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Performance Psychology Consultant, Dr. Alexander McWilliam, Talks Presentation Anxiety and Performing Under Pressure with MBM CEO, Darren A. Smith.
Join Darren as he asks; ‘What makes Dr. McWilliam the best person to talk Presentation Anxiety?’. With perhaps the only PhD, globally, that specialises in why and how we feel nervous when public speaking, Dr. McWilliam has the utmost knowledge and expertise on how to combat presentation anxiety. Watch or listen to the podcast episode to experience Darren and Alexander exploring the ins and outs of this subject.
Read The Full Episode Transcription Below:
Darren A. Smith
Welcome to the world’s stickiest learning. My name’s Darren Smith, and more importantly, I’m here with our guest. Thank you for coming. Alex, how are you?
Alexander McWilliam
I’m very good. How are you doing?
Darren A. Smith
Hey, I’m good. I’m good. We’ve both got our funky shirts on and striped. You’re in check. We better not go to the same party. We’ll clash. But hey, we’re good. We’re good. Let’s get back to you. We’re going to talk about presenting and about being nervous and speaking up and those types of things. We’ll get to that in the nicest possible way. Why should we listen to you when you talk about this topic?
Alexander McWilliam
Well, we said my name is Alex, which is true, but my full title is Doctor Alexander McWilliam. I’ve got a PhD in public speaking anxiety and performing under pressure. To my knowledge, the only person in the UK potentially globally with a PhD specialising in this field, and I’ve been coaching presentation skills confidence when presenting for almost decades, so a wealth of experience. It makes me feel old, but.
An expert in the field of anxiety and performing under pressure.
Darren A. Smith
Two decades we haven’t even got any grey hair. What’s that about? OK, so you’re the only one with the PhD potentially in the world in this. So just tell me about that. How long did you study for to get this?
Alexander McWilliam
So my PhD took 1/ years in total, so it was three years. Multiple studies I looked at AI looked at all the interventions available for public speaking anxiety into reduction. That was one area of study. I developed a questionnaire to help identify specific public speaking concerns because there’s so many in the world. But actually when we’re coaching, we need to identify what it is specifically.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
And then a last study was using acting and improvisation to help reduce public speaking anxiety.
So over the three years, there was all of these studies going on with multiple participants trying to figure out why they get anxious. How do we overcome that? And as there’s so many interventions available, can something alternative, like acting in improv, which hasn’t seen many mainstream sort of interventions, you see CBT, you see exposure therapy, things like that. But acting in improv, that was the unique route I wanted to go down and bring on my own expertise of being an actor and being an improviser.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah. Yep.
Alexander McWilliam
With that so 3 1/2 years of lots and lots of studying, lots of reviewing, lots of writing, and if anyone’s doing it, if anyone’s done it, they know that it is a mammoth of a task. But so rewarding once it’s done.
Darren A. Smith
Impressive. OK, so 3 1/2 years doing that and and just would you just paint a picture for us? So what did you do? You did some research, not some. You did research. You looked at research you practise it. Is that we did for 3 1/2 years.
Alexander McWilliam
I read a lot of papers looking at theories, different theories from sports psychology, from psychology, looking at why people fail to perform when it when it matters, and what’s happening in our bodies and our brains when anxiety kicks in, fears, anxieties, how we develop those. So looking across the board over the last years worth of literature, looking at what interventions are available, which ones are effective and which ones aren’t effective because again.
There’s a lot of interventions available. People go, Oh my God, there’s so many things I could try and do to reduce anxiety. What works? Well, luckily, I published a paper earlier this year which identified which ones were good, which ones weren’t, and how we overcome them. And also, it’s been a while developing this questionnaire to identify those specific worries and having to test it, validate it. All of those things with thousands of, I think we ended up having around participants to validate this questionnaire. So it’s not that because.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Alexander McWilliam
You get a questionnaire, you know the online ones are going. Ah, what’s my biggest worry then? You know, it could be anything’s anyone’s written that. So we took a lot of time doing that. And then also the intervention testing out a six week improvisation course to go. OK. If we got people in over six weeks once a week for a few hours, can we use those techniques to do that? And then we have to do all the steps work which again.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
I’ve I’ve never learned stats when I was younger, so that was a new area of statistics of how to do.
