“What do I do with my hands when I speak?”
November 7, 2009
I was having an important conversation with my daughter this week when I became very aware that I was not connecting at all with her. We were standing by a car and I couldn’t find a relaxed, comfortable position. So instead of really listening to what she was saying, I was focused on where I should put my arms and how I should stand to be comfortable. In doing so, I felt separate from her and removed from the conversation.
So often when I’m coaching people to be more comfortable when they speaking, they ask me, “what should I do with my hands?”. Interesting that this is such a universal concern! My response is that we can’t choreograph our movements ahead of time and that the most natural neutral stance is with our arms down by our side allowing natural gestures to arise in the moment, while also eliminating distracting, unconscious, repetitive movements.
But focusing on our arms and hands will increase our self-consciousness which, in turn, leads to feeling less confident. It’s really superfluous and not central to what we want to accomplish. Instead, we need to bring our attention back to our core, our center – to be conscious of self as opposed to self-conscious – and to speak from there.
So instead of thinking about what do to with your hands, try these three levels of awareness:
- Feel your feet solidly on the ground. Find your roots.
- From that grounded place bring your awareness to your belly, your core, to center yourself.
- Then become aware of your back body, your spine, as you bring your attention to your audience. This will open you up to an expanded sense of the space around you,your place in it, and the people in your audience.
As you speak, your arms and hands then become like branches in a tree. They are still when there’s no breeze and move gently when the currents of the air (or the subject matter) move them.
Fear of the first few minutes in public speaking
September 29, 2009
I swim for exercise. I swim in pools that are kept relatively cool so that lap swimmers don’t overheat when they work up a “sweat”.
This means that it’s always hard to get into the pool at the beginning of my swim. Once I’ve been in the water for even one lap, the chill wears off and the temperature feels fine, but the anticipation of diving into cold water always makes it hard.
I’ve found that I’m much better off just not thinking about the water temperature ahead of time. This is especially true as I’m getting ready to leave home on a cold and snowy winter morning because I’ll never get to the pool if I think at all about the cold water awaiting me.
Transitions are always hard. Getting into the cold water is one example. Moving from one project to the next is another. Arriving at a party is another. And, starting a presentation is classic!
Probably the most common statement I get from my public speaking clients is “If I can just get over the first few minutes I’m fine.” Most often, it’s the accumulated anxiety in anticipation of a presentation and the surge of nervous adrenalin when we first get up to speak that make those first few moments so miserable. In fact, many highly capable and talented people opt out of important speaking engagements simply because they dread those first few moments.
It helps to look at these moments from the perspective of transitions. In fact, our brains are designed to automatically become more alert when we move from the status quo, what is known and comfortable, into a new situation.
This is because it’s in those moments that the most primitive structures in the brain must determine if our survival is at stake. If danger is detected, signals get sent that trigger the fight, flight, freeze or appease response and we experience the sweaty palms, rapid heart, and racing thoughts that so often characterize the fear of public speaking. But if it seems that we are safe, there’s no threat, then essentially that primitive brain goes back to sleep and we can go on with our business without interference.
This entire sequence of events is engaged whenever we encounter a moment of transition. And, if we can simply take the process in stride, recognizing that it’s a natural part of our reaction to change, we then simply ride the waves of the anxiety without getting too attached to the feelings, knowing that it will eventually pass.
The problem for many speakers is that they mistake this heightened state of alertness for fear. And, fear begets more fear, feeding off itself, until it becomes intolerable.
To a certain extent, getting over the fear of public speaking is really about getting out of our own way and staying in the present moment.
When I get ready to go swimming I don’t focus on the temperature of the water. I do focus on how much I enjoy swimming and how good the water feels by about the third lap. Then I stay in the present moment. I just take one step at a time. I take the shower to wash off before going to the pool’s edge. I put on my bathing cap. I put on my goggles. And, then just as I put my legs in the water I jump in. I don’t linger, giving the fear its head. Instead, I just go. The first length is cold, but then I start to feel my stride (or stroke) and I’m in the flow and loving the water.
