It’s the day of your speech. You‚’ve worked hard on getting it just right. But when it comes time to deliver, you‚’re so nervous that you can barely breathe. Your hands are sweating. Your heart is pounding. You can‚’t even remember what you wanted to say. You feel as if you‚’re fighting your own body all the way through – if you actually get through!

Sound familiar to any of you? Well, it certainly sounds familiar to me, because some years back that WAS me. I was caught for years in the trap of stage-fright mismanagement. Not knowing how to deal with stage-fright, I actually succeeded in making the symptoms even worse!

In the questions I receive from speakers, no other issue comes up as regularly as the issue of stage-fright. You see, mismanagement of stage-fright can cripple public performance, and often does. But I have good news for you. My study of stage-fright over the past decade has taught me that it does not need to be the destructive force it is for many people. Over the past seven years, I have helped hundreds of people to overcome stage-fright symptoms, and I can help you to do the same. In the next three updates of this blog, I‚’ll be sharing three important strategies with you for managing and reducing stage-fright. Even better, you can start preparing for strategy number one right now.

Since most speakers stand to make their presentations, please check yourself out the next time you stand. What muscles actually need to work when you stand? What muscles are YOU turning on in order to stand? The reason I ask is that many speakers unknowingly increase their stage-fright symptoms by using large amounts of unnecessary muscular activity just to stand. For instance, if you are clamping down on some of your breathing muscles just to stand (e.g. intercostals, abdominals), this will add to your discomfort and amplify stage-fright symptoms. So take a look at how you stand, and I will be back to look at this with you in more detail in the next instalment.