Which again is a mammoth task of maths and data and analysis, but again very rewarding, but a very complicated at the same time. So three years of lots of that and then presenting at conferences, writing papers, editing that took a long time because a my thesis I think was around , words. Trying. Yeah. Trying to get and that’s a short one that’s that’s quite a short version some people’s thesis.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
OK.
Off.
Alexander McWilliam
Are , words like a lot of history thesis? Are there like hundreds of thousands of what? Not hundreds, but maybe ,? So trying to make it so that it was rather.
And not waffling is the other things there’s such. It’s like there’s so much content you could talk about and try to go one of it. What am I refining it? And actually I found during my PhD in the first six months, actually I started coming in with one idea and then six months later, that idea sort of change and amalgamated. And then it kept changing. I think when someone does a PhD, they realise that actually they start with one idea and it does.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Modify a lot and for the better as well.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, makes sense.
That makes sense. So over the next minutes, however long you and I are going to talk, I’d like to talk longer. People are going to understand why they’re nervous when they present and how they can overcome it is that is that simply what we’re going to get because that’s powerful, right? OK. All right. Fabulous. Fabulous. OK, well, I’m intrigued. So over the next to minutes, I’ve got four or five questions that we’ve pulled from Google search that most people ask around this topic.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Darren A. Smith
And then I think at the end of it, you’ve got a really handy mnemonic, a really handy takeaway for us to have. Is that right?
Alexander McWilliam
Yep, got one. It’s called steady and I’ll let you people can still go. Oh, what’s that about?
Darren A. Smith
They’ve been treated us now. I like that. So that’s the the culmination of , words. Your thesis down to things.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, essentially.
Darren A. Smith
All right. OK. All right. Well, I’m keen. I’m going to kick off with our first question, if that’s all right.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith
How do I not feel nervous or panicked before presentation is the first question most people are asking how do I not feel nervous and panicked?
Alexander McWilliam
But the first thing to challenge that is go nerves aren’t a bad thing. If we’re nervous, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It can actually be quite facilitative to our performance. We need it to energise us. If the issue comes, it become too nervous. It overwhelms us and it impacts our performance in a negative way. So that’s the first challenge. Nerves aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Alexander McWilliam
And also and I’ll talk about this later, our body doesn’t necessarily know when we go. Oh, I’m feeling nervous. Is it nerves? Because actually.
There’s a famous study where actually they reframed, oh, physiologically, nerves and excitement have the same physiological response. My heart rate goes, my handshake, I feel sweaty. The only differentiation is your mindset. When we’re nervous, I’m worrying about the worst case scenario. When I’m excited, I’m dreaming out at the best case scenario. So you, I’d always recommend you reframe that and go, actually. OK, I’m feeling this is it nerves. Well, OK. I don’t really know what it’s. I could be nervous about, but maybe.
Darren A. Smith
I love that. Yeah, yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Excited. I’m excited because I get to present to my peers and share my idea because the the nervousness comes from the unknown and the ambiguity. I’m nervous all about something. What’s going to go wrong? However, I’m excited because I get to share my research and the audience get to share my story. That’s why I’m excited by I use that when I go to the dentist. I hate dentists. I’m nervous, but I go. I’m so excited they get to clean my teeth. I’m so excited they get to do this.
And it it calms me down a bit.
So I think nerves isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s only when it becomes too overwhelming. But and there are in that steady Muni, we’re going to talk about how do we sort of calm down before that kind of presentation. But I think the main thing to do is identify what it is specifically that you are worried about because if we can name it, then actually it takes some of the worry over because we go, oh, it’s such a big thing. No, I’m worried about making mistakes. OK.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Now we can start to work on some.
Mentioned or some training to reduce the potency of the worry about making mistakes, the probability or the cost. Well actually if I make a mistake, is it a big deal? No, it’s only a big deal if you do this. Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I’ve I’ve made a mistake most of the time. Audience won’t recognise if you’ve made a mistake. It’s only if you showcase it. So actually we can reflect afterwards. Ago I stumbled. I did that fine. But the audience probably have no idea. You made a mistake.
Darren A. Smith
And actually, dare I say, with most presentation little presentations, it might wake the audience up, up, up a bit. Oh, and he made a mistake. Wow. Are we really only on slide ? Thank God for that.
OK. All right. So I’m going into a presentation or public speaking, but I’m going to keep it real. I’m going to a presentation. There’s eight people in the room, but it’s important presentation. I’m feeling panicked and I’m nervous. And what you’re saying is let’s think about the mistakes I could make and how then I can overcome those. Have I got that right?
