by Kate Marlow


When clients come to work with me the first thing I ask them is “What do you want?” From Actors to Rock Stars, TV presenters, Supermodels, Executives, they all say...To be more confident. But what does it mean? Usually if I know what I want then I also know how to go and get it. I want a new car, a holiday, new shoes, food, a night out, all these things that we want we more or less know how to get them. Physical things are tangible - we can see them and touch and feel them, get hold of them, it’s easy.


But our thoughts and feelings are less tangible, or are they? Is it possible to succeed and get what you want in social interactions, public speaking or performance as easily as it is to get what you want in the material world?


Imagine you have to speak and make a presentation two weeks from now? What’s your first thought or sensation? Scared?


Now imagine that you think about how frightening it’s going to be 30 times a day for the next two weeks, by the morning of the big day you will have thought yourself into a frenzy of terror and panic. Well done - you did a great job of getting what you wished for.


What you have to do is purposely create the presentation in your mind the way you want it to be, as simple as 10 minutes a day imagining yourself being relaxed, calm, confident. Most of us leave it to chance and put off thinking about it all together.


The number one fear of most adults is speaking in public. Yet the ability to communicate to groups of people is a skill that can make a critical difference in your career and your ability to share information, ideas, experience, and enthusiasm with others.


16 - WORK


Studies have revealed that the top predictor of professional success and upward mobility is how much you enjoy public speaking and how effective you are at it.


Many dislike it, some dread it. Speaking and performing in public: You take the stage and your hands sweat, your voice weakens and cracks, and your mind goes blank. In some cases, your fear of public speaking has dire effects on the audience too - you bore them to death.


Have your instincts to flee ever kicked in when you’ve had to address a large group of people?


It’s completely natural for nerves to kick in because natural survival instincts tell us it’s dangerous to stand alone in front of a large crowd of other people, fight, flight or freeze.


If you found yourself out alone in a strange place and confronted by a large group of strangers you’d need those survival instincts to kick in to get out of there alive.


So public speaking is unnatural, your brain says get out of there quick, your body is experiencing stress your heart is racing, your breathing is out of control and your mind has gone blank.


So how can you possibly learn to enjoy it?


Simple performance techniques everyone can learn, skills to slow down your thinking, and enable you to do what you want to do and diminish even disregard your nerves.


Great presentation is an art form, communication is king whether it’s performing on stage, being interviewed on TV, making a presentation, speaking in the boardroom, at an interview or being the best man at a wedding.


I love performing, always have, but I too was once wracked with nerves and fear. I knew what I wanted but didn’t know how to get it.


I knew what I didn’t want; nerves, shaking voice, sick feeling in my stomach, shaking knees, clamming up. But once the nerves kicked in they took over me. I learnt to put on a front, to fake it, to pretend to be more confident than I was really feeling.


It was exhausting and not just limited to work I had the same stress in social situations. I just learnt to live with it.


The problem was the more I did it the worse I felt.


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