Embrace Your Authentic Presence: Overcoming Nerves in Public Speaking

We often hear the phrase “fake it 'till you make it.” While visualisation and power poses can have real effects on confidence, there’s a crucial difference between preparing your body and mindset and pretending to be confident while ignoring what’s really going on underneath.

It's one thing if you're an actor or someone who feels comfortable pretending to be someone else—maybe your confident 'alter ego.' But what if you aren’t? What if you want to overcome your nerves and deliver your best speech, pitch, or presentation? This post explores grounded, evidence-backed strategies to calm your nerves, connect to your authentic presence, and step up without faking a version of yourself that feels false or unsustainable.

Understanding Nerves: Why Do We Get Nervous Before Speaking?

Nerves are normal! Even seasoned performers and speakers feel them. To be completely honest, I get nervous before I perform, speak, and sometimes even coach or teach. Public speaking and performing tap into a primal fear of rejection and exposure. This physiological reaction is part of the Fight, Flight, or Freeze mechanism. The trick isn’t to eliminate nerves entirely, but to understand them.

It's important to build strategies to move through your nerves and work with them. Recognising that nerves are a natural part of the process will help you regain control.

The Pitfalls of Pretending

What doesn’t work? You’ve probably heard advice like “just act confident.” While visualisation and positive body language can help, pretending you feel confident when you’re actually spiralling inside can disconnect you from your audience—and more importantly, from yourself. This kind of faking often creates more stress.

Your body knows when you’re not being truthful. Remember, the body doesn’t lie!

Effective Strategies: What Does Work

Instead of pushing your nerves away, learn to work with them. Here are three key techniques:

1. Ground the Body and Breathe

• Plant your feet firmly on the ground.

• Feel the contact with the floor.

• Soften your knees, jaw, shoulders, and stomach—these areas often hold tension.

• Breathe low into your belly—the deeper, the better.

  
  

This practice helps you get out of your head and back into your body. I call this your base point.

2. Shift the Focus

• Shift your attention from worrying about what people think of you to what you want them to understand, feel, or do. What is it you want from your audience?

• Shift the intent to connect, not to perform.

  
  

3. Use Your Voice with Intention

• Don’t push for volume or strain for energy. Instead, speak with clarity and care from a place of ease and relaxation.

• Imagine you are sending your sound to your audience, almost as if your voice is an arrow aimed at your target—your audience.

• Warm up your voice beforehand. I recommend a thorough vocal warm-up, just like actors do. Tailor this warm-up to the time you have available and the circumstances around you.

  
  

True Confidence: Embodied, Not Performed

Real confidence doesn’t mean never feeling nervous. It means being able to hold steady and trust yourself and your work despite the nerves. Authentic confidence allows your audience to see a genuine human being who is clear, grounded, and fully present.

This takes practice! It’s entirely learnable. Practice may not make perfect, but it will certainly help. And when you think about it, what is 'perfect' anyway?

Conclusion: Want More Help?

If you or your team want to dive deeper into practical, evidence-backed tools for speaking with presence and clarity (without pretence), please get in touch about 1-2-1 coaching or group workshops.

Let’s shift how you speak, lead, and show up... for good!