My tips for overcoming a fear of public speaking

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Remind yourself how awful most business leaders are: the bar is low, says Lucy Kellaway

Lucy以前很怕当众演讲，有一天突然发现自己这么很可悲，于是开始作出改变。她给出5个建议，不要用药助眠如果是晚上演讲之前可喝一两口小酒，用更大的恐惧来对比演讲的恐惧，提醒自己那些商业人士做的演讲有多糟，早点到场，在没耐心的青少年跟前排练。

短语句子

dispense with v. 没有……也行

go to great lengths v 尽最大努力

zonk out v 很快入睡

in extremis prep 在紧急情况下

take the edge off v 缓解，起缓冲作用

be compounded by 由于……而加剧

参考文本

Until a couple of years ago, the thing that frightens me more than anything else, even more than my childhood terror of bats making a nest in my hair, was standing up before a group of benigh people and opening my mouth. My fear of public speaking was as irrational as it was extreme, so much so that I spent the first two decades of my working life going to great lengths to ensure I never had to do that. Then around my 40th birthday, I decided this was not only career limiting, but also pathetic, and so started to force myself to accept invitations.

The night before my first big speech I was so nervous I failed to sleep at all, and in the morning put on bright pink shoes in the fond hope that the jauntiness of my feet would trick the audience into thinking their owner felt the same way. 15 years on, I have dispensed with the pink shoes and speak with almost no fear. My body obligingly generates just about enough adrenalin so that I focus on what I meant to be doing. But that's about it.

My history and my sympathy for the millions similarly afflicted means I get across everytime I see dud advice. The Harvard Business Review recently pubilished a piece on the subject in which it suggested the trick is to leverage our physical bodies to be more present. I have no idea what leveraging your body involves, but it doesn't sound comfortable. In any case, being present before a speech is a bad idea. What you want to do is to absent yourself as much as possible in the hope of calming down a bit.

Even more laughable is the tip that you get a good night's sleep beforehand. Quite how one is supposed to do this when the whole point about nerves is that they are incompatable with sleep is not made clear. The more interesting question is which is worse, to zonk yourself with sleeping pills and be groggy in the morning, or to be sleepless and jangly with exhaustion?

Over the years, I found an answer to this question, and it develops to 5 steps of approach to mastering the panic of presentations.
First, on the question of substances, I found the problem of sleeping pills is that they not only remove nerves, but also remove all feelings altogether. Being shattered beats being a zombie.

Beta blockers, in extremis, works better for calming nerves. So does a small amount of alcohol. For a morning speech, a nip from a hip flask may not be quite a thing, but for evening speeches one or two glasses of wine take the edge off.

The next tip is to offset the fear of speaking with a larger, more rational one. Once when cycling to the place where I was due to speak, I narrowly avoided being squashed by a cement mixer. They remind that I felt no fear at the very real risk of death, and every fear at risk of giving a slightly lame talk shamed me at being less afraid.

My third tip is to remind yourself how godawful most business people are at speaking. The usual advice, ensure your speech going before other people's only works if the others are unusually good. Otherwise, it's better to go later and calm yourself beforehand by watching their substandard performances and noting the audience's boredom. The bar is low, you can easily clear it.

The fourth piece of advice ought not to need saying, always arrive unfeasibly early. Reduce to zero the risk that speech nerves are compounded by lateness ones.

Finally, practice in front of the world's most unforgiving audience, a yawning teenager who never laughs at any of the jokes and keeps asking how much more of this is there. Bad rehearsal, good performance.

In the long term, there're two things that work better than these five tips put together. The first is the experience. The more talks you give, the less nervous you get. Partly because you improve, but mainly because you work out that the world doesn't end if the things do not go quite to plan.

Better still is getting old. One of the beauties of being over 50 is that you go postfear, at least at work. I'm still frightened by what's happening in the world. I'm still frightened for my children. But I'm no longer frightened by myself.

As for standing up in front of a friendly audience and talking on something I know about, I can hardly remember why once it seems so scary.