7 Tips to Overcome Nervousness
Nervousness is very common when we facing strangers or dealing an important deal. It is even more obvious when we are giving presentation or speeches to a group of strangers or even sometimes with close colleagues. Being afraid to make mistakes in front of them, afraid that leaving bad image after the occurrence.
We can overcome nervousness easily by practicing more often. Doesn’t mean that we must do presentation more often, we can simply practice before the show. Either during meeting presentation or big seminar speeches, we never able to avoid nervous but we can shift it to something else.
1. Physically and Mentally Well Prepare
First of all, we must understand what is nervous. Nervous is the feeling of tense, sweaty hands, heart beat raises and worried. Now we understand that nervous is merely a feeling of worried and afraid created in the mind when we facing the circumstances that we are not familiar with, here why we must mentally well prepare by adjusting our thinking to positive.
Rather than thinking fear, we can distract our mind by focusing the content we are going to deliver, the outcome we expect to be. Physically well prepare is the preparation of physical appearance, wear nice and tidy for formal occasions, leaving a good image to audience and also enhance our self esteem.
2. Enhance Self Confidence
Self confidence put us in a state of calm and prepare to face any challenges up ahead. The feeling of confidence that we can do very well in presenting thus reduce the negative feelings that raised up within. Self confidence also put us in better gesture during presentation giving a better image to everyone. Here we have another article discuss how to enhance self confidence.
3. Regulate the Breathe
Few minutes before up to the event, calm and relax our mind will slow down the nervousness. Breathe in and out slowly to regulate the heart pumping speed, move around slowly as breathing in and out slowly. Or sit and meditate for 10 minutes to calm and slow down the heart beat. Then practice to focus back the content of your presentation rather than thinking of nervousness and worries.
4. Change Nervousness to Excitement
The symptoms of nervousness is panic, heart beat raises, sweaty hands, shaky body and tense. Now we look at what is the symptom of excitement, it also has panic, heart beat raises, sweaty hands, shaky body and tense. Yes, we can change our mindset from thinking that we are nervous, we should think that “Hmmm, this is exciting!”. This will drastically reduce the feeling of nervousness.
5. Visualize the Positive Outcome
Imagine what is the expected outcome during the preparation period. Usually this practice shall be carry days before the event. Before going to bed or after rehearsal, sit down and relax, imagine and visualize the positive outcome or the expected best possibility result. This is to prepare the mental and a subconscious training so that we can perform as how we imagine and visualize, to be in a state of well prepared mental. Remember that to visualize in positive ways and best expected outcome, imaging the negative possibility will only make us even more nervous.
6. Hold Some Object on the Hand
Hold little object on the hand during speeches or presentation. To divert nervous energy to this little object. It can be a bottle, a pen, a microphone or small notes. These object very useful to distract our nervous energy in our mind out of our body, also act as a little companion to enhance our confidence, treating our mind that we are not alone on the stage.
7. It’s All About Ourselves
Yes, sometimes the audience not really care. They do not care what we are saying and what we are trying to deliver, they might just happened to be there and spend a short amount of time to be there as required. But it is our duty to deliver even others do not care. We are doing as we love to do rather than we doing for the stake of doing.
Think it in a way that we trying the best to give, it is up to them to receive or not. What important is we must do our best to give, then the energy will flow by itself, either audience to accept or not. Sometimes, it just not really matter, it is just one of occasion in our life.
Stay calm and relax, enjoy the moment and the experience. Prepare well and give the best out of us, either the result is excellent or screw up, experience earned. Experience is wisdom, live life to fullest.