Some of us may be tempted to take a beta blocker, a shot of booze, or a gummy to help with public speaking anxiety.  Before we do, please consider the audience and the right they have to a great talk.  The drug may dampen our own anxiety, but it may also dampen our performance.  There are certainly other ways to manage our anxiety that do not hurt our delivery.

I work from the premise that when a reaction is caused by a thought, it can be managed by an action.

I worked for several months with a brave soul who had taken a strong stand against the unethical practices of the company for which he had worked.  His talk preparation progressed beautifully until a few days before when he showed up to rehearse.  His words seemed labored and leaden; his speech was…Read on.

This is just ridiculous. Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin with this. Ludicrous. Is the point to dehumanize our audience so we feel superior? To humiliate them? To infantilize them? Make them less threatening? Why do we think of the audience as an adversary to begin with? And how indeed do we hope to force ourselves to see something that isn’t even there? Should we ignore the dressed audience? Look away or over their heads? Squint? Sheesh. What a waste of everyone’s time to focus energy on what isn’t there when we could be falling in love with our audience, including our audience, giving a gift to our audience, engaging, embracing, dancing, playing with our audience. If we are scared, as most of us are, of speaking in public, there are many, many wonderful skills and techniques we can use to help us enjoy our time in the limelight. The basics are…Read on.

I recently had to fill out a donation form offering a few sessions to a fundraiser. When it came to describing my offering, I realized I had never written up a description of what it’s like to work with me! Usually, I offer a 20 minute chat to see how I can help, make a first connection, and see if this feels like a good fit for both of us. For this non-profit gala, the “client” bids on sessions without having the benefit of hearing my voice, sharing their challenges, learning about how I work, making a personal connection. So this is what I wrote…Read on.

Most of us feel at least a few butterflies before we speak in public. Sometimes the butterflies are more like hammers in our chest. Some actors think they need a little anxiety to do their best and will “pump themselves up” before a performance. Some of us go straight into panic mode. One study suggests a strategy that reframes anxiety as excitement, as both have similar physiological manifestations. However we view or experience anxiety, as speakers, we want to make sure that we are in control, rather than being controlled by our anxiety. Simply doing the…Read on.