People could choose to be anywhere.

But these people you’re going to talk to? They’ve chosen to be in a room with you.

In 2014, if you’re teaching a workshop, leading a conference or speaking at a seminar – they know exactly who you are, what your qualifications are, and what you’re supposed to be speaking about, and they still chose to be in a room with you.

They could have been watching the game. Reading MindBodyGreen. Walking their dog. Opening all those unanswered emails.

And they still chose to be in a room with you.

So meet them there. Don’t meet them with your fear or your panic or your trauma. Do what you need to do to release that. Then meet them with love and gratitude for those precious moments of their life, and pour out everything you’ve got – substantively and energetically – for 25 minutes (+ 5 minutes more for Q and A). Here are a few conscious methods to re-calibrate the experience and release your public speaking fears.

1. Reframe and receive. Show up to the experience of preparing and practicing your talk boldly expecting your audience to be excited and breathless with anticipation and eager receptiveness to your message. Visualize that as you prepare. Every time your mind goes to “I’m so nervous” intentionally restate the sentence (ideally out loud), substituting “nervous” with “excited.” Your brain doesn’t know the difference.If your fear is paralyzing, or you lack speaking skill but feel that you need them to fulfill your life’s calling, set about solving that problem like you would any other, less emotionally charged task or work project. Hire a coach. Go to Toastmasters. Practice. And practice some more – with your safe people – people who will critique and support you at the same time.

   Carve out 4 times as much time to prep your talk as the length of the actual talk. Then give yourself another 4x the length of the talk to practice. Overdo the practice. Do whole practice talks, speaking at smaller groups with less pressure before you go on the big stage. There’s no such thing as overkill: I’ve known speakers who got good when they went to hypnosis or therapy to resolve the panic and anxiety that was triggered every time they even thought about giving a talk.

   I’ve also known speakers who take prescription anti-anxiety meds or a vodka shot every time they speak, just to “take the edge off” so to speak. But self-medication of the pain both prevents you from getting under the pain to resolve the root issue. And it’s a double-edged sword: it also diminishes your presence. That edge is part of you. That’s part of what the audience came for! And dimming the edge also dims your chances of being freaking delighted and awed by your own performance and energy exchange with the audience. Allow yourself to not just give – but to receive  – everything this experience could possibly have for you. You might just actually love it.

2. Get detached. There are only really two outcomes possible from your talk, and most fearful speakers misunderstand what they are. They think that they could either crush it (that’s good) or bomb (bad). The reality is that the only two options you have are as follows: (a) you could have a soaring, brilliant talk or (b) you could learn a brilliant lesson – about yourself, your material, your process or your audience – that will help you get to the place where you give a soaring brilliant talk. That’s it. There are only two options. Embracing them will help you get unstuck, unparalyzed and dive on in to getting ready for the stage.
3. Get engaged. If you’re not enthusiastic about the material, don’t bother giving the talk – it wastes your time and your audience’s. If you are enthusiastic about it, or about the impact your talk could have on your audience, show it. Don’t play it cool. “Cool,” at the front of the room, looks aloof and uncaring. And if you don’t seem like you care, no one else will too.Get nerdily engaged, excited, geeked out, act like you care – a lot. Every inch of space between you and your audience is distance across which your energy must span, and a little tiny bit is lost in that physical space. That’s why when you see great speakers up close, they look a little overly intense – eyes wide, nostrils flaring. I often rev up my energetic engines with a dozen burpees or a handful of sun salutations before I take the stage.

Great speakers know they need to crank up their physical and energetic intensity for it to make it all the way to the back of the room, beyond what would be appropriate in an ordinary person-to-person conversation. Do that. Remember your purpose for giving the talk, turn yourself all the way on, and leave nothing in the tank. Your audience will thank you for it.