The same is true with public speaking. Instead of putting our attention on our fear and all that can go wrong, we focus on the key message we want to make and why it’s important. We then stay present with what’s happening in the moment. We say hello to people as we enter the room. We focus on the person announcing us. We feel our feet on the ground. Whenever we feel anxious, we simply take whatever next step is upon us. We don’t let the anxiety take control of us. We simply say to ourselves…. “Ah… there you are, just as I expected.” And we don’t attach to it. We don’t give it power. And, as we begin to speak, and settle into the rhythm of our interaction with the audience, the anxiety begins to diminish, eventually melting away, leaving us to fully enjoy our time in front of the group.
Contemplative practices reduce anxiety
April 4, 2009
Several weeks ago, I gave a talk with Dr. Sara Lazar, neuroscientist and researcher at Mass General Hospital, a Harvard teaching hospital. Sara’s research is centered on changes in brain structures that result from meditation and yoga.
Her results are very interesting! Basically they show that regular awareness (or contemplative) practices like yoga and meditation thicken those parts of the brain that have to do with self-awareness, well-being and embodied presence and decrease the size of those parts of the brain that are most active when we feel anxious.
Now, those of us who do any of these practices on a regular basis already know this from experience. Personally, I’ve certainly recognized that after 20 years of meditating, doing yoga and practicing tai chi (another contemplative practice not currently part of Sara’s research), my general state of anxiety has significantly decreased.
This became very clear to me several years ago when I stopped my daily practices for about 3 months because of some health issues. I began to notice that a background level of agitation which had been so present when I was younger was beginning to resurface. It was only then that I realized just how much calmer I had become because of my daily contemplative practices.
A common principle that runs at the core of each of these contemplative practices is “Where we put our attention, that’s where energy flows.” If we become preoccupied with our anxious thoughts, we actually strengthen our anxiety. If, instead, we focus on our breath, the contact we make with the ground, a mantra (a calming phrase), or any other anchor for our attention, we begin to quiet the mind and become more present.
So, how can we apply this understanding to reducing the anxiety that comes from public speaking? I think there are two ways to support ourselves through contemplative practices.
First is to commit to some minimal degree of daily awareness practices. Many of my clients start out with 5 minutes a day of simple meditation (I might do another post some day on developing a meditation practice to support your public speaking). Meditating on a regular basis, even in very short increments like this, can help to calm that sense of floating anxiety that might always be there in the background.
The second is to practice what I call a relational meditation whenever you speak, whether it be at the dinner table with your family, in the check-out line at the grocery store, on a phone call, in a meeting with your colleagues, or in a formal presentation. Rather than focusing on the situational anxiety that can arise in a stressful speaking situation, we focus on our audience, asking ourselves how can we be of service to the people in our audience. In effect, we anchor our attention on the relationship and not on our anxiety. Paradoxically, this can help calm us down, steady us, and help us be more fully present in the moment and responsive to the needs of our audience.
By strengthening our self-awareness through our daily practices, and then regularly anchoring our attention on our audience when we speak , I believe we are actually making changes to the structure of our nervous system that can have a long term impact on our degree of comfort speaking in public.
Consciously slowing down can reduce anxiety
March 5, 2009
I just caught the tale end of an interview on NPR with Michael Tilson Thomas, music director for the San Francisco Symphony, talking about the audition process for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. I tuned in to the interview just as he was talking about how musicians tend to speed up when they are nervous. My guess is that as music director an important aspect of his work is to help nervous musicians slow down.
This was so interesting to me because it reminded me that speeding up when anxious is a universal problem, not just one that speakers have. If there’s one principle I return to in every conversation I have with clients, it’s that if they simply slow down, it will make all the difference in their speaking. And, I’m not talking about speaking slowly. We can speak quickly but still have an internal awareness that is slow and easy.
