Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
So in presenting, a huge fear is,
'What if I forget my words?'
But realize that everybody stumbles, startles and even goes blank in a presentation.
I did. Sometimes, my brain goes too fast for my mouth, I'm thinking about ideas
and... starts talking about rubbish for a moment. So instead of being
anxious about this, I actually use this as a point of connection to the audience.
So if start going... I just look at the ceiling and say, "Wow, there
must be some radio-frequency interference here". Alright and just making a
joke of it, making a lie out of it or just stepping sideways and say, "Well, that's
obviously not the spot to stand"
relaxes the audience but most importantly
relaxes me.
Obviously, you need to be prepared for your presentation, you need to know how the
presentation goes. Maybe you prepare a set of powerpoint slides and you kept
those powerpoint slides as a movie inside your head
and that's one way to do it but if you do stumble, you could say something like,
"Oops, I appeared to lose my place. Let me go back to the beginning" and then actually go
back to the beginning and say, "Hi,
my name is Andrew Bryan and what I'm about to talk to you about is..." and of course that'll get a laugh
from the audience and that
moment of relaxation will unfreeze your brain
because the brain freezes when we get a little bit stressed or
we're thinking too fast.
So all you need to do is rehearse something
that will let you pause, take a breath
and your brain will reboot,
and you'll be able to pick up exactly
where you left off.
So find something, rehearse it, for me it's the, "Bzzzz.. oh, sorry that's the
interference!" You might say,
"Oh! Sorry! Just had a brain freeze, let's start again".
But practice something as it'll happen one day and then you can use that and
everybody will think you're professional.