- Tons of studies show
that public speaking
is a major cause for anxiety
for many people.
At the same time,
good public speaking
can help you accelerate your career.
So today, we're gonna give you three killer tips
to help you overcome
any public speaking anxiety you have.
And I have a special guest with us today
to help us do that.
We are here today with my friend Kit Pang.
How are you doing today, Kit?
- Alex, I'm so glad to be here.
Thank you so much.
- It's so wonderful to have you back on the channel.
So lemme tell you a little bit about Kit,
if you have not met him yet.
He is the founder of BostonSpeaks.
He is a three-time coach for TEDx Speakers.
He has lots of high-profile clients
in the Boston area and beyond,
and he recently ran a public speaking summit
that was focused entirely
on helping speakers like you overcome your anxiety.
I was one of 30 guest speakers that participated in that.
And by the way,
you can still access a lot of that content for free.
I will put a link in the description below
that you can take a look at
when we're done watching this video.
So Kit, let's talk about the three big takeaways
that you received, that you've gathered
from this public speaking summit.
So the first question is this,
what is the cause of most of our public speaking
in the first place?
- Yeah, and the cause,
just to drill down to the answer right now
is basically, how we think about the situation
that's in front of us.
Basically saying, our mindset.
I just wanna give a quick reasoning into that.
Now, I'm not sure if you are all aware,
but your emotions
only last for 90 seconds.
So that means within the 90 seconds,
your body is releasing all these chemicals, adrenaline.
And then after 90 seconds,
the question is, "Why does the emotion keep on coming back?"
In our case, the nerves or the anxiety?
It's because we are thinking of the same thing such as,
"Oh, my voice is trembling again.
I'm such a bad speaker, I'm nervous."
"So have you ever spoke before?"
Many people say this,
and I asked them, "Do you get nervous?
Kind of like when you get in a minute, two minute,
three minutes in after you talk?"
And most people say,
"No, I get into a rhythm.
I feel good."
It's usually that buildup, right?
So again, your emotions only last for 90 seconds.
So the question is why?
It's your thoughts, your mindset.
We keep on having these thoughts
over, and over, and over again.
That's why we just keep on feeling it,
over and over again.
- That's exactly right.
I've experienced the same thing.
The emotions start to fade away,
but then when you start thinking those thoughts again,
it makes the anxiety surge up again.
So if it's our mindset,
how do we get to the bottom
of what's making us tick inside?
How do we explore that more?
- Yeah, and I'll give us a good exercise to do that first,
but I just wanna quickly explain.
When it comes to our mindset
if any of you have seen
the iceberg picture example before.
Like you can see,
you know, what's on top of the iceberg,
and then there's a lot of things that you can't really see
under the iceberg.
So when it comes to the thought side of things,
it's really, do you know what your conscious
that you're thinking about?
For example, people might say, "My voice is trembling.
Oh, it's trembling again."
But there's usually a deeper thought,
which we call a belief,
that you're usually not aware of.
So just as a quick example,
of one of my clients, we actually used this exercise.
It's called the Five Whys.
They use this in business a lot.
So basically,
once you know what kind of thoughts that you have,
you drill that thought down
with more questions as in,
"Why do I feel this way?
What does that mean?"
And then you can ask more and more and more
because when you ask it more,
you drill down to a more deep-rooted thought.
So that example, of one of my clients
is basically, whenever she speaks to higher-ups,
she feels like she always has to give the right answer
and give value, okay?
But whenever she talks to people that she manages
her coworkers, people that she sees every single day,
she's fine just being herself
because it's not as high stakes.
So what we did with the Five Whys exercise
is basically, if we know the first thought,
as in, "Oh, I feel so nervous, I always, you know,
I have to be, I have to always up my game,
when I'm speaking to executives
because the stakes are high."
And then, and I ask, "Why do you feel like
you always have to be at the top of your game?"
And then she would answer something like,
"Well, if I don't give value,
people will look down on me.
People will see maybe that I'm incompetent.
And then I would..."
Here's another question that you can do on your own.
So when you ask another question,
you want to ask another question
based off of what you said, okay?
So another question I could ask would be,
So are you saying
if you don't know what you're talking about,
that you will seem incompetent?"
And then, you know, we can go dig down,
and dig down, and dig down,
and dig down further. - Right.
- But that's a quick example of the Five Why,
Five Question Exercise,
to what we're doing with the mindsets.
- Right, I love that
because so often people will talk about,
"My voice trembles."
Well, that's just a symptom
of what's happening in your head.
And if your voice is trembling,
why is it trembling?
And you trace those thoughts down,
keep drilling down,
until you get to the root, which is,
"If I make a mistake,
if I'm not flawless or something like that, right?
Then I won't seem competent in front of my bosses."
That will, if that's what you're thinking,
you're going to get nervous
because you have just raised the stakes
on your own
and put more pressure on yourself.
But what I'm hearing is,
when this client was,
this speaker was talking to her team,
it wasn't about that, right?
