually causes us to miss out on a lot of things, whilst also making the anxiety worse.

And the reason that avoidance does this is because it never provides us with the opportunity to prove our irrational fears wrong. So we have this fear that you're going to get on stage, you're going to present on Zoom, whatever it is. Just picture the thing that you're afraid of doing as it relates to public speaking. Your brain is going to take that fear and make it into a monster. It's going to add on all these extra parts, all these extra possibilities that are never going to happen. And because of all that anticipatory anxiety, you are probably going to avoid that experience. But in avoiding that experience, your brain, overreting that experience, your brain,

only has the delusional or rational fears that it's concocted as evidence for what would have happened. Because you haven't exposed yourself to the actual real thing, or you haven't done so in a while, you have no evidence to say, hey, actually, it's never as bad as I think it is. It's actually not terrible. I can do this. And that avoidance creates more anxiety, which creates more avoidance. You just see how this becomes a cycle. It also means that, you know, sometimes the things that scare us the most, are actually the most important things to do.

One of my friends is an entrepreneur, and she really struggles with public speaking and presenting. And what she said to me, when I was asking her about this topic, I was like, I know that you used to be really afraid of this. Now you are genuinely the pro, the person that I look up to when it comes to providing and presenting compelling, compelling arguments and convincing people. And what she said to me was like,

I just realized the cost of not doing it was so much higher than the cost of doing it. Like, there was so many more opportunities for it to go right than for it to go wrong. So with that mindset in mind, what are the tips that I have for you today to bring about that same epiphany that she had? And even if you don't have that epiphany to just make it more bearable. I remember when we were younger, we always used to be told to, like, imagine the audience naked or, like, in their underwear.

I find that so weird and creepy, not going to lie. incredibly unhelpful. So my first and biggest tip is to picture the person that you think is the best at public speaking or the person you admire the most and emulate them. For me, it's my friend. She's just magnificent. Like no one will look away. She's so poised and self-assured. And so when I have to do keynote's like I did a recent talk at South by Southwest in Sydney. I imagined her. I thought about how she would hold herself, how she would dress, what her tone would be, what her pace would be. This is a great technique because we give ourselves a mental example of someone who wouldn't be scared. We give ourselves a mental example of someone who couldn't fail, who we admire,

and we can almost wear our image of them as an armour. By imagining ourselves as this confident individual, we engage in a psychological process. It's called modelling. And it's a concept that's rooted in social learning theory. And social learning theory was developed by Albert Bondura. You probably are familiar with his name if you've studied psychology. Basically, what he said was that we learn all behaviours by observing an

imitating others. So when we mentally step into the shoes of someone we admire and we model their behavior, basically what we are doing is we are activating neural pathways associated with confidence and competence. And we are effectively tricking our brain into believing that we possess those qualities ourselves. This technique also taps into what we call embodied cognition. When we adopt the physical posture, tone, pace of a confident speaker, this can influence our internal state. What we do physically influences how we feel internally. And so when you say, I'm confident and you hold yourself with confidence and you present with confidence and with expertise, it makes you feel like you already possess those things. So by embodying this persona, what we are able to do is

temporarily bypass our fear response and allow us to just focus on speaking, focus on making our point rather than on the anxiety that it's going to elicit. I use this technique not just for public speaking, but for a lot of really fearful activities when I need to go to things alone, when I need to fly, when I need to meet new people. I find that it's just an incredible strategy to be like, okay, yes I am me, but I am also this more confident version of me, or I am this role model that I have. What would they do? What would they look like? How can I pretend almost or take what's best from them, what I can learn from them and bring it to the situation? If you have ever seen the TV show Ted Lasso, which I recommend to everyone, it's my favorite TV show of all time, hands down, the best.

There is a character in that TV show called Rebecca. And in that show, she has this practice, this method of making herself appear really big before she goes on stage to talk. She raises her arms above her head. She stands strong and tall and fierce and brave in front of a mirror. And then slowly she brings all of that back. And she walks out into a room with the same energy that she just saw displayed to herself. Just try it. See if it works.

My second tip for mastering public speaking is don't. aim for perfect, just let yourself find the flow. I think our biggest inclination when we're scared of public speaking is to rehearse, to rehearse, to rehearse, to rehearse, just practice, practice, practice, to know everything word for word to be prepared. Honestly, being prepared is a great way to be less stressed. But we can also take it too far and I think there is something to be said about preparing too strictly. People often like to write out huge scripts. like word for word of things they want to say, because when we have a script like that, it provides us with a sense of control, which is a natural anxiety reliever.