Alexander McWilliam
So think of it like OK.
What you can do today and go what’s the worst case scenario? OK, I thought my play, you know, I make a complete.
All over the place I stumbled. OK, well, that’s that could happen. So we’re going to challenge it first. What’s the probability of that happening? Well, actually, I’ve done presentations before and that’s never happened. So why would it happen now? So we’re challenging the probability of it happening, but also what we can do is challenge the cost. If it does happen, what are the costs? What’s the consequences if I make a mistake, what happens?
OK. Well, I can just reset and keep going or if I if I forget my slides. What’s the thing? Oh, I can just go back and reset. So you kind of essentially go what’s the worst case scenario and that what is my solution for solving those problems? A lot of time. And I says to a lot of clients we we lack the practise a lot of people go I’m going to wing my presentation and that’s usually what heightens the nerves because you go ah I’m not used to this situation.
Because while you might have mentally gone, I’ve gone over my lines.
Your tongue, your voice. Your body hasn’t prepared. Your heart rate isn’t used to being a little bit under pressure when you’re practising. Maybe you’re casually sitting in an arm chair at home doing this going. Welcome to my presentation. You’re not used to the stresses that you’re going to have when you’re presenting, so practise is going to give you that benefit. It’s like an Olympic, you know, runner or a basketball person.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Not the basketball person. Basketball player, not practising anything. They go, oh, I’m just going to wing it when I get to the game and they go well, you haven’t done your drills.
You haven’t done your training, you haven’t done your teamwork. You haven’t done all of this stuff, and actually it means you’re not going to know what it’s like to work under pressure until the event, and then you’re going to might stumble and you might fall to pieces. So if you have a presentation coming up, things to think about and go, OK, if I am worried, say about making mistakes, challenge it and go, what’s the probability of it have? And then is it a self fulfilling prophecy of? Well, I haven’t practised. Well, why haven’t you practised? Well, I was busy. Well, why were you busy? Well, I didn’t prioritise.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Why did you prioritise it and get to the root cause of? I didn’t prioritise that because I’m actually scared of it because I don’t like presenting and then you get to the root of. Well, if we force you to do it and force you to practise, then actually some of those nerves and worries that you were worried about will probably dissipate because we don’t practise all of that becomes heightened because we’re dealing with the unknown uncertainty and lack of experience and that’s the main one. If I don’t practise.
I haven’t got a mastery experience to go. I can do it.
I’m essentially winging it and hoping that I can do it, which is I think the biggest mistake when it comes to presenting.
Darren A. Smith
I’m just thinking when you said that back to that, there was a doctor Pepper advert. Maybe I’m too old. There was something like, what’s the worst that can happen if I treat the doctor Pepper and the guy gets run over by a bulldozer, which obviously won’t happen. And I was thinking about that. All right, so we’re thinking about what could go wrong, what’s the probability, what’s the cost and how do I overcome that? OK. And also practise lovely, I get that. I get that there was a famous.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith
I think it was a TikTok video. It’s always TikTok at the moment, isn’t it? Where?
A woman, I think she was a psychology student, was talking about that excited thing. Have you seen this video and instant? Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
I haven’t seen it.
Darren A. Smith
And she was saying that before we go into a presentation, we try and calm down, but actually we’re excited in sorry, we can’t calm down. It’s better just to tell ourselves we’re excited. Is that correct?
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah. So again, it it, it could work for you. It’s one of these things of with every person you’ve got to see what’s going to work for you. Like I said, the the reframing of that anxiety sort of physiological to excitement might work for you. However, we’re not that sometimes we’re not very cognitive and we go. I can’t. I can’t think clearly that’s not going to help me. So it might work for you. It might not, but it’s definitely a technique worth trying to go. OK.
Is it worth me trying to reframe this?
Because actually it’s like you can’t just say I’m not going to be nervous because it’s like you’re imagine your anxiety is a freight train. You can’t go stop because the train’s going to go all over the place. You’re going to fall to pieces. But what we can do is there’s there’s a theory called catastrophe theory when it comes in sports psychology, and it depicts why people fail to perform at optimal levels. So there’s AI. Think all of Yerkes is Dodson Curve, which essentially like an inverted U and what that says is you have a peak level.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Physiological arousal to performance. So if you’re physically kind of engaged, you will have a peak level of performance. If you have too much arousal, it will slowly Peter down. Now that that does happen, however, if you have a lot of worries or cognitive anxiety, posh term for worry instead of it happening like an inverted U, it happens more like a crashing of a wave, so you get that peak level of performance, but instead of it slowly dissipating down, think of it like it crashes down and you fall to pieces.
