The Only Thing to Fear is Fear Itself – But That’ll Do

I can identify with Sara Palin’s low-tech crib notes. For a high school French final, I copied conjugated verbs on my upper thigh all the way to the panty line. The guy next to me failed, but I passed.

Unfortunately, this technique doesn't help most of us when forced to speak in public. At such times, the problem isn’t remembering the point, it’s voicing it. Pushing the point up the throat, convincing it to take that leap of faith off the tongue.

Public figures, teachers, preachers, and other blow hards can do it, just because they’re always doing it. Face the same fear often enough, it goes from frightening to downright boring.

But for those who speak to a large audience only on rare occasions, the body tends to betray the spirit. An invisible hand grabs and strangles the throat, and another invisible hand shakes the brain up and down like a snow globe.

I thought about this recently, while comfortably in the audience during a public hearing, watching one or two speakers make rather a hash of things. I felt a patronizing sympathy. As one who has done her fair share of public speaking , I chose to identify with the times I amused and charmed -- when I had been saying essentially the same thing to a similar group of people day after day, week after week.

But buried deep among my many, many humiliations, were the times I made a speech when woefully out of practice. When the words I had to say were perfectly fine, but I couldn’t find the breath to say them. And then my body would whisper, “I’ll save you!” sending a series of adrenaline torpedos. And then we'd bomb.

You’d think the body and mind would prop each other up in time of need, because really, when it comes down to it, all they’ve got is each other. But usually they’re at cross purposes; each with an opposing agenda. That’s the major reason I’m not my own best friend. We have so little in common.