It seems that when we deliberately decide to slow down and take our time, we actually send a signal to our nervous system that there’s no need to feel anxious. Which, in turn, helps the nervous system calm down, and we begin to have a sense of internal quiet and clarity.
On my 45 minute DVD, The Seven Crown Jewels of Public Speaking Presence, there’s a five minute talk on slowing down and how important it is for a speaker. Here’s the clip:
Intentional Attention: Insights from the cha cha cha
February 4, 2009
I took an aerobic dance class yesterday at my fitness center. We were doing the cha cha cha and a series of steps with lot’s of turns. Long ago as a modern dancer I was trained to “spot” when I turned, that is, to focus on one spot during a turn so that I could stay balanced and not get dizzy. I found myself spotting yesterday as I was doing the cha cha cha and after one particular turn the gift of my ability to spot left me with a moment of startling clarity. The insight that came with that clarity was so compelling that I found it difficult to continue dancing for the rest of the class.
So, what was my insight? When we have an intention to focus our attention in a particular way, we feel present, steady, grounded, clear. And, this is true despite all the activity swirling around us. The dance steps I was doing were fast paced. The music was loud. There were many other dancers in the room. New steps were being presented continuously. In turning, it could so easily have led to my feeling off balance. But in the moment when I completed that one turn, with a clear focus on my spot, all the frenetic activity around me became still and I was momentarily simply THERE.
When we feel anxious, we often have a feeling that there’s too much swirling around us and we find ourselves in an ongoing state of imbalance. This is particular true when we are doing an important presentation in the throes of a fear of public speaking. In these moments, our mental state creates an experience of chaos and we feel out of control.
In those moments of high anxiety, the physiological stress response kicks in and we are thrown into survival mode. One manifestation of that internal “fight or flight” state is that our eyes rapidly scan our environment as we become hypervigilant.
In a speaking situation this translates into what I call the “radar” scan – we continuously look around the room without really seeing anyone. To use my dance “spot” analogy, this is the equivalent of not focusing on anything when we turn, which leads to falling off balance and feeling dizzy. The net result of this experience is that we amplify the fear that was already there.
In my years as a public speaking presence coach, I have found that letting our gaze rest quietly on one person at a time as we speak (what some would call “eye contact”) with a conscious intention to truly see the person we are looking at, has the same effect as the “spot” has in a dance turn. In a way that might seem quite paradoxical, this gentle focus of our attention on a single person at a time instead of the “crowd”, calms us down, steadies us, brings clarity in the moment, brings us into balance, keeps us from feeling dizzy, slows us down.
And, it has another benefit… Our audience feels invited in, included, important. They feel attended to and so become more interested in what we have to say.
Do we need a written script when we deliver a talk?
January 22, 2009
More thoughts on inauguration presence.
I’ve been following the glitch around the presidential oath with some interest. As I understand it, John Roberts didn’t have a written version of the oath with him and was depending on his memory. Clearly, in the pressure of the moment, he didn’t have access to what he must have felt he knew so well. After all, it was only 35 words!
I’ve heard that when we feel anxious, some important mechanism in the brain shuts down and prevents us from remembering things that can feel so simple and accessible in less stressful moments. And, I think that concern over this possibility is precisely what causes so much of the fear of public speaking.
At the same time, not many of us are as skillful as Obama is at reading a script. He makes his words come alive. He animates his thoughts. You can tell that while his script was prepared in advance, when he delivers a prepared talk, he’s able to access the meaning and feeling behind the words he’s written.
This is not easy. You can usually tell when someone is reading from a text. It doesn’t sound natural. It sounds canned. The same is true for most people when they’ve memorized a talk.
So, should we read from a script or should we speak without a script? My personal preference, under most circumstances, is for a speaker to be conversational and not read or recite from memory. But there are times when the precise wording is really important. And, reciting the presidential oath is one of them. It probably would have been a good idea for John Roberts to have had a copy of the oath at hand in case he forgot the words.
In case you are interested, I have written an article on whether to memorize a talk entitled: To Memorize or Not to Memorize That is the Question.