Darren A. Smith
Makes sense? Yep.
OK. Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
So it an example would be a basketball player has a free throw. They miss it for the rest of the game. They have falling to pieces, they’re passing poor. That can happen in a presentation you make a big mistake. Rest of the presentation. You are stumbling over your words. You’re falling to pieces. It’s not working and you just have a catastrophe. Now the way to solve that and what they tend to do in sports is they bench you for minutes.
And to lower your heart rate, get it all lower so you can kind of and calm yourself down. So if that happens and you, if you have the opportunity to maybe a colleague can take over.
You can step out of the room for a few minutes, calm it down, and then go back in. Not always a possibility, but you might be able to hand over to a colleague and in that time you can stay in the room, but you might be able to calm yourself down to then get back on to the the waggon of presenting so it can be useful. But I think you’ve got to figure out is that going to be the right moment for you or is your brain going to let you do that because we’re very.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Alexander McWilliam
Sort of primitive animals at times, and we can’t go. Yes. Oh, it’s excitement. Nope, I’m just in a panic mode.
Darren A. Smith
I get that I get that. Perfect. Perfect. So let me ask that probably that question everyone who’s watching is thinking, OK, I can’t hand over to a colleague. I am about to have a catastrophe. I’ve had a part one. The rest is going to be a train crash. What can I do?
Alexander McWilliam
Certain things you can do is get it back to the audience. So if I’m ever coaching someone to go ah, I’m having a little bit of, I think it’s all on me. Throw it back to the audience. Why don’t you say, ah, any questions on what I’ve covered or would anyone like to ask something about reflect on your experience. How do people feel about using this technique when you’re presenting and or when you’re what do you think about that in your sales revenue or your sales pipeline for your business?
So you can kind of throw it back to the audience, they can reflect and take some time or even go. I want to take a moment now in a group or in your pairs. Just take a moment to discuss what I’ve been speaking about. And then in that moment, you can grab a drink of water.
You can maybe just take a couple of deep breaths and you can try and reset what it might be, and that might be a nice way of just deflecting back to them without going. Oh, that’s all on me. Calm it down and then you can go back into your presentation.
Darren A. Smith
Lovely. I like that. So you’re transferring the spotlight. That’s really good. Really good. OK.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah.
Darren A. Smith
Let’s take our next question, which is how do I mentally prepare for a big presentation or how do I mentally prepare for a big presentation?
Alexander McWilliam
So there’s there’s a couple of things I would always recommend. So when it comes to that big presentation, we’ve got to go what is at stake. So the big presentation, let’s take a sales pitch, for example. That’s quite a big one usually. Say say there’s £,, on the line, quite a big, quite a big sales pitch. So we know that that’s the potential consequences of of a poor performance. I lose out. So that’s what’s at stake. So mentally we need to go well. What resources do I have?
Darren A. Smith
Yep.
Alexander McWilliam
What skills do I currently have and I go? Can I can I accomplish that successfully go well actually?
I haven’t got many experiences of being in those high stakes situations, so mentally I have to give myself opportunities to present in high stakes. So if you’ve got two weeks, can you essentially do your own hierarchy or step staircase of pressurised situations to mentally prepare you to go? OK, I can do it in front of one person, two people, five people. They’re pressurising. We’re going up that ladder of pressure.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Yep, Yep.
Alexander McWilliam
Mentally, we also go, actually the audience don’t know what I’m going to be speaking about. They haven’t got my script, but they do know the topic. They know I’m going to pitch, you know.
Or we can save them money. How we can generate income, but they don’t know my script. So to remind us how to go. You’re the only person with that script, so that should they’re not going to be like going. OK, actually, you said that word wrong. This is incorrect. So you’re that the other things to think about and we talk about this in the munic is to go well actually can I heighten my status because a lot of the time we worry about the audience because we go, they have a high status than me. They’ve got all the cars they’re in charge of the £,,.
But actually, if I can elevate my status by altering my perceptions of myself by going OK.
