Get used to your nerves by practising in front of real people.
Arjun can already give his talk for the clinic managers to an empty room without stumbling. He has recorded it, reviewed it and fixed his pace. He still feels sick when he imagines the real room, with the operations director at the head of the table and seven clinic managers watching.
Rehearsing to an empty room does not prepare you for real faces. Nerves respond to practice the way most fears do. The more often you face a situation and come through it, the less threatening it feels the next time. This exercise gives you that practice twice, in a small, friendly setting. There is a week between the two sessions so you can see the change.
You need 2 or 3 people for about 20 minutes. Friends, family, colleagues over lunch or a peer from another team will all work. They don't need to know your subject. It can be better if they don't, because they will ask the questions an outsider would.
Pick a 3-minute section of your talk. The opening plus your first main point is a good choice. It includes the moment near the start when nerves usually peak, as described in lesson 6.1, "What nerves are doing to your body".
Set up the room so it feels a little like the real thing. Stand while your audience sits, and use your slides if you can. If the real talk will be online, run the practice as a video call instead.
Give your audience two instructions before you begin. First, one person will interrupt you once, with a comment or a question, at a moment they choose and without warning. Second, at the end, each person will ask you one awkward question, meaning a question that is hard, sceptical or slightly off topic.
For many people, interruptions and hard questions are scarier than the talk itself. If you meet them first in a friendly room, the real room won't be the first time. Module 7 covers handling questions in depth. For this exercise, answer as well as you can and notice how it feels.
Before you speak, run the pre-talk routine from lesson 6.2, "Breathing and a routine before you speak". Check your setup, put water within reach, run through your first lines once and do a minute or two of slow breathing. Then give your three minutes and take the interruption and the questions.
Straight after the session, before you start chatting with your audience, write a three-part note. This is a short record of your nerves before, during and after the session. Give each point a rating from 1 to 10 and add a sentence or two of description.
Before: how strong the nerves were and what you noticed in your body. During: when they peaked and when they eased. After: how you feel now.
The ratings are rough personal ratings, not scientific measurement. Use the same 1 to 10 scale in both sessions so the two notes can be compared.
Arjun invited two university friends and his younger brother over on a Saturday afternoon. He put his laptop on the dining table and stood at the far end. In the second minute his brother interrupted to ask why he didn't just send two reminders. That was the exact misunderstanding Arjun had worked to avoid in lesson 1.4, and he was glad to meet it on a Saturday instead of in the real meeting.
In his first note he rated his nerves at 8 before starting (an example figure), with his heart racing and a dry mouth. During the talk they reached 9 in the first thirty seconds, dropped to 5 by the end of the section and went back up to 7 at the interruption. Afterwards he rated them 3. He wrote that he felt relieved and slightly embarrassed about one answer he had fumbled.
He ran the second session a week later. Before starting he rated his nerves 7. During the talk they were 7 in the first thirty seconds, 4 by the end and 5 at the interruption. Afterwards they were 2. He noticed that the interruption barely registered the second time, because he had already handled one.
A week after the first session, do it again. You can use the same people or different ones. Different people are slightly better, because new faces bring back some of the uncertainty of a real audience. You can repeat the same section or move on to the next three minutes of your talk. Run the routine, take an interruption and the questions, and write the same three-part note on the same scale.
Then put the two notes side by side. Most people find the second session easier, sometimes much easier. The peak may be lower or shorter, the interruption less alarming and the questions easier to answer. Some people find their "before" rating barely changes while the "during" part improves a lot. Whatever your pattern is, the written notes show progress you would otherwise forget within a week. Keep both notes with your recovery plan from lesson 6.4, "When you blank or make a mistake".
The exercise is done when you have run two sessions a week apart and each one included the pre-talk routine, an interruption and at least two awkward questions. You also need a short written note from each session covering your nerves before, during and after.
Book your small audience now, with dates a week apart, so the second session is fixed before the first one happens.
Run this practice session twice, a week apart. Each time, write a short note on how nervous you felt before, during and after.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).