How to Control My Nervousness During Presentations?
Aiman Azlan
Licensed Counselor | Building a healthy space where marriage can grow and heal. Posts are about emotional intelligence and relationship harmony.
This is not the first time I receive such a question. Being a public speaker since 2011, I have experienced such a situation myself, many times! Once upon the time I was the person who gets nervous while presentations.
That’s good news for you, because you can understand that no one on earth starts an expert. Everyone starts as a noob first. But that is a phase that will pass, if you are committed to the practice-feedback routine.
This is how it looks: practice, feedback, practice, feedback, practice, feedback, practice, feedback....on and on.
You have to try, try, try, try and try again. With each trial, you will use whatever you previously learned to do better. Then, you learn a new lesson and use that lesson for the next trial.
Learn from mistakes. Don’t be overwhelmed by mistakes. When you finished your presentation, reflect upon it. But do productive reflection, not destructive reflection.
A productive reflection is when you focus on what you can learn and apply for the next trial to become better. A destructive reflection is when you focus on your mistakes and keep replaying those mistakes over and over again.
In essence, you are knocked down and you keep punching yourself while you’re down. Don’t do that. Get back up. The process is long. So you have to be patient with yourself and you have to persevere through the mistakes that you will make along the way.
It’s part of the process of learning and growing.
I made mistakes along my career. But I didn’t stop my journey because of it. I learned from them and keep on going. Just because you screwed up one or two or three or four maybe ten public speeches, it doesn’t mean you have to stop.
You have to learn and grow. Because if you stop, then you lost that opportunity to learn and grow. That’s how you can eventually overcome that nervousness. It’s a phase that’s everybody is going through.
There are no short cuts. Appreciate the process, be patient, and in 10 years, you’ll be great.
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AIMAN AZLAN, #YouthMentor, aimanazlan.com