For most people, it’s perfectly normal to feel nerves when speaking in public. The only problem is, being nervous can have a big impact on your ability to deliver a great presentation.
I speak a lot on stage, as an MC, Speaker and Comedian, and nowadays I very rarely get nervous. Over the last 15 years, I’ve mastered a few ninja tricks along the way to help with my nerves, so I was quite surprised when I got really nervous before my recent stand-up show.
What I found out when doing my first hour-long solo comedy show in 4 years, was that there are actually 3 different kinds of nerves you get when speaking in public and trying to be funny. Each type of nerves needs a different solution and this video explains it further.
3 Different Types of Nerves when Speaking in Public and Being Funny on Stage:
1. Physical Changes in Your Body
When you get stressed and nervous at the thought of public speaking your body fills with Adrenaline. Your body goes into fight or flight mode and it pumps all the blood in your body to your muscles in your arms and legs so you can run or fight.
After the initial burst of adrenaline, if your body is still under stress, a whole host of other hormones including cortisol kick in to respond to the stress. (Source: University of Maryland Medical Centre). To help you deal with the stress and physically get you “the hell out of there”, your brain function gets suppressed, affecting your memory, concentration and rational thought. Yeah! Really helpful when you are trying to remember what you wanted to say.
Solution: To counteract the fight or flight response that reduces your ability to think and concentrate – you need to calm down! Take deep long breaths, focus on returning the blood to your brain so you can remember what to say.
2. Remembering a Completely New Speech or Material
If you have to remember something completely new, it’s possible that will also make you nervous. The only way to counteract this type of nerves is to practice & prepare, practice & prepare, practice & prepare, over and over and over again until you remember it all and get really comfortable with it. Practice in front of a mirror, have great notes, record your presentation into a phone and listen to it over and over again till you know it as well as your favourite song. And if that doesn’t help, or you don’t have much time, make sure you have great notes to refer to while you are presenting. People don’t care about seeing your notes – what they care about is if you do a good job or not!
Solution: Practice and prepare, learn your material or speech till it sticks in your head and have good notes to refer to when presenting.
3. Unknown Audience Response
The other thing that got me really nervous before the show was I had no idea if the audience would respond in a positive way. As a comedian, you need to get laughs – and I wasn’t 100% sure that my humour was going to hit the spot.
Solution: Sorry to say, there is only 1 way to get over these nerves and that’s to perform in front of a live audience! Put on a brave face and just go and do it! You can reduce the risk somewhat by using a small friendly test audience, or a small trial performance, but it’s still gotta be in front of a crowd. And once you’ve tested it, tweaked it and refined it, those nerves will easily fall away.
So there you have it! The 3 different types of nerves you may encounter when doing a presentation or public speaking and how to deal with each one. Good luck for your next presentation!
Have fun!
Cheers Kate