But I find that this can be really overwhelming because you become hyperfixated and overly focused on saying exactly what you wanted to say at the right time, in the right order, and that leaves a lot of room to feel like you've made a mistake, even if the audience doesn't know that you have. Maybe your timing was wrong. missed a sentence or a word that you wanted to say and instead of being able to segue and move on, because you have tied yourself so closely to a script, there's no room to improvise. The thing is, is that the audience won't notice the sentence that you've missed because they

didn't know it was going to be there, but they will notice your reaction after the fact as you get flustered and stressed. So here's the thing I like to remember. You might know exactly what you want to say and what you intend to say your audience doesn't. They haven't seen your script, they don't know your plan, they will take whatever you give them and they will think that it's brilliant and that was always what was intended. So you should really feel free to release the reins a little bit, as counterintuitive as that feels. How I like to do this is that, yes, I do make an extensive plan of what I want to say, how I want to say it, my key points. And sometimes I will write out a full script, but then instead of just bringing a big clump of pages onto stage, and then just staring down the whole time.

What I do is I create four to five sections, and within each of these sections, I make three main points. So it means that over the span of my talk, my speech, I have 15 main points that I want to make. And each of these points, they can't be any more than 10 words each. A lot of numbers I know, but just visualize having five cards, five cards for your speech. Each card is a new section of what you want to say,

and each card only has three points on it. So, for example, if I'm doing a speech on, I don't know, like the psychological benefits of nature and how we could incorporate nature into our approach to mental health, instead of having a script in which I read off a huge paragraph like a 2012 article from the Natural Wildlife Institute provided a concrete estimate of blah, blah, blah, and have that written out exactly that I need to read off the page.

Instead, I will have a point that says highlight benefits, less stress, more present, good for depression. And then because I know, and I have practiced and I've spent time in my research, I know that I can bring that up rather than having to read it off the page. And I said something at the beginning of this episode that really relates to this tip, and that is self-trust, trusting that when you get up onto that stage, into that room, onto that Zoom call, whatever it is. You actually, your brain is a lot more capable than you think you are a lot more capable

than you think of remembering what you need to say. I also like to create my hand cards, placards, whatever you call them, such that they have a very distinct structure. And I use highlighter, red pen to just pull out keywords so that if I'm getting lost and flustered, I have this anchor, right? I have this thing that I can come back to. So I don't lose myself in like the spontaneity of it all. Like I'm not completely ad-libbing, but I'm also not.

not stressed out by being boxed in. I think this is the secret for anything that when you aim for perfect, you will fall short, but when you aim for good and natural and authentic, you get a lot closer to the outcome that you want. So sometimes getting good at public speaking is actually doing the opposite of your instincts, loosening the control a little bit. We are about halfway through my strategies today. So when we return, I want to talk about three more important tips that made me a great public speaker. We'll be back very soon. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%. I break down the science of mental toughness,

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podcasts. Anxiety has like this image in my mind and in many of our minds of being this like very fast emotion, this like speedy, erratic, run around the house, jittery buzzed emotion. Because that is essentially what it does to our nervous system. It pumps a whole lot of energy into us to prepare to fight or run away from a danger. danger, when that energy has nowhere to go, it finds a way out through this jitteriness, through this intensity and this speed. How that will show up when we're public speaking and this is an entirely natural response is that we do tend to at the beginning feel very hot and flushed and rushed.

We stumble, we feel jittery, we feel anxious, we can't really focus on where we want to look. Totally normal. When you find yourself, in that space, pause, slow it down, take your breath. This helps calm your nerves. It helps communicate to yourself and your mind that there is no danger. If there was danger, why would you be slowing down? When we slow down and take deliberate pauses, we not only regain control over our breathing and our heart rate as well, but we also engage what we call the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system counteracts our flight or fight response. So essentially what it does is it goes, okay, hold up, false alarm.

Let's just take a breath, slow it down. Let's ground ourselves in the present moment and it reduces the intensity of anxiety's physical symptoms. It also has the added bonus of making what you're saying feel more impactful and important. You know, when I talk like this and I'm like rushing and I'm just like, I want to make my point, you're not listening as much as when I'm really focusing in on what I want to say and slowing down between my words. It gives the audience time to absorb and reflect on what you're saying. It enhances their engagement. It creates a rhythm that commands attention. It signals confidence and poise because you know that what you have to say is important. You don't need to rush through it.

And over time, practicing this like intentional pacing and slowing down, it trains our brain to associate public speaking with calmness rather than fear. And so it rewires our response to these situations. I really learnt this through trial and error. I remember having to do this presentation when I was maybe 22. And it was actually really important. It was back, I think I had just finished uni. I can't actually remember the social. circumstances of it. It was a work presentation, like maybe an employee presentation. And I remember it was

in front of maybe 15 people. Ah, it was like a interview to be promoted. And I was, you had to give a talk. Sorry, details, not necessary, but you had to give a talk, to present on something in front of like a panel of 15 people, room of 15 people. And I just got so frazzled that I just kept talking. And then suddenly I was saying things that I didn't mean. Suddenly I was going way too fast. I couldn't stop myself. It all just like tumbled away from me. And afterwards I was really embarrassed.