I’m going to stand tall and I’m going to go right. I’m in charge, not, you know, like I’m in charge conf confrontational way, but I know my stuff because you are the expert. You have been asked to present because you are the expert on what you’re talking about. And I think that’s something to remember. You are the expert. Whatever. I’ve spoken to many clients. They go. Oh, you know, they’re like, oh, I’m not. I don’t really know my stuff. Go. Yes, you do. You know so much about.
Darren A. Smith
Yep, Yep.
Alexander McWilliam
Energy about public sector about this way more than me. I’m learning. I’m learning so much from coaching you because you’re teaching me all of these things.
Darren A. Smith
Yes.
Alexander McWilliam
Are the expert and we want to get your personality across and that comes through relaxation. So mentally we want to know our audience, we want to heighten our own status. Go. This is what we’re doing. We want to practise under pressurised situations to get us mentally ready and then also we want to focus on that outcome. What is that message? If I can solve that problem to them and focusing on those kind of aspects.
Then remember, it’s a conversation. It’s just a conversation with to or to or to . Whatever it might be. Treat it as a conversation. It doesn’t have to be this big scary thing, because I think presentations and speaking events should be fun. If you have fun. The audience has fun. And if the audience has fun, they’re much more engaged and they enjoy the process and that it becomes so much more rewarding. The Ted talks you watch.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Are so much fun when you’re going this guy or this woman loves what they’re talking about.
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to my presentation. We are talking today. You start to switch off because we’re we’re we don’t think you like what you’re and a lot of the time people aren’t wanting to be there. So can we go? You are the expert, share some fun and share who you are because that’s what we want to see.
Darren A. Smith
Yes.
I love that you’re absolutely right about the Ted talks. I watched one recently about a guy who, just in his words designs book covers and he is amazing. Absolutely amazing. That’s a funny dance as well. But worth watching. I can’t remember his name, but it’s a brilliant Ted talk. Anyway, let’s come back.
The pizzai, particularly like there was I’ve just written down the ladder pressure. I’ve taken it up. So that’s something I’m going to take away. Let’s ask our third question from Google. Why am I so stressed about a presentation?
I think I know the answer, but I’m more interested in yours. Why am I so stressed?
Alexander McWilliam
I think there’s loads of different reasons. I think the main reason or the main rationale is because you haven’t had much experience. That’s a good one. Like, oh, why am I so stressed by this? Because you’ve never done it or you barely ever do it. We your day-to-day job is not to present your day-to-day job is to do account to do software development is to do this. It’s not to present. So you’re going to stress about it because you haven’t had successful experiences of it. That’s why if we we advocate training and practise like a personal trainer in the gym. I’m sure you’re the same with your trainer.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah, yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
You come in, I’ll train you, but actually go away and do it yourself because you can develop that and then I’ll come back in and give you another PT session to heighten those skills, refine it, maybe give you some tips. But actually, if you can practise a lot that stress level goes down, but also potentially you’re putting a lot more pressure on yourself to be perfect to get it right. It has to be. This is such an important pitch and you haven’t put the time into practise or develop it, so I think.
Lack of experience is a big one.
Darren A. Smith
Write about that practise. I mean, here we talk about the world’s stickiest learning, and we advocate the best piece of learning we ever did was driving lessons because we did a bit, stopped in another bit another bit. And we averaged about lessons. Now we’re not going to say everyone’s got to do times of practising, but at least a few might help. OK. Fabulous. Fabulous. Let’s ask our last question from Google. It says what are the five PS of.
Confident, public speaking. I’ve never heard of this question. I’m hoping you have.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, I think there’s there’s always like, what are five PS, what the S is, what are the I think you you could you could do it anything. And So what what the five PS you could be practise, practise, practise, practise, practise that’s could that could be one practise. Well if we do one now be practise pressure training it could be pause pace.
Punctuality being there on time, you know there’s loads of different things, but I think everyone loves it. Like the five PS the, the three Q’s, whatever it might be. But I think practise is probably the main one because actually but practise effectively because actually you can practise loads but inhibit bad, you know.
Instil bad habits. Like if I practise a golf swing really poorly and I’d do it so many times, I’m going to have a poor golf swing. But if I practise it effectively and go right, OK, because they always say practise until perfect and I go well, no practise effectively and properly until you get it perfect. So maybe that’s a weird four piece practise effectively into yeah. Something like that.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
I think there’s something there. I like that because I can practise, practise and have a really good bad swing.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Darren A. Smith
I’ve mastered a bad swing. Look at me actually takes me back. I don’t like golf, but I tried many years ago and the professionals said OK. Darren, you’ve never played before. Let me see what you’ve got. It can’t be that bad. I did it. You went OK. You are that bad? What’s that? He said. You swing like Elvis with your hips. No idea what he meant. I hate golf. Anyway, let’s move on.
