What to do when your brain freezes during a live presentation? 4 Steps

It happens, so let's normalize it to start with, but what next?

When you lose your train of thought, suddenly you feel consumed by fear it is one of the scariest & loneliest places to find yourself.

It’s a fear everyone holds, and so much, so that it prevents many people from speaking their thoughts and ideas publicly and can be career limiting for many.

But if it happens to you, then what?

Well ‘fight or flight’ - you choose!

If you choose to stay and fight, what do you need to do?

Stop

Whether you are at the start, middle of end of your message - just stop. Perhaps take a drink of water.

Breathe and ground yourself

Take a moment and take a deep breath and I mean take a full deep breath with the focus purely internally on your breath. slow everything down.

Accept

That you have lost your focus and your train of thought, firstly to yourself and then if you want, to your audience. Everyone has the “brain freeze”, and by admitting you’ll appear more human to your audience.

There’s nothing wrong with showing some honesty and vulnerability, simply saying, “I’ve just lost my concentration there, where was I?” (or something similar)

and then:

Rewind and repeat

what you have just said - start at the beginning of the point/slide you were making once more. Tell the audience you are doing this and off you go again - remembering to keep breathing.

and you are back on track!

If you’re curious to know more about the work I do globally, please drop a line for a chat it would be great to speak or check out the Confident Speak website.