Overcoming the fear

I was not sure if I should write this or not. But I thought, if I don’t write this now, I won’t be able to overcome my fear of public speaking ever. This is in regard of the 23rd Tech Talk that happened yesterday. I was one of the speakers of the talk and it didn’t go well.

What actually happened was my animation stopped working (God knows why) after I presented few slides. I was doing fine in the first few slides even if I stumbled on some words to express fully. I tried for 2–3 minutes to fix the problem but it didn’t work out. In the interval of those few minutes, I was freaked out and I was sweating. Things didn’t go as expected so I was anxious. I managed to give remaining presentation anyway. By the end I gained the confidence which I knew I had from the beginning.

I had already presented in one of the previous tech talks and it was good. I do not have a stage freight and I am not very uncomfortable in mass. But I messed up yesterday and upon thinking I came to conclusion that there were some factors behind it. It may be because of the internal pressure I felt because I was being filmed. I may have perceived subconsciously that I should not freak out in front of camera no matter what. I guess if there were no cameras, I wouldn’t have freaked out. Also the previous speaker had presented very well with good confidence. He had increased the standard of presentation and I had a pressure to meet that standard. Once the things got bad, it got even worse.

I have been thinking and I know that I could have done a lot better. I have been mentally scripting what I could have said when the things weren’t going as expected. I could have handled the situation much better and not mess the presentation. I could have talked about how I was feeling before continuing the remaining presentation so that I wouldn’t have lost my confidence. I have now figured out what I should do and say if the situation doesn’t get as expected in the future presentations. I hope that this was the last time I ever freaked out while delivering a public speech.

I do not regret for standing up to give a tech talk even though it was bad. I am happy that I stood up for the talk and learned the valuable lesson which I wouldn’t have learned if I had missed the opportunity. I guess this experience will be helpful while presenting big in the future.