She just wanted to be authentic and be herself.
And then, of course, she probably came across much better
when she had that mindset.
So that's fantastic.
By the way, just another reminder for you viewer,
if you wanna see the public speaking summit content
that Kit has assembled,
there's a link to that in the description below the video.
Let's go through another example
of digging down into the why.
Why people are anxious
when they don't really need to be?
Do you have another example from a speaker?
- Yes, and so this other client that I work with,
here's the thing.
He was at some event a long time ago,
and he saw another speaker, okay?
And this other speaker, to him, was a nervous wreck.
I'm not sure if you've seen people in real life
or on YouTube, or other videos,
this guy was a nervous wreck.
And because he saw someone else really just
you know, fidgeting,
you know, sweating, and really nervous,
to him, he said,
"Man, I never want to come away like that, okay?
And so just by seeing
other people being nervous,
or actually just hearing other people say,
"Hey, being nervous is bad."
We conceptualize that.
And then we internalize that ourselves, right?
And so we've created a meaning of our own of,
Man, we can never be seen as nervous like that."
But it all goes back to, Alex,
I just wanna wrap up,
kind of the things that we just talked about, right?
One, it's all about your mindset,
how you're thinking about your speaking.
Second, do you know more of the deep-rooted thought?
And so to use this example,
the person is basically saying, "Disbelief.
If I'm seen as nervous
or someone else sees someone else as nervous,
that means being nervous is a bad thing."
Now some of you might be thinking,
"Kit, of course, being nervous is a bad thing."
That is under the iceberg.
That is the subconscious. - Right
- How do I know
when someone is free from speaking anxiety?
We're able to work through all of the beliefs
that's causing speaking anxiety, in the first place.
Just like that one,
being seen as nervous is a bad thing.
And just a quick thing, you know,
you were mentioning the Fearless Public Speaking Summit.
The reason, the main reason we're having that summit
is because if you want to be a better speaker,
we are stuck, usually, with what?
Our own mindset.
And so we have 30 amazing speakers,
Alex, himself, and other great speakers,
showing you about how they think
about their nerves,
and about their speaking.
So that's one of the main reasons
why we have that summit
in the first place,
But I'm going on here, Alex.
Give It back to you. - No, that's great.
I believe that we all need role models.
And if we can hear that people
who have gone before us
have conquered this and managed this successfully,
it's really inspirational
to hear them overcome that.
So just to recap,
before we get to the third tip.
And this is really a sequence
of three steps. - Yeah.
- The first thing you have to realize,
that your inner world
is driving your anxiety,
your mindset, your thought patterns,
and is pushing those emotions.
Secondly, you have to drill down
by asking good questions.
"Why, why, why?"
Until you get down to the root cause,
that belief that triggers your anxiety all the more.
So now we get to the third tip,
and that is,
how can we go about starting to improve our mindset
so that we can overcome those limitations?
- To improve your mindset,
this is something that took me a while
to really grasp the concept of,
is to really understand
the way that we are looking at a situation
is only a way, it's only our way,
that we're used to looking at the situation.
The key is knowing how to keep an open mind.
Now, when I say that,
many of you might think, "Kit, I have an open mind already."
But it's learning how to have an open mind,
and look at all the different perceptions of it.
There's a great quote that I wanna share with you, Alex,
and the rest of the listeners.
I forgot who said this, I read online somewhere.
And the person said,
"Your mind is like a parachute.
If it's not open, it doesn't work.'
Being able to see different perspectives
about the situation that you're in
will set you free from speaking anxiety.
It's really as simple as that.
- That's great.
You know, one of the things as you're talking,
I'm thinking about, "Whoa, what's my mindset?
How did I get over it?"
Because I don't, I get a little nervous,
but just the normal amount.
Anxiety does not hold me back from public speaking anymore.
And one of the decisions I made,
the new thought I have,
that I adopted a while back was,
"This is all just practice." - Hmm
- I view every single public speaking
situation I've ever been in
as practice for the next one.
I have been right in front of clients,
high-paying clients,
and I still say to myself, "It's just practice.
It's just practice."
And so the fact that it's practice relaxes me
because I practice my public speaking a ton.
It's just one more practice.
And it really frees me then to improvise a little bit,
to be myself, to be spontaneous,
and let my personality shine through,
rather than letting that anxiety come through.
So I just wanna remind the viewer one more time
that you can access
a lot of that content for free
from Kit's public speaking summit on anxiety,
and gaining more confidence.
And kit, did you wanna give me a quick
description of that before we sign off?
- Yeah, so the Fearless Public Speaking Summit
is all about helping you become a more confident speaker,
and knowing how to break free from speaking anxiety,
by understanding the mindsets and strategies
of some of the best speakers in the world.
- Wonderful, there's a link below
like I mentioned.
Kit, thanks for coming back on the channel,
and spending some time with us today.
- Alex, thank you so much.
Pleasure being here.
Thank you so much.
- See you all later.
Take care, bye-bye.