The Confidence Checklist Nobody Gives You
Normal tips don't work for many people who are anxious about public speaking.
Public speaking fear is a tangled mess made up of lots of pressures, feelings and expectations, created by a Stone Age brain.
We misunderstand confidence.
Anxiety is part of being human.
You probably won't like this list.
We need to rethink public speaking.
So you may have noticed that this isn't a list of six tips for becoming a better public speaker. It's an attempt to untangle what is actually going on when you are anxious about public speaking, and rethink what confidence might mean. It's kind of an anti-checklist checklist. How meta!
The problem isn't that people who are anxious about public speaking have too much fear. It's that they have too much going on around the fear. So tips don't get through that fear and sometimes make the fear worse.
eg Practice, practice, practice, which is the most common tip, unless you change how you see public speaking, it really means practising being scared more.
I think if you are an anxious public speaker, public speaking is a bit like your old tech drawer, full of old leads, phones, iPad chargers, string, rubber bands, some instruction booklet for a telly you had 10 years ago. It’s hard to sort out the tangle unless you get the drawer out and make it simpler. The big tangle can be understood if we explore confidence and anxiety, so combining points two and three.
Confident people feel fear. It's a myth that they don't.
But what confident people do is have a bigger comfort zone by practice. When they step out of their comfort zone, they don't fight the fear. They allow the fear to be there, but it doesn't stop them doing what matters. They allow themselves to feel discomfort.
Imagine fear as a small ball of paper.
You might have some fear when they send your food back or speak up at a bigger meeting than normal. That’s the small bit of paper representing the fear.
But then you might have the thoughts…
I don't want to feel these feelings.
The paper – the layers of struggle – get added with each thought. So here another piece of paper gets added.
The next thought…
I'm broken in some way if I have these feelings.
(more paper)
They will judge me if they see me having these feelings.
(4 layers now)
If they judge me, they will think less of me.
(5 layers)
If they think less of me I might not get invited back.
(6 layers)
And then I run a catastrophe in my head.
(7 layers)
By now, I should have sorted this out.
(8 layers)
Other people don't have this feeling like I do. I have my own special version of anxiety.
(9 layers)
The inner critic saying I’m crap, shit and terrible.
(10 layers)
Maybe I should just get a job in a forest where it's quiet and I can hide. And not talk to anyone.
(11 layers)
I’ll always be like this.
(12 layers)
There is no point in trying to change. I'm always going to be like this.
(13 layers)
I told you I'm not good enough!
(14 layers)
By now, we've snowballed it into the size of a watermelon (mixing metaphors). You start off with a small ball of fear but, when you don't want it, annoyingly, it gets bigger. We want to outthink our feelings but it makes it worse. And when we fight ourselves, it's a battle we can't win. And if you try to throw that snowball away, you can't. It's stuck. In fact, it's there to make the next time worse.
Can you see why we need to rethink confidence?
And that’s why my real checklist starts with confidence.
A. Understand the dance between anxiety, confidence and your life
We are using a brain from the Stone Age to do 21st-century work. It’s really good at social threat and overthinking and being self-focused. The last upgrade to our brain was approximately 100,000 years ago. Most people who come on my course have impostor syndrome. We are going around with feelings of not being good enough. That’s normal and we are wonky Stone Age people.
The paper ball shows us that trying to control anxiety backfires massively. If you don’t want it, you have got it. So anxiety isn’t going away any time soon. So confidence isn’t the absence of fear. Anxiety is normal, you are not broken, it’s meant to be uncomfortable, but please don’t take it as a signal to stop.
It’s about doing what matters to you despite the uncomfortable feelings. And if you practise actions of confidence then your confidence grows.
I think the psychologist Ellen Hendriksen puts it really well with her work with a client.
“I want to feel less anxious so I can live my life," he said. "Absolutely," I said. "We'll do that, but how about in a different order? You'll feel less anxious by living your life."
How to be yourself Ellen Hendriksen
So on my course I talk about developing your own confidence practice. That can be a tiny bit of practice, talking to new people, walking new walks, wearing brighter clothes, speaking up at meetings etc.
B. Re-think audiences
Audiences seem to be full of judgement. Unless you are part of the audience. When you are in the audience you sometimes think of the contents of your fridge or planning your holidays. Not thinking daggers about the speaker.
Speakers misread audiences because they don’t understand the audience have become passive listeners. The audience are not responsible for the speaker unlike conversations. Audiences look bored because they are not giving the active listening clues. Not because they hate you or are judging you. Learn to love blank faces, it’s really not about you.
C. See it as a chat not performance
Small tip but worth trying. Call it a chat in your head rather than a presentation. What would you rather do next week – do a presentation about your work or chat about your work? Calling it a chat is language for yourself, to make public speaking smaller in your head.
D. Practise being the centre of attention
I’ve had over 8,500 people on my course. Probably 95% hate being the centre of attention.
And yet when other people are the centre of attention, they just let that happen. They are not full of judgement and NOT staring at the speaker. They might be looking but they are not gunning for you. Being the centre of attention must have been tricky in our evolutionary past so it often creates an adrenaline rush. But treat that as normal and start doing small bits of centre of attention work.
E. Make it less about you – purpose, values, helping
Anxiety hijacks our attention and makes you hyper self-focused. It’s all about ME. If you shift your focus to helping your audience or speaking up on behalf of your team you make it less about you. The story I use on the course is the woman who worked with sexually trafficked women in S.E. Asia. “When I go for job interviews, I kind of collapse but when I speak up on behalf of the women I’m like a lion.” It’s not about her, it’s about something bigger than her. When it’s less about you and more about purpose, there is probably less anxiety but no actual guarantee. When I stopped six men for singing about child abuse on a train, my heart was racing, but the purpose outweighed the fear massively.
F. Be kinder to yourself
It’s what they all say and you might be bored of this tip. But let me give you a different take on it. The tough inner voice has been present on every course I’ve ever run. Most people are going around with a critical voice.
My understanding of that voice is that it’s an evolutionary feature. The idea is that the inner critic keeps us safe by keeping us small in social groups. It’s not bothered about your happiness or your career path, it’s worried about social risk. So many of us have impostor syndrome and we didn’t all have the same parents. I never saw you at breakfast in my house.
The theory is that it kept us safe in Stone Age groups by curtailing behaviour that might get us expelled from the group. Expulsion could have meant starvation or worse.
It’s pretty damn useful, except for our happiness and public speaking and social occasions and reversing the car when people are looking.
So your inner critic is probably a mix of Stone Age software and remembering your embarrassments from your teenage years, all in a crazy mix. It’s not who you want running the committee of you, with your inner critic chairing the meeting.
What if we saw that voice as just an advisor and you brought other voices to the table?
Imagine if your 10-year-older self rang you up today. Would he or she or they be nasty or critical, or would they be encouraging?
I’ve asked over 100 people this question on my courses and all of them apart from one person had a kinder, more encouraging voice, and a lot of those are perfectionists.
The thing is that the studies show that being kinder to ourselves can lead to better outcomes.
So realise that you are being run by Stone Age software. Step back and let your wiser self guide you, even if that’s your imaginary 10-year-older self.
Final thoughts
One of the truest things anyone has ever said to me on my course was from an 85-year-old farmer on the second day. He said, “Do you know what John, I’m like a handbrake on my own life.”
A client wrote to me this morning. She said, “After the course I did things I wouldn't previously have done. Some were big. Some were small. But to me, they were all big wins.”
You don't need to become fearless. You need to stop treating fear as a reason to make your life small. And that's how being a better public speaker gives you a more vital life.