From the category archives:

Nervousness

3 Reasons not to use NLP to overcome fear of public speaking

November 11, 2008

Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a controversial topic. I started my research for this post with a relatively open mind. I say relatively, because I do have some biases against NLP. Many NLP-trained people spout the nonsense about only 7% of your communication being based on the words you say. If you’ve been reading this [...]

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Review of top 10 methods to overcome fear of public speaking #2

November 8, 2008

This is Part 2 of a review of the top 10 methods for reducing the fear of public speaking. In Part 1 I reviewed affirmations and visualization. In this post I explore the use of hypnosis and relaxation training. 3. Hypnosis I have no personal experience of hypnosis, and as I began my research for [...]

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Review of the top 10 methods to overcome fear of public speaking #1

November 4, 2008

There’s a ton of internet advice on how to overcome the fear of public speaking. Much of the advice is of the “what worked for me” kind. Or the advice is the first stage of trying to sell you a a hypnosis CD. So how do you decide what advice to follow? In this post [...]

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Mice show that you can overcome fear of public speaking

October 15, 2008

If you get nervous about speaking in public, the recently published results from a scientific experiment on mice, should give you some hope. The experiment showed that mice that had been trained to feel calm, coped better with stressful situations. The mice were trained to associate a specific sound with safety. They were then subjected [...]

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15 baby steps to overcoming the fear of public speaking

September 11, 2008

In the three previous posts (Overcome your fear, No perfect presentation, Seven thinking sins) I have talked about the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) approach to overcoming the fear of public speaking. I’ve focused on the cognitive principles on the basis that if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably doing presentations (the behavioral part of CBT). [...]

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The Seven Thinking Sins of Public Speaking

September 9, 2008

In the previous post in this series There’s no such thing as a perfect presentation, I looked at how to analyse your thinking and change “musts” or demands” into “goals” and so reduce the pressure you put on yourself. Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of people to help them reduce their nervousness. So [...]

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There’s no such thing as the perfect presentation

September 4, 2008

Do you demand presentation perfection? It might be stopping you from performing at your best. This graph shows that having a high expectation for your performance will lead to improved performance – up to a point. But when you continue to demand more of yourself, beyond the peak of the curve – your nerves get [...]

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Overcome your fear of public speaking the proven way

September 2, 2008

Advice on overcoming the fear of public speaking is easy to come by. You may have been told, “Just go out there and do it, take every opportunity you can to speak”. But you still get nervous. Here’s a story from someone who has suffered through just going out and doing it: At one point [...]