Quora Answer: How Do I Stop Panicking & Improve My Public Speaking?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “I have tried to improve my public speaking for years - many courses, voice training, improv - and nothing seems to improve it.  I just panic and cannot think straight.  What would you do in my position?” 

You cannot simply attend courses and training for public speaking, without actually engaging in it on a regular basis.  That would be like attending all sorts of lectures and events about swimming, but never actually trying to swim in the pool.  You will panic, flail around, and maybe even drown. 

Public speaking is the exercise of the art of rhetoric.  There are many elements to it.  You need to learn it as you do.  One of the greatest fears of people is public speaking, which explains the panic and the loss of coherent thought.  Your brain is going into the flight or fight mode.  If you were back ten thousand years, hunting mammoths, that would work.  There is fear, so the breathing becomes shallow and rapid to fill the lungs with oxygen.  The blood floods the extremities and the heart pumps faster in anticipation of that fight or that flight.  Your vision narrows so you can focus on the prey or the predator.  The mind blanks because you revert to instinct.  None of that is useful when you are on stage, about to speak. 

Aside from the usual exercise and practices, even experienced speakers go through this.  It could be that they are unprepared, or that the occasion overwhelms them.  The difference is that experienced speakers understand the physiological effects occurring.  Sometimes, through force of will, they snap out of it.  Other times, they revert to the last sentence, or even the last speech from another occasion. 

The first thing you do, when you start to panic, is to clear your mind.  Your are going through the consequences of failure, and you think the world is judging you or laughing at you.  Even if that may be true – and most times, it is not – it is irrelevant.  Take a deep breath.  And then another, and another.  This resets your mind, and snaps your body out of the flight or fight mode.  You have gained a semblance of control. 

The next thing you do is look at the audience.  If you look down, you lose credibility because people interpret that sort of body language as belonging to someone who is lying or afraid.  If you look up, they will know you do not know or are searching for the next thing to say.  You will know they know because there may be some restlessness in the audience, and the panic will come back.  Look for a friendly face in the audience.  It could be a friend, or even someone you greeted when you came early.  If that is not possible, look at anyone, but fixate on a point between their eyebrows.  That way, the audience thinks you are making eye contact.  Then, start your speech, or if you were in the middle of it before you panicked, start at the last point you said, at the beginning of the sentence or the point.  Say it slowly.  This allows the brain to catch up with the tongue.  From the audience’s point of view, however, it looks as it you are reiterating an important point in your speech. 

Every time you forget, pause.  Look at the audience meaningfully.  Breathe slowly again.  Own the uncomfortable pause between points of our speech, and the start from where you left of.  When you slow your speech down, you are less likely to panic, because you are able to remember the points in your head.  When you speak too fast, your tongue moves faster than your brain, and when you lose that train of thought, you panic.  That is where pause fillers or word fillers creep into your speech, and your contentions lose credibility with the audience.  A good speech does not need to be long.  It simply needs to be meaningful.  Long speeches tend to meander and belabor the points.  If it can be said in five words, do not use ten.  If it can be said in three words, do not use five.  Keep your sentences short, and do away with conjunctions as much as possible.  Long sentences, when interrupted, lead to loss of train of thought.  That is what causes you to panic. 

Finally, if you are prone to panic, then always prepare your speeches.  Do not write it down and memorise it.  If you lose your train of thought, you will find it difficult to continue from where you left off, and you will panic.  Instead, summarise three points, an built your argument around them.  Do not give twenty reasons for something.  Give three.  The audience will not remember the rest, and neither will you.  Have an opening statement and a closing statement, the call to action.  Have a habit of coming early to the venue, and introduce yourself to people.  Make small talk, and get to know them.  In that way, you are not addressing an audience of total strangers.  There are people among them you have connected with.  As you stand on the stage, look for those friendly faces, and you will be more at ease.  If you want to master public speaking, join a Toastmasters club, or get a coach.  Seminars and workshops by themselves are worthless.