It seems to be human nature that we focus disproportionately on the disappointments, embarrassments or failures of the past, more than our successes.   If you have ever had a bad experience during a presentation or speech, you may well have found that you still think about it in the days running up to speaking engagements.

Focusing on negative experiences from the past naturally leads you to relive the feelings of disappointment or embarrassment all over again. You can then become trapped in the cycle of low confidence contributing to poor performance which results in more damage to our confidence and even more disappointing results. According to sport psychologist Steve Bull, in his great book ‘The Game Plan’, the way to break this cycle is to regularly reconnect with past achievements.

Steve recommends creating and maintaining a ‘Confidence Peaks Chart’. This concept is as useful for helping to build and maintain confidence for presenters as it is for elite athletes. Simply draw an image of twelve interconnecting mountain peaks on a piece of paper. Then write a brief description of a public speaking achievement that you are really proud of in each one.

If you are a very nervous speaker and you overcame your fears to give a one minute presentation in a meeting 2 months ago, and then write it down in one peak. If you are more experienced, you may want to note down the fantastic presentation you made to the board six months ago.

Update the chart regularly, whenever you have a new public speaking achievement to record. From now on every time you need a confidence boost before a presentation, reconnect with your past successes through your confidence peaks chart. As you read about each success, dwell on it, recall what you can see, hear and feel about that time.

Even the most successful speakers can occasionally suffer from a ‘crisis of confidence’. By using and updating your chart regularly you can focus on your past successes as a speaker rather than the occasional disappointment or imagined future failure. This can create a virtuous circle of confidence rather than a vicious circle of declining performance that will serve you well as you develop your speaking skills.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 18th, 2007 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Fear of Public Speaking, Confidence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.