Editor Brooke Le Poer Trench dives deep into something so many of us fear. You can probably already predcit what we're aobut to say. Yes, it's public speaking. It's presentations. It's talks. It's speaking up in meetings. The good news is, you're not alone (far from it) and conquering your fear is easier than you think. Let's do this together.

True story. A few years ago I was appointed to a senior role that was a significant step-up in seniority. I was excited… and trying to ignore that inner voice that wondered if I was up to the challenge. About three weeks before I started, my manager called me: “We’ll need you to run some of the panels for us,” she said, of a large conference the brand was holding my first week on the job. That would be on a stage with a head mike, interviewing a few industry pros while hundreds of ticket holders listened. “Absolutely no problem,” I said. And I meant it. I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone. In fact, I had been treading water for so long that this was precisely the kind of opportunity I was hoping the new role would offer. 

The only catch: while my heart was in it, my nervous system had other ideas. For as long as I could remember, I have just always had that heart-racing response to any kind of public speaking. Even at a meeting, just rehearsing the opinion I wanted to share would result in heart palpitations and my voice catching in my throat. Which I then worried would make me seem unprofessional or unprepared. The strangest thing is that I want to ask the question. I want to share my opinion. I want to get on stage. I was willing… but felt my body was betraying me. One of the handiest things about being a journalist is that you’re able to workshop your problems with world-renowned experts under the guise of “helping others.” I had a big breakthrough several years ago after I interviewed Patsy Rosenberg, a renowned British voice coach and Head of Voice at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She works with world leaders and British acting aristocracy like Dame Judi Dench among many others (and has a great TED Talk if you want to hear more). 

Until we spoke, I assumed that were people who are good in front of a crowd and people who are not. This is simply not the case, she pointed out. People who can speak confidently in front of a crowd, more often than not, have practised the speech many, many times. “You need to say it so many times that by the time you get up to speak, the words are almost muscle memory." I first tried this trick for my own wedding speech, and could not believe how relaxed I felt holding the microphone and chatting away in front of one hundred or so people. Wow, preparation really works, I marvelled. 

But back to my recent promotion and the hosting of the panels: before work started, I reached out to a good friend in London who has been a TV and theatre actor for many years. “How do you deal with the shaky voice and the racing heart when you first get on stage?” Without a beat she replied: “I was hypnotised.” And then: “There’s a women who lives in a basement in Notting Hill who has done everyone I know.” Since I still had 10 days left in London before moving to Australia, I decided to give it a go. For the sake of expediency, I will condense the experience: She was about 95; had no digital footprint to speak of; lived in a teeny basement with many stuffed animals; and during our two hour session, she put me into some sort of trance. She said she was re-wiring me, because my subconscious (where the message I had repeated to myself over and over again about me not being one of those people who could speak in public had taken root) needed a new message. And this one was simple: “I am calm and in control.” After our session she said before any public speaking or situation where I could feel my body starting to react, I need only press my index fingers and thumb together and say “I am calm and in control.” At the time, I wanted to believe. But part of me thought, surely it takes more than two hours in a lazy boy. 

Two weeks later I found myself at the base of a stage, with a head mike and a few palm cards, ready to host a panel. And I could feel my heart starting to race, so I tried it. To be fair, I had also practised my questions plenty of times in the mirror… my Patsy lesson still going strong. “I am calm and in control” I repeated quietly. And I have to say, on that day my voice did not shake. Yes I was nervous. I had butterflies in my stomach. But it did not take over. And I even enjoyed myself. 

After a little digging I discovered that there is quite a bit of legit research that underpins what happened in that basement, and my new habit of coaching myself before a presentation. A study by Allison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School has shown that changing the way you talk to yourself before you’re in the spotlight can make all the difference. Switching from obsessing over my physical state to telling  myself I was in control, may have flicked a switch (you know, in addition to the hypnosis).  Another paper in Clinical Psychological Science found that viewing your pounding heart and sweaty palms as your body getting ready for action—rather than a sign that you’d rather be doing anything else but the thing in front of all the eyeballs—made participants enjoy public speaking more.

What I have also learned is that illogical fear (which is different to healthy fear that protects us from physical danger and real fear that might allow us to deal with difficult concepts like death) can be dismantled. It’s not easy, but I found the work of speaker and author Monica Berg, the author of Fear Is Not an Option, really compelling. She has many different tools in her book, but what her message really boils down to is that we need to decide that irrational fear is no longer an option. Her challenge: What would you do if you weren’t afraid? This is something I now ask myself all the time.