Two Things to Help You Avoid the Doom Loop When Presenting

Many presentations these days tend to be doomed to failure simply because of our unavoidable and subconscious survival instincts. It is but natural for many of us to go into fight or flight mode when presenting simply because it is a horrifying experience for many to be standing and talking in front of a live audience. Thanks also to mirror neurons, our audience can see and feel what we’re actually feeling if we’re not too careful, and they tend to mirror those feelings too and soon communication breaks down. You feel like your audience is losing interest and you panic… your audience panics in return and there goes your presentation down the drain.

So what can we do to avoid this scenario? How can we prevent presentation doom from happening?

Here are two tips you can do provided by Nick Morgan:

1. Control your gestures.  For the most part, controlling our facial expression is quite easy. We smile even if we feel like crying. We generally put up a happy face even if we feel like beating someone to a pulp. But how about the rest of our body? How do we control our gestures? After all, they happen with the help of our unconscious mind and most of the time we are not even aware of it. What we can do is practice in front of the mirror or have someone observe us while speaking. Have that person point out the negative gestures we do which don’t help our presentations at all.Repeat as often as possible until we are able to control the littlest of our unhelpful gestures.
2. Control your emotions.  This one is easier to do. It’s just a matter of training our minds and changing our behaviors. If you don’t feel particularly excited about giving a presentation, think about a time when you last felt happy, excited and giddy. Use that memory to access the emotions you need at the moment to help you with your presentations. Then just repeat this process until it’s second nature to you.

For more insight on this matter, please head to:  How to Avoid the Presentation Doom Loop