So let’s come to your takeaway. Your mnemonic. Something will really help us to overcome the why am I panic before presentations? How do I prepare? How do I get this right?
Alexander McWilliam
Hmm.
So the numerator got is to help you reduce that anxiety before a presentation. So you’ve got a presentation in minutes time. What can I do that’s going to help to elevate me and just try and reduce some of those elements? So we’ve got, it’s we describe it as steady. We’ve got. Yes, steady. We’ve got S stand tall. So our body is going to align with our emotions. So if I’m stood like this.
Darren A. Smith
OK, I’m going to write this down, yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
I’m naturally not going to be as confident, but if I stand tall.
And the great way to do it is just imagine there’s a piece of string at the top of your head standing nice and tall already. That’s going to make you look more confident as well. So that’s one extant tool. The next one T TuneIn. There is a theory of entrainment, which basically are internal rhythms, match our external rhythms. So if we’re feeling very nervous, we can put some calming music on.
Darren A. Smith
About that.
Oh.
Alexander McWilliam
To find your favourite, not some heavy rock music or some metal death of metal, whatever.
So it’s something that will calm me down. However, if you are too calm, you might need something to energise you so you can also use that to energise, but if you’re feeling very overwhelmed, some music to calm you down. I like to use a bit of classical music. It just helps go. OK, just calm everything down South TuneIn.
Darren A. Smith
None.
And and is there something I’m just going to check around? You’ve seen Barack music. I know something about using Baroque. Does that help or is that not? Are we on a different wavelength?
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah.
I think it it really depends on the on the rhythm of what it is. So I think find a music that you like and you find relaxing and whatever rhythm that is. If your heart rate’s going really fast, just even something that just slows it down and it’s just something just a little bit of a slower beat just to kind of it could just be a bit of just gentle sort. You can even tap or something like that. So we want to tune in that.
Darren A. Smith
OK.
Yeah.
All right, all right. So I’ve got George Michael’s older favourite record.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, if that if that works, that works. I’ve. I’ve got some. I’ve got a I’m trying to think of what my one is. There’s a. There’s variety of ones, either musical, you know, either it’s going to be instrumental music or it could be. Or it could be, you know, vocal music as well. So whatever you find most relaxing. So we’ve got, you know, tuning the next E Envision success.
Darren A. Smith
Love it, OK?
Alexander McWilliam
Always I advocate to do a performance visualisation before your presentation. A simple thing is to close your eyes.
And imagine walking through into that room, or turning that zoom, or teams meeting on you are opening your eyes. You’re speaking, they are loving it. They’re smiling, they’re nodding, they’re clapping. They’re throwing money and contracts at you. They you, they ask some questions, you know how to answer every question. They give you a standing ovation. Afterwards, everyone’s clapping and applauding you and then you open your eyes and then you walk into that room where you turn that zoom call on.
You are picturing and you’re aligning your body and mind to the success that you want to do.
So already you’ve got that more positive mindset, focusing on what could go right as opposed to what dwelling or what could go wrong. So we envision success.
Darren A. Smith
Like that is that very similar to Stephen Covey’s end in mind, would that be similar?
Alexander McWilliam
I’m not as familiar with that so.
Darren A. Smith
OK, he was talking about something similar, he said. Everything in the world was created twice. Once in your mind and once in reality. So I guess it’s similar. OK, Envision success, fabulous. Love that.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, yeah, envision success. A anchor, your breath.
So this is a really good one. So when we get panics and nerves, our breathing goes all over the place. So we want to try and slow that breathing down and anchor it. So various techniques, if you’ve done yoga, Pilates, you’re probably familiar with some of these, the box breathing info for hold for four out for four, hold for four just slows that all down. You’ve also got one called like alternative nostril breathing.
