Is It Fear or Excitement? The Simple Reframe That Calms Public Speaking Nerves

A few months ago, a client of mine was sitting in his office anxiously counting the seconds until he had to step in front of his employees…heart racing, stomach doing that weird flip it does and brain rapidly running through everything that could possibly go wrong.

He told me he wanted to back out and have someone else address the team in his place.

Instead, he took a breath and said, out loud, to no one but himself: "I'm excited for this."

Not "I'm nervous." Not "I hope I don't screw this up." Just...excited.

He walked in and gave one of the best presentations he'd given in a long time. All without the need to take anti-anxiety medicine.

I’m sure you’ve heard all the stats. That public speaking is the #1 fear in the world. That 3 out of 4 people have glossophobia (the fear of public speaking). But did you know that this anxiety doesn’t just apply to public speaking?

Somewhere between 30% and 40% percent of Americans deal with communication apprehension severe enough to affect how they speak up, causing them to avoid doing so altogether. So if your hands shake before a meeting or your voice wobbles at the start of a presentation, you are not alone.

If there’s one thing I've learned after more than a decade of coaching people through this: it's rarely about speaking up or presenting. It's fear of failing, being judged, or looking foolish in front of people whose opinion matters to you. The speaking is just where all of that shows up.

So before you give into that fear, I’m going to give you a technique that will change everything:

Reframe your fear as excitement.

Fear and excitement feel identical in your body. Racing heart. Sweaty palms. Shallow, quick breathing. That fluttery stomach. Shaky hands. Your nervous system can't actually tell the difference between "I'm about to bomb this" and "I'm about to do something amazing." It just knows you're activated.

So when those butterflies show up before your next meeting or presentation, they're not necessarily telling you anything is wrong. They might just be telling you something matters.

"That's nice, Shannon, but I really am nervous."

I hear this a lot. And I get it, the reframe can sound like a nice idea that falls apart the second your heart starts pounding in real life.

Except it actually works. Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks ran a series of studies on exactly this, and she found something surprising: most people's instinct is to try to calm themselves down before something stressful. But calming down asks your body to shift from a high energy state to a low energy state, and that's a big jump. 

Reappraising your anxiety as excitement asks for a much smaller shift, since both are high energy states. Her research found that people who reframed their anxiety as excitement performed better than people who tried to talk themselves into being calm.

That's exactly what my client did. For weeks, every time he felt those nerves ratchet up before a meeting or presentation, he swapped "I'm nervous" for "I'm excited." Out loud, every time. At first it felt like a trick he was playing on himself. But eventually, his mind and body stopped questioning it. The excitement became real.

So the next time you feel your nervous system amping up, try these techniques:

Say it out loud. Not in your head, actually out loud if you can. "I'm excited for this." It feels a little silly the first few times. Do it anyway. Saying it out loud does more than thinking it. Psychologists call this the production effect: speaking something activates more of your brain at once than silent thought does, which makes it stick.

Name the outcome you want. Instead of rehearsing the version where you what-if everything that goes wrong, say the version where it goes right. "I know what I'm talking about and I'm going to nail it" does something very different to your brain than "please don't let me mess this up."

Do the reframe early. Don't wait until you're standing at the podium with your heart in your throat. Start the night before, or that morning. Anticipatory nerves respond to this too.

Notice the sensation, not the story. Next time you feel that flutter, pause and ask yourself: is this fear, or is this excitement wearing a disguise? Sometimes just asking the question is enough to shift it.

None of this makes the nerves disappear. It just changes what you do with them.

Nerves like this don't have to be something you just push through. If you want some one on one time to work through what's underneath yours, book a free 30 minute Spark Session. It's a short conversation, and you'll leave with real tools, not just a pep talk.

Book your Spark Session ->

Speak Success, 

Shannon