Use Your Brain to Calm Your Speaking Nerves

You are about to go onstage. The words of your speech are echoing in your mind. You know each sentence; you even know the planned pauses. The world slows down as you approach the stage. You can feel your heartbeat pumping in your chest, and your hands are dripping with sweat. You take a few deep breaths. This is it!

Next thing you know, you are onstage, the audience is applauding, and your words come pouring out, until ... you go blank.

I’m a high-performance and leadership coach, speaker, and podcaster, and I have coached and interviewed hundreds of high performers. One of the greatest fears of most speakers is forgetting their words. Let’s explore why this mind-blanking phenomenon happens, and the best neuroscientific tricks you can use to cope with it or prevent it from occurring.

1 Hijack Your Brain’s Hijack: The Amygdala Alert

To best understand your mind’s reaction to stress, it helps to study the place where it all begins: in the brain.

The amygdala is the part of your brain that identifies if your current situation is a threat or not. If the amygdala sends the signal to your body that you are safe, you will act in a calm, relaxed manner. However, if it signals that the situation feels threatening, you may experience an “amygdala hijack,” which is when your body goes into a fight-or-flight (or in many cases, freeze) response.

Going blank onstage is a typical freeze response. Your amygdala has identified that you are in a situation that feels dangerous and has hijacked your body and brain. In such moments, you have a feeling of total panic and anxiety. You grasp for your words but can’t find them.

Though this is every speaker’s worst nightmare, it is actually good to experience it once or twice, because you will realize that you can get through it. Eventually your pre-frontal cortex (the most evolved brain region) kicks in, and you remember your words again, or you improvise and find a way to move forward, even if it’s not how you planned.

That’s why being part of a group such as Toastmasters and practicing regularly can provide support—if you face this freezing while you rehearse, it’s easier to regain control if the same thing happens when you are onstage.

What to do

• In the case of an amygdala hijack, one option is to pause, focus your gaze on the audience, and repeat your last few sentences, prefaced by “As I was saying, …” This calms your amygdala and gives you space to remember what you wanted to say.
• You can also shift your perspective. Remember, this is not truly a threatening situation. You are not alone in having this reaction. Showing compassion to yourself can go a long way toward calming your mind.
• My favorite trick is to remember that the audience doesn’t instantly realize you’ve forgotten your words, so you can just say, “Let’s all take a moment now and focus on our breathing.” You can just tie it into whatever you were saying before.

As you do this, a few magical things happen:

• You switch the focus from yourself to the audience.
• You calm down your own breathing.
• You give yourself time and space to remember what you were about to say.

This may seem like a counter-intuitive approach in the middle of a talk, but it works. People love to take a few deep breaths. You can justify it by saying something like, “I can sense the energy is shifting right now,” or “This may seem complex, so let’s re-center before we continue.”

All you need to do is remember this: Go blank—let’s breathe. If you do, you will have an emergency lane on the highway. And it works!

2 Build Good Habits: The Basal Ganglia Routine

Although it’s great to have some tricks up your sleeve for when you freeze, I think we can agree that it’s even better if you can prevent going blank in the first place.

One way to stave off freezing onstage is to develop a pre-speaking routine. In this case, the part of our brain we want to tap into is the basal ganglia—it supports you in building and breaking habits, something entirely possible since our brain cells have neuroplasticity and can form new habits.

Three fundamental habits:

• Before Your Talk: Develop a few power moves before entering the stage. These can include taking deep breaths, doing squats or push-ups (which releases cortisol, helping regulate your stress response), saying a few core affirmations, smiling, or anything that makes you feel strong and capable.
• During Your Talk: Tap into what you learned while practicing. Include some pauses and breaks in your speaking to allow the audience time to process what you are saying and to give yourself a moment to consider your next step. The more you practice, the more at ease you will feel when speaking to a group.
• After Your Talk: Create a routine to celebrate your presentation. This will help you unwind and calm your nerves. When you train yourself to feel good after a talk, you’ll get a boost that will make you want to speak in public again.

By having before/during/after routines, you help your basal ganglia create lasting speaking habits. This allows you to speak easily and smoothly. It also helps prevent an amygdala hijack, as your brain will feel this is a comfortable position and not a threat.

3 Visualize Your Success: The Anterior Cingulate Cortex Practice

Your anterior cingulate cortex is the area of the brain that loves novelty. It notices what’s new and ignores what is familiar. Multi-tasking actually shrinks the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas meditation strengthens it.