I was like, that was not what I wanted to do. That wasn't the energy that I wanted to bring into this situation. And I really was like, okay, what could have I, what should I have done differently? And the one thing that kept coming to my mind was like, you should have just paused. You should have just taken a really deep breath and been silent. Because silence is actually quite powerful. Here are some other ways that we can really positively manage our anxiety in these situations. Treat your anxiety like excitement.

I've spoken about this before. It doesn't work for everything. In this situation, it is a game changer. We know that anxiety and excitement, they activate very similar like pathways through the brain, very similar areas in our body. So excitement, the nervousness, the ball of energy in your stomach, the eyes darting across the room, that like energy you can feel rising to the top of your head. That shares a lot of similarities and parallels with what it feels like for your anxiety to be increasing.

So taking a more cognitive mental approach, you can basically say to yourself, wow, I'm so excited by this feeling. I'm so excited by this opportunity to deliver this speech. Not I'm excited for it to be over, but I'm excited to test myself. If this goes wrong, that's okay. I'm excited by the possibility to learn. The anxiety is still there, but the label is different, and labeling your emotions is invaluable.

How you interpret and perceive your emotions has been shown to influence how you experience them. I also would say if it's an environment where you are on a stage or in an open space, move around, pace around, give that energy that's sitting in your body somewhere to go, pacing and like purposeful movement during your speech, not only does it release some of the anxiety from your body, it also really enhances your confidence and the audience's engagement. Psychologically, we know that movement helps calm and channel nervous energy

by really providing like a physical outlet for our body's natural fight or flight response. For the audience though, movement creates visual interest. It keeps their attention focused. As humans, we are naturally drawn to motion. You know, we're intrigued.

Like, what does that signal? So pacing is really important in that regard as well. Has the dual benefit of making you feel better and making the audience feel more engaged? It can also serve as a really important nonverbal cue. So, you know, when you're moving into a new part of your speech, you know, as you walk, it emphasizes a transition. And it can also improve memory. I read this really interesting study that really good public speakers, I guess it wasn't really a study, it was like an article.

Really good public speakers use certain movements to bring about flow to make it feel like what they're talking about, has more of a fluidity to it and to remember key parts of what they want to say. So, you know, they associate standing in the left corner of a stage with the first point they want to make, standing in the right corner with the second point they want to make. A little bit advanced, but it really does show the alignment of the physical and the mental and the emotional when it comes to mastering public speaking. With that, I would also say, you know, audience engagement is key. Pacing is one way to do it. Sowing down and speeding up your pacing for your voice and your tone is really great. Also, my mum taught me this. Focus on a new person every 20 seconds. What says anxiety

more than darting eyes? It's a natural feeling though. You know, darting eyes is basically our brain being like scan. You know, this is a scary situation. I want to scan my environment for threats. Slowly, intentionally focus on one person every 20 seconds. It can feel rather intense, but it kind of also brings about an accountability of like, oh my God, they're watching me, I better pay attention. And so again, it means that people really feel that you have something to say. If you are saying it to them, also making eye contact engages the audience's mirror neurons, which really helps create a sense of connection and empathy. And it gives you an anchor.

I talked about the anchor in the form of specific words that you highlight. A person in the crowd can also be an anchor, a really, really valuable one. Finally, I just want to give you a little bit of a pep talk. If you are listening to this in preparation for a big speech or you're trying to get ready and get your skills sharpened, you're going to do amazing. The fact that you care enough to be listening to something like this, wanting to really hone in on your skill set,

and what is such an important skill to have, shows that you have an attitude of confidence in your ability. It shows that you have an attitude that is centered on wanting to do well, that is centered on wanting to do your best, that is going to come through. That excitement for this experience, even if it feels like anxiety right now, is going to come through. remember that you are much more capable than you ever think you are upon first assessment.

You are so capable. You've done so many hard things. You've also probably done a speech before, or debated or done some public speaking. And you get that buzz afterwards. You get that high. It always works out as much better than you think it will. And even when it doesn't, you're still here. You survived.

You're still okay. And there are people who care about you that weren't in that room or who weren't still care about you. your whole life is not touched by one speech or one presentation. I also think of people like Jennifer Lawrence who literally fell on her face when she got her first Oscar. And, you know, it became not something that she was judged by. It became a funny little gag. Like no one really thought anything too deep about that. We scrutinize our behavior so much more than others do.

So I really want you to hold strong to that knowledge. and I'm sure you're going to do absolutely amazing. I hope that these tips and the psychology behind them and why they do work and how they've worked for me also really supports you and whatever you have coming up. If there is someone else you know who needs to hear this episode, please feel free to share it with them. It really helps the show to grow, which we value so deeply.

I'm also really trying to get people to leave reviews for the podcast. It's something that actually is insanely helpful not just for like reaching new people but also just for growing our own community and they also selfishly make my day make sure that you are following us on instagram it is at that psychology podcast if you have episode suggestions if you have any more tips that you think people could benefit from when it comes to public speaking please feel free to share them with me and i'll share them on until next time stay safe be kind be gentle to yourself and we will talk very very certain. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist

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