4. Controlling your nerves - Shake-less Performance…

As your time slot is coming closer, you might experience some nerves or fear… With some simple actions, you can minimise these.

Practice

One of the major fears expressed by people is the fear of forgetting their text. I know I always have this fear and the easiest way to eliminate this fear is by simply remembering your lines and visuals.
In short, practice as much as you can!

If you are really short on time, then try to remember some buzz-words for each category which will help you to remember the details in between.

Major tip, practice with your visuals as well and don’t be afraid to change your story a bit if you find it hard to remember or pronounce certain parts.

Be on time

One of the best things that always seem to help me and some of the students I had, is being on time!
Hell, be early… Go into the room when nobody is there yet and stand on the spot where you will be standing.
Look at the technology available to you and maybe even talk to the people of the event on how things work.

Anything you learn now, you don’t need to worry about later.

Top Tip: If there are sound people there, talk to them, they are experienced and know so much. If you experience some nerves, they will have some realistic tips for you which you can use!

Woozy Breathing

Before you skip this one, I HATE these woozy woozy breathing exercises and yoga things, so I will not teach you any of those.

This breathing exercise is one that I learned from a video of David JP Phillips, which actually seems to help and is insanely fast.

How it works?

• Take a single, normal breath…
• Take another breath, a bit deeper, still normal speed…
• Take one more breath, again a bit deeper and at a normal speed…

Repeat if needed!

Some people like to close their eyes, others like to look up or down…
Personally I just sit back, put my head a bit back and relax.. Often I repeat this 2 or 3 times just before going on stage…

Standup & go

One last thing that always seems to remove some nerves for me is simply to standup a few minutes before going in front of the crowd. I started doing this because I was afraid my legs would refuse to work when I needed to stand up and fall flat once my time would come. On top of this, I always get this energised feeling in my legs when I am nervous, and standing up simply helps to control these.

The end...

That's it! You choose for the quick and dirty articles, there you have it...
Now go on stage and show your audience the best presenter of the day!

If you think this is somewhat to short after all, check out the articles in the "Start to Finish" Series :)