by Honora Wolfe

I have often heard that fear of public speaking is cited as nearly equal to fear of death for most people. Even I, after years as a teacher and public speaker, get stage fright almost every time I am in front of a group. Here are some of the best tips I know for overcoming those pounding heart, sweaty palms, “I’d rather die than do this” feeling so often experienced by so many of us.

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Psychologists say that debilitating fears are often rooted in past events. A short-tempered teacher who humiliated you or an over-forceful parent who pushed you to perform can be the source of this fear. When we contemplate public speaking, we unconsciously “time-travel” back to that moment somewhere in the recesses of our body-mind, and all that fear and humiliation comes right up as if it were yesterday without us having any control or conscious knowledge of why we feel this way.

If you hate to speak in public, take a few minutes try to go back in your mind and find your first memory of performing in front of others. Note your age and try to remember how it felt. Look at this child in your mind’s eye and how young he or she is and think about how much you have changed and grown both physically, mentally, intellectually, and emotionally since then.

Now remake the scene in your head. Remove the child from the scene and you, in your adult form, do the performance for the child, while you reassure him/her that you will be the one who does all such future events. Keep doing this (perhaps using it for multiple bad memories) until you can keep yourself from becoming the child. Then you can proceed to the points below.

1. Organize your material into at least two different formats. These include: the 15-20-minute talk while everyone is eating lunch, and the longer maybe-they-are-really-listening format (maybe 45-60 minutes). Remember to keep this simple. Make an outline of your topic. Each point in the outline has a small pearl of wisdom and one or two examples or stories. A 15-minute talk can only contain about three of these points. To support whatever your talk is about, feel free to use the research available at the TCMInfoline here at the Blue Poppy website.
2. Go give a talk somewhere. Start with something really low risk, like a brown-bag luncheon group at the public library where the topic is something introductory like “Can Chinese Medicine Help You?”.
3. Finally, TRUST that you know about Chinese medicine. When you look at one of your Power Point pages, you will know what there is to say about that subject and you will remember your stories. Don’t over-prepare….it kills spontaneity. If you forget something, move on to the next point and don’t make a big deal about it. Also trust that, unless you mumble, are stand-offish and unapproachable, or really just don’t know your subject at all (which is not true), people in the audience generally speaking WANT to like you and they WANT to like what you have to say. Few people come to a talk to be a heckler or spoiler.
4. Once you get to your talks, consciously send your “child” off somewhere to buy an ice cream cone and practice these rules for success:
• Be yourself. Try to use nervous energy to give you spunk, liveliness, and verve. Be a real person connecting to real people.
• Find three or four friendly faces in the audience. Talk to them directly, speaking to your audience and not at them.
• Walk the aisles, make real contact. Don’t get stuck behind a podium or glued to your Power Point machine
• Continue to reassure the “child” if s/he pops back up again.
• Don’t cover your fear by being a know-it-all. You can tell people if you don’t know the answer to something. Offer to get back to them by email with an answer later.
•You can admit to the audience that you are nervous. Many of them would be as well and they will empathize.
• Welcome evaluation and feedback; even use a form for these and read them! Paying attention to criticism is one of the only ways to improve.
• Update your talks regularly. If you are bored with your materials, the audience will be bored too!
• Bring your cards and brochures with you, as well as a mailing sign-up sheet to pass around. (Be sure to tell people that you don’t rent or sell your list and that your email list is secure.)

This can be an exciting way to share your love for Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and it is one of the best tried-and-true ways to get new patients.

Good luck, everyone.

Copyright Blue Poppy Ent., Inc., 2009. All rights reserved.