If you are nervous about a presentation

Summary

The text discusses the common experience of nervousness before a presentation and suggests embracing the emotion rather than avoiding it.

Abstract

Many people experience anxiety and nervousness before giving a presentation, often resorting to temporary coping mechanisms to alleviate these feelings. However, these methods are usually short-lived and can lead to a cycle of fear and anxiety, exacerbating the original emotions. The author proposes that acknowledging and observing the nervousness, rather than trying to suppress it, can naturally dissolve the emotions, allowing for a more authentic and less resource-intensive experience during the presentation.

Opinions

The author believes that temporary solutions like positive self-talk only mask the underlying nervousness and worry, rather than addressing them.
Fear of experiencing nervousness again can lead to a recursive cycle of emotions, which the author likens to a function call without a base condition in programming.
The author suggests that allowing oneself to feel the original emotion of worry can lead to a resolution, similar to the relief of watching someone else handle the stress of a presentation.
The text implies that the anticipation of the presentation is often worse than the actual event, with emotions frequently dissipating once the presentation begins.
The author emphasizes that overthinking and trying to control emotions related to presentations is counterproductive, akin to unnecessarily "washing the dishes."
The author notes that this approach may not guarantee a good presentation but is a more honest and resource-efficient way of dealing with presentation anxiety.

If you are nervous about a presentation

When one has a presentation they get nervous and worried. It is not exactly a pleasant feeling, So they think about ways. to get rid of this feeling and give themselves temporary solutions to get rid of the worry. here are few:

“it’s just a presentation”

“picture everyone naked”

“get it over with”

“just imagine the joy after you are done”

(I personally like and use the last one)

So they become temporary calm using this approach, suppressing their original emotions. The nervous and worry is still there it was just temporarily tucked away with good self-talk.

Then after a while, fear sneaks in. It is not the fear from the presentation necessarily but its fear from feeling nervous again, because they didn’t like that feeling and they are afraid to have it. They try to remember the temp solutions antidotes but they don’t come to mind or when they do they aren’t as effective. more fear seeps in because the solutions mo longer work, fear creates more emotions of worry and anxiety, that presentation might go bad, they might stutter, they might not remember what to say. This creates more fear, they might not get the promotion or may get ridiculed or worse fired.

It is like a recursive function call of emotional rollercoaster with no base condition. Each emotion creates a stack frame with its own local variables, eventually they run out of stack space.

Why? because you’re afraid of this? why? because you’re afraid that? why? because you’re afraid the other? and so on.

Have we considered allowing ourselves to feel the original emotion and Be worried for once? Acknowledge that emotion, Watch ourselves be naturally worried and nervous. Truly there isn’t anything we can do to get rid of it.

You see it’s like watching someone else being nervous about to give a presentation (when you don’t have to) what a relief that someone else has to do it but you don’t right?

just watch, whatever emotion you get, you get. The base condition is met, the recursive function stops.

You then enter the hall, do the presentation and leave. Often times all emotions dissolve by themselves and disappear when you utter the first word in the talk. So you see all the thinking and wheel spinning was a waste of resources and stack space.

It is exactly like washing the dishes.

P.s. If you follow this as an advice to do good presentations you will get disappointed.

Just wash the dishes.