Which essentially is you go up one nostril, you breathe in and you breathe out the other nostrils. You can hold your nose going, and then you go. Be careful. Don’t do too much, because obviously, if you, if you if you blow too hard, you might snot might come out. But it’s it’s just a way just to slow everything down. Because when we’re panicked, when we’re when our physiological arousal is high, everything’s kind of going into OverDrive. So slowing things down really helps. So anchor that breath.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
OK, box breathing. I haven’t heard of that. I’m going to write that down particularly OK like that? Yep.
Alexander McWilliam
The next D distract yourself.
A lot of the time the worries get into our brain and we overthink everything. There was a study in by AI think a German group called Bottomman and Rompke, and they looked at the effects of playing with a dog feeding a fish, watering a plant before a presentation to distract an individual. So actually the worry doesn’t creep into their minds. So I’d always encourage individuals to go right. Can you distract yourself before a presentation?
It might be, you know if you’ve got a pet or a plant doing something like that, it could be simply maybe you’re doing your nails or something to distract your mind, so you’re not going to let those worrisome thoughts in of going oh, my God, I’m worried about this. I’m worried about this. I’m worried about this. So you don’t let it fill in that your brain, your, your, your brain with all of those worries and thoughts. So distract yourself. Obviously, if you’re in the room with a group of people presenting having a dog.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
Might not be easy, but you might be able to do something else that just distracts you.
From those worries, so we have distract and the last one why you’re in control. So this is an amalgamation of reframing that anxiety into excitement. So we can reappraise that, but also elevating your status by there’s a technique called altering your perceptions of personal power. So heighten your status. Imagine the audience all owes you money already that heightens your status because actually.
Darren A. Smith
Yeah.
Alexander McWilliam
They owe me money. I’m feeling higher. But also you are the presentation. Yeah. I think you advocate this as well. Like you are the presentation. No one else is. You’re in control. No one has the script. No one knows what’s going to happen. You are everything. So reframe that. So there’s a couple of them stuck in together. About going. You are in charge and you are the expert. So remember, you’ve got this. That’s another way to remember. You’ve got this. I believe in you. You’ve got this.
So we’ve got steady. You know, we’ve got the S, we’ve got the T, the E, the A, the D the Y.
All of this thing helps to stead you before a presentation.
Darren A. Smith
I love that I’m just going to put that on screen with my very bad writing, but this, but this is the mnemonic you’ve come up with, which I love. Steady. So if you’re nervous, worried about a presentation you’re about to either go on stage or make a big pitch. Steady is where it is. So we’ve got to stand tall to tune in the Envision success. Anchor your breath box breathing love that these distract yourself. And why is your in control? Wow, I really like that.
Alexander McWilliam
Oh, look at that.
Darren A. Smith
I really do. That’s good. I’m just checking on time.
That’s a great mnemonic. I love that.
Alexander McWilliam
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Darren A. Smith
I haven’t seen that before.
The two that stand out for me particularly are envisioned success because that that ties in with Kobe’s ending mine, which I absolutely love and ties in with sports visualisation, which is to see it before it happens and the other one has got to be the box breathing because we all know we should breathe better. We don’t have a technique and I like that. I’m going to look that up.
Before we leave the viewers.
Any last tip you’d like to give them? If they’re thinking, I get that I can do steady.
What else would you like to share with them that might really help them should you have one last tip?
Alexander McWilliam
We just back to what we talked about earlier. It’s the importance of practise. I think practise and practise under pressure because you can practise in a very relaxed manner but if you don’t have that pressurised situation beforehand it will throw you when the real pressure comes. So I would advocate practise and practise under pressure more than anything.
Darren A. Smith
And that and I wrote down the ladder of pressure, which I I really I can see it because not often can we find if we’re going to present people are there people around who might just let me do this beforehand? No, but there might be . There might be . There might be some way I can get myself under pressure.
Alexander McWilliam
Hmm.
Darren A. Smith
I love that Alex. That’s been fantastic. We’ve asked the five questions that people are asking on Google about why am I nervous? How do I mentally prepare? And you’ve given us a mnemonic of six things with steady.
Love it. Thank you very much.
Alexander McWilliam
Grandma, no thanks for having me. Absolute pleasure.
Darren A. Smith
Well, we hope to see you next time where we can talk more. We might get into your seventy , thesis. We’ll find a way to get into that and we’ll see what questions come back and then maybe we can do a Part if you’re willing.
Alexander McWilliam
Yeah, sounds great.
Darren A. Smith
All right. Thank you very much for joining us.
Alexander McWilliam
Thank you very much.
Darren A. Smith
OK, bye.
