Stage Fright
March 28th 2007 02:23
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said, "At a funeral, most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy." I think his comment is quite funny and true. I believe many performers and even top speakers in this world get stage fright; but they have their ways of covering it.
I remembered my first power point presentation that I had to deliver when I was in graduate school. People usually gave you a lists of symptoms due to stage fright such as: sweaty hands, nausea, trembling lips, shaky knees, dry mouth, just staring blank, etc… ; and trust me, I had all that. Not only that I had all the above conditions, but on top of that, I also performed Michael Jackson's "Moon walk." I stood right in front of my audiences at the middle of the room with the pointer in my hand and I did not remember where on the screen to point at. My audiences felt so bad for me that they did not even ask questions. I left people with all the questions.
After my first speech, I came back to my seat, buried my head with my textbook, and ran out of the room, straight to the rest room and threw up. That was how bad and humiliated that I felt at that time. However, it was not over yet because I had to repeat the same task every week until my graduation. It was so serious that I had called-in sick the week after.
People around taught me how to avoid getting the fear and the anxiety attack from public speaking. For instance, take a Valium, do breathing exercise, don't look at the audiences' face but the top of their heads, and even try to imagine your audiences are naked or with their underwear (old trick). However, you still have to be well prepared. Unfortunately, none of the above techniques worked out for me.
After one week, unless I decided to drop out of the program or avoided public speaking for the rest of my life, I realized that I had to overcome my problem. For the second presentation, I have tried something new that I invented myself. I came to class drunk. Of course, the alcohol would relax me a little bit but my professor and my classmates could smell my breath all over the room. I zoomed through the presentation without hesitation and without knowing what I was talking about. My problem was so obvious that my professor had to see me after class. That was a wake-up call for me.
From the beginning, I thought if I was well prepared with an excellent topic and an outstanding contents for the presentation, and concentrated on how good I looked then all my problems could be solved. But little that I know, my inflated sense of self-importance was the main reason that stopping me from being a good public speaker. Until I talked to one person, this person totally deserved all the credits of how the person I became today – a better speaker. He made me realized that the reason why I was so nervous and afraid of standing in front of the audience. The cause of my condition was my self-consciousness. I worried the fact that I was being watched – the feeling of "everyone was looking" at me. The situation was like placing myself in front of the mirror. All I could see was my imperfection and not my confidence on the subject. Nothing else was really matter at that moment; the only thing that had crossed my mind was how people thought of me.
My final thesis speech eventually went through like magic. I came in class dressing comfortably but decent. I have not planned to look stunning for overwhelming my audience. I stopped worrying about how I had looked like and I refused thinking about other people viewed me in a negative way. I realized my old belief was imbecile. The lesson that I have learned from this experience was nobody has ever died of stage fright and nobody would pay that much attention to my look. All the people in my program just wanted the class to be over with so they could go out to celebrate.
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