What separates an amateur speaker from a professional speaker is their ability to deal with uncertainty and sudden changes. Here’s a great exercise to do before any speaking event:

• Visualize what could go wrong AND visualize yourself dealing with it well. Anticipate the microphone not working, the schedule being changed, your slides not coming up, or your mind going blank. The key here is not to freak out and think: Oh no, what if that happens?! Rather, pause, feel calm, and visualize these problems AND see yourself coping. Imagine yourself making a joke about the microphone or slides not working, being able to adapt to speak at a different moment, or not being rattled by a loud noise outside.

Visualizing trains your brain to be prepared for any changes to your plan while remaining calm and focused. Your brain can’t necessarily tell the difference between reality and imaginary, so create a positive scenario for yourself. (Think about a time you were really angry with someone, then imagine yourself having a heated confrontation with them–your heart rate probably went up and you may have even been shaking.) By flipping the script and imagining yourself speaking confidently in front of an audience, your brain is tricked into remaining calm. Thus, when something does happen, your brain has already practiced overcoming the challenge.

4 Avoid Multi-Tasking: The Pre-Frontal Cortex Focus

Your pre-frontal cortex is the CEO of your brain. It’s the part that is responsible for decision-making, rational thinking, and ... coherent speaking. Chances are if we had a scan of your brain at the moment you are onstage delivering your talk, your pre-frontal cortex activity would be high.

When you experience an amygdala hijack (that fear-flight-freeze response), your pre-frontal cortex gets your brain back onboard. It loves deep, focused attention. And the more you train it, the quicker it pops back to action (and with it, your words!).

To train this area of your brain, practice the following:

• Practice focusing on one activity at a time and avoiding multi-tasking to strengthen your pre-frontal cortex. Each time you resist the urge to multi-task, you increase your willpower, discipline, and focus.
• Incorporate some deep breathing techniques, such as meditation. Meditation improves your ability to focus. When you meditate, you focus on your breathing, and each time your mind gets distracted, you bring your attention back to your breathing. This improves your focus and strengthens your pre-frontal cortex.

W. Timothy Gallwey, author of The Inner Game of Tennis, wrote that “peak performance is the function of a still mind.” The more still your mind is before you deliver a presentation, the less likely you are to feel anxious and experience an amygdala hijack, and the more likely you are to be in the flow and give an amazing talk.

5 Keep Your Entire Brain Healthy

Lastly, by keeping your brain healthy, you are ensuring you feel great and give a fantastic talk. By investing in its health, you are providing your brain with the fuel it needs to feel amazing the day of your talk.

Here are six fundamental ways to doing that.

• Socialize and play. In studies on life spans, the number one longevity factor is socializing. Your brain needs to be social as much as it needs food and water.

And play is equally beneficial for a high-functioning brain. I heard about a World Champion of Public Speaking who spent the night before the competition playing games with friends, and then won the next day!

• Focus your attention. Activities such as learning, reading, and focused work all help the brain to be healthy and highly functional. Incorporating some type of meditation practice and avoiding multitasking helps your brain become stronger.
• Watch what you eat. The brain cells (neurons) fire together thanks to different chemicals such as calcium, iron, selenium, etc. Guess where these chemicals come from? Food. For example, if you eat blueberries, which are filled with antioxidants, your brain will think more clearly and effectively. On the other hand, if you eat doughnuts filled with sugar, your brain becomes inflamed, and your cognitive function decreases. Pay attention to what you eat before your speech.
• Exercise. Movement and physical activity make the brain flexible and give you energy. The endorphins rush through your body, boosting your mood. That energy translates onstage and people can actually feel it. Before each talk, try to at least fit in a walk.
• Sleep. That’s when your brain repairs itself—an absolute must. Don’t reduce your sleep to prepare more; it isn’t worth it. In his book Why We Sleep, neuroscientist Matthew Walker explains that sleep is a fundamental aspect for everything in our body: from increasing our immune system to heightening brain functioning.
• Take time out. Relaxation, reflection, and taking time out help your brain process everything. We didn’t evolve to be “on” all the time; on the contrary, we need to balance full on and full off. In other words, work hard, play hard.

Finally, here you are. You are about to go onstage. The words of your speech are echoing in your mind. There is a smile on your face. You feel still, calm, confident. As you walk on the stage, the audience cheers, and your words flow out of you. You merge with the audience, you feel amazing, and you know: You’ve got this!

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