How I Overcame My Fear of Public Speaking
May 26, 2017
If you’re afraid of speaking in public, you’re not alone. In fact, Forbes contributor Nick Morgan says a whopping 10% of people enjoy public speaking. For the rest of us, talking in front of others induces hair-raising fear or butterflies or lost sleep or a general feeling that we’d rather be anywhere else.
For most of my life, I suffered from a genuine case of glossophobia, the medical term for a fear of public speaking. I knew most of the answers in class but didn’t dare raise my hand. I dreaded group presentations. I didn’t participate in youth group meetings. My fear extended to nonverbal activities, too. My hands shook on the piano keys during recitals in front of a room full of students and parents, even though I could play the pieces to perfection for the stern judges at music competitions. Early in my soccer career, I played so stiffly on the field that the ball sometimes bounced off my foot, right to a defender.
I learned to speak up in school and honed my first touch on the field, but I never quite conquered my fear of speaking in front of a crowd.
Then, something happened. In the summer of 2006, doctors diagnosed my 7-year-old sister, Taylor, with a fatal brain disorder called CLN1 disease (Batten disease).
Suddenly, I couldn’t stop talking. I was so angry and sad and desperate to save Taylor’s life, I’d tell her story to anyone who listened. Within months, I’d helped found a charity called Taylor’s Tale and started my first blog. On a cold winter night in early 2007, I stood in front of 160 people, and I told our story and bared my soul.
I’ve been an introvert my whole life. I took the Myers-Briggs personality test when I worked in the corporate world, and I was such a strong “I,” I almost fell off the scale. So becoming a mouthpiece for a public effort to tackle a problem as deeply personal as my sister’s disease didn’t really fit into my wheelhouse.
I never imagined I could change. But communication coach and bestselling author Carmine Gallo says even the people most terrified of public speaking can learn to overcome their fear using these three strategies:
1. Manage your fear.
A healthy dose of fear is good for everyone. Fear makes us more cognizant of our surroundings and social cues. It helps us make safer, more responsible decisions. It breeds respect. In fact, speakers who aren’t nervous at all often don’t care about the message they deliver or how it makes their audience feel.
2. Reframe your thoughts.
A healthy dose of fear is good for everyone. Fear makes us more cognizant of our surroundings and social cues. It helps us make safer, more responsible decisions. It breeds respect. In fact, speakers who aren’t nervous at all often don’t care about the message they deliver or how it makes their audience feel.
3. Do what you fear. A lot.
Practice makes (almost) perfect. If you’re not used to doing something, you’re more likely to get tripped up if you forget a word or hear a yawn or feel a flutter in your chest. Even the most gifted public speakers weren’t born that way.
Practice makes public speaking easier, but passion is even more important. I’ve spent most of the last 10 years telling parts of the same story, adding bits here and there to reflect our little organization’s ascension and my sister’s physical decline. I’ve spoken at large and small events, to groups of friends and complete strangers, on live radio and TV, from chilly hotel ballrooms in North Carolina to an emerald lawn overlooking Shipwreck Beach on Kauai.
I’m still a strong I on the Myers-Briggs scale, but as I once told a friend, Taylor helped me find my inner E. And this fall, I’ll do something I never imagined possible: I’ll deliver a talk on the TED stage.
In a lot of ways, I’m still the girl whose face turned beet red whenever a teacher called her name in class. But my sister taught me that it’s important to push your own limits. Now, I channel her strength, whether I’m pushing my body to run a fast race or writing one more paragraph long after midnight or speaking in front of 500 strangers. And when I step onto that stage this October to talk about my sister’s life and the impact of rare disease and strategies to fix it, I’ll take a piece of her with me.
TEDxCharlotte 2017 is Friday, October 13. Tickets go on sale in early June. I hope to see you there!
