Stage Fright and What I Do With It

I still get nervous. Before pageant finales, before lectures in rooms I have taught in for years, before a two-minute introduction. The nerves never left, and at some point I stopped treating that as a failure.

Nerves are energy without a direction

The physical symptoms of fear and excitement are almost identical. What differs is the story attached. I say, out loud and slightly ridiculously, that I am excited, and a surprising amount of the shaking reorganises itself.

The five minutes before

• Slow breathing out, longer than the breath in.
• Feet flat, weight even, shoulders dropped.
• One sentence I know cold, ready to open with.

The opening sentence matters most. Once the first line is out in the room, the body understands the situation is survivable.

Preparation does not remove fear. It gives fear less to work with.

Focus outward

Fear is self-focused. The fastest exit is attention on the audience: who they are, what they need, what they are worried about. Curiosity and terror cannot occupy the same attention for very long.

Afterwards

I write two lines: what worked, what to change. Without that, memory rewrites the whole thing as a disaster, and the next occasion becomes harder than it needs to be.