Don’t Be Nervous, It’s Not About You
By Joe Patti | on December 4, 2013
I do a lot of public speaking and am generally pretty comfortable doing it. The place I get most nervous is up on stage. In a classroom or hall full of 50-100 people, no problem. On stage, in a theatre, and my nervous energy starts to rev up.
It doesn’t approach anywhere near paralysis, but it is there.
At the last theatre I worked at, I got pretty accustomed to the space and the general energy of the people. But now that I am standing up in a new space, I gotta start all over again.
I took a little guidance from a post Seth Godin made about public speaking on Monday to prepare for my appearance before the performance we had Tuesday night.
In his post, “Speaking in public: two errors that lead to fear,” he says:
1. You believe that you are being actively judged
2. You believe that the subject of the talk is you
When you stand up to give a speech, there’s a temptation to believe that the audience is actually interested in you.
This just isn’t true. (Or if it is, it doesn’t benefit you to think that it is).
You are not being judged, the value of what you are bringing to the audience is being judged. The topic of the talk isn’t you, the topic of the talk is the audience, and specifically, how they can use your experience and knowledge to achieve their objectives.