Fighting stage fear - Practice and preparation are the Key

In the first part of this series I spoke about the importance of tackling stage fear. As children, some amount of anxiety to perform in front of an audience (even as an adult ) is absolutely normal.

Everyone gets a little nervous when you’re up to face a group of ideas in front of a group of people, there are a whole lot of fears that include presenting your ideas and opinion in a concise way, putting yourself out there to be criticized and trying to sell your opinion to people.

While some amount of stage fear is natural, people showing excessive taciturn behaviour may develop other drawbacks and handicaps later in life. I had mentioned a little incident from my childhood in the previous post on stage fear.

It was my first ever participation in a debate. It was a competition hosted by my school in Gwalior and I was to speak on Science and Religion.

I was this shy kid, who had been home-schooled for the most part and here I was in front of an audience, waiting for my turn to be judged.

This incident quite opened me up to another aspect of human behavior - no matter how good you actually are at what you do, when you see worthy competitors, your confidence dwindles, if only by a bit.

Like most others, when I saw the kind of talent I was up against, I wasn’t just scared, I doubted my own ability to deliver a halfway decent performance as well.

Also, my own principal seated at the front towering above the others wasn’t doing much to calm my nerves. Soon, my name was called out and I walked up to the stage sheepishly, my palms sweaty.

I did the usual rigmarole of addressing all the honorary guests there before I started my monologue. I found myself quite tongue tied and couldn’t speak loudly, my father later told me that I was almost murmuring !

As if that weren’t bad enough, after a few sentences, I forgot my lines and went blank. I couldn’t seem to even know what to say next - my feet froze and my brain couldn’t seem to process what to do next.  I stood there cold and blank, while the other students booed and the principal finally asked me to leave.

Dejected, I went home.  To my surprise, my father said I had done well for a first-timer and all I needed was practice.

I was made to practice all speeches in front of my family after that - practice and preparation are the key.

Soon after, in the span of a year, I was actually winning debate competitions.

These years of preparation and practice made me capable enough to give extempore speeches n Science College, where I was pitted against senior students and won many competitions. I soon became a regular of the debate team.

This just goes to say that with the right amount of preparation and practice, no goal, no matter how small or big - is achievable.

In my next blog, I will talk about another memorable life lesson I learn. I hope you all like these series of my early life. Do let me know what other posts you’d like to see here.