Public speaking: why do we get nervous?

Here’s a picture of me being unbelievably nervous before a TEDx talk I gave very recently.

I prepared the talk for about one month. During that time, I was anxious every single day. It would leave my mind at times, but come back soon enough as I remembered the upcoming event.  

I’ve been public speaking for a few years now, and I’d say that out of my limited skill set, it’s probably one of my better skills. So I was confused.

“Why am I still getting so nervous? I know I can do an OK job here”.

I wanted to understand why we get nervous about public speaking, or for that matter, why we get nervous at all. So, I grabbed ‘The Chimp Paradox’ by Prof Steve Peters and set about my task.

 The brain can be crudely divided into seven systems. There’s two key parts for our purpose:

• The Limbic system, which is coined the ‘Chimp’ by Peters, is your emotional brain which uses very little logic, and thinks using emotional energy. It’s the brain we relied on to survive when we were in the jungle. 
  

• The Parietal system, which is coined the ‘Human’, is the brain that thinks rationally. It’s often the voice in your head that says ‘well… this is the right thing to do’.

These are two completely different systems, and they think INDEPENDENTLY of each other. It’s the human that says “yes I’d love to do that talk” and your chimp that’s yells “hell no, that’s scary”.

The biggest, and most important instinct our chimps possess is the FF response (Fight or flight). This is crucial to understanding why we get nervous before a talk.

“In the jungle, a chimpanzees FF instinct is a successful survival response. The problem for us, as humans, is that the inner chimp still believes it is in the jungle and it tries to use this in everyday life”.

Hence, even though there is no serious danger attached to speaking in public, our chimp senses ‘danger’ and attempts to act. It does so by releasing the FF response in the body, in an effort to mitigate the danger.

If you ignore this and don’t respond (i.e. “no, I’m going to do this talk, because it’s important to my goal in life”) something fascinating happens…

In my case:

Fight? I can’t ‘fight’ yet, because the talk is in a month.

Flight? No can do, doing a TEDx talk has been my dream for years, I need to do this.

When the adrenaline of the FF prompt is coupled with negative thoughts (that are created by the chimp that conceives danger) you will go into an anxiety state.

Nature uses anxiety as a means of forcing you to make a decision. Naturally, this will last until you have made a decision.

In public speaking, you make the ‘fight’ decision when you walk on stage.

Ever heard someone say, “Once I got into it, it was fine”?

Anxiety disappears once you have started speaking, because you no longer need it.

Next time you feel nervous before a big talk, smile. You have a healthy brain that is misconceiving danger.

Use grit to carry yourself through the anxiety. You can perform wonders.