Learning Public Speaking with Meditation

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This is an article on how I looked into my fear of public speaking. The whole process became mediation, a journey both inward and outward in life.

The Fear

I remember a time when I was 8 years old. There would be Independence Day celebration in our school, and I would always be eager to prepare a speech for it and go in front of the whole school. I remember being shy, and nervous but not panicking. Then I went to a boarding school to study as a teenager. It was a time of no internet or smartphones. During our morning prayer session, it would be the responsibility of a student to collect important news by reading newspapers, go up to the stage and read in front of 300 students. I remember being scared to death when it would be my turn to stand on the stage and read the news in front of everyone. We also used to have a lot of extracurricular activities such as debate and speech competitions, and I would never participate. Teachers would criticize me for being good at studies yet never showing interest in these competitions. They would say don’t be afraid, but for me, it was just too difficult. The trembling in my voice, the rush of anxiety in my whole body, heightened heartbeat, the blood rushing through the veins of my neck, losing sense of what should I say, and my awareness of all of this, I would experience it all.

I remember sitting through a debate competition in school, as an audience. I heard all the speeches, all of them really good, yet I could not ignore the lack of depth and knowledge in some of them. I thought to myself, “I know a lot about these topics but I can never go and speak fluently in front of everyone.”

Finding a Public Speaking Space in Brussels: Debate Meetup

That fear remained, through my academic and corporate life, and I dreaded project and work presentations. Then I moved to Brussels, Belgium to start my PhD studies. I stumbled upon a debate club, where people gather weekly to debate on diverse topics related to science, social issues, philosophy, and sometimes fun topics. Typically 20-30 people attend each session. A motion is given by the organizers and two teams of 4, debate on the motion. You can either choose to participate as a speaker or just listen as an audience. The first time I went, I thought, “Wow this is really cool.” I was amazed by a few people speaking so fluently.

I went home and kept thinking how good it would be if I could speak up like that in front of everyone. That was also a time when I was diving deep into meditation. I decided to apply meditation in learning to speak publicly with confidence.

Meditation

Meditation is when there is a witnessing/awareness/observation/feeling of everything in you and the outside world, yet there is no judgment at all of what you are observing and being aware of.

It sounds very simple, yet the application of meditation to day-to-day life is transformative. By the end of the post, you will realize how this simple act of observation without judgment gives you a deep understanding of life. It changes the very quality of fear, anxiety and nervousness that we experience in life.

My Starting Mindset

This was my thought process as I set my goal:

I want to be naturally and effortlessly good at speaking publicly. I have great ideas and beautiful insights into life. I want to be capable of presenting myself someday. The goal is not to be a great public speaker but to develop the capability to speak publicly as the way I want to.

Why was this my goal?

In trying to become a good public speaker, I have to fit into the definition of what is good. The definition is usually a collective agreement of the majority of people in the society. It would be about adjusting my self-expression. It would be about studying great public speakers in history and finding good qualities in them and try imitating and implement them in my speech. This is what most of the self-help industry, and “How to improve public speaking ?” articles are about.

This didn’t felt congruent with my vision of how we should live and grow in life. So I set a goal to come to a state of myself, where I can effortlessly speak publicly. 

Understanding The Fear

Children

As I see, most children have an innate ability to speak publicly in a very natural way. They are a bit shy, nervous, looking down, looking here and there, pause at times, but they speak. And sometimes if they know what they are saying, they speak very fluently, and with great enthusiasm and excitement. There is a carefreeness and spontaneity to their speech. This is how a normal and natural person should be, displaying a multitude of emotions of shyness, nervousness, confidence, and excitement entangled with each other. I asked these questions to myself

• Why is a large percentage of the population (almost 75%) afraid of public speaking? https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/public-speaking-statistics
• Why some are so afraid of public speaking that, it feels like a life-threatening act?
• Where is that natural child in me, who was shy, and nervous but not panicking because he had to speak publicly?

Societal Standard of a Good Public Speaker

A simple search on Google, on “What are the qualities of a great public speaker ?” I found terms like “Confident, Engaging, Organized, Authentic”. Most of society believes, including parents, and teachers that a good public speaker is supposed to be confident and clear all the time. This implies that there is a condemnation and judgment of being shy and nervous as well. The very judgment, condemnation and non-acceptance create the fear of public speaking when a child grows up. 

How can everyone fit into a single standard of how they should speak in front of other people, and how they should express themselves?

Origin of Fear

“A small child gives a speech in front of the whole classroom. He is confident at times but shy and nervous at times as well. After the speech, the teacher takes him to a corner and asked, why you were a bit nervous while giving the speech. Don’t be nervous. Be confident next time.”

This happens all the time. I have never seen a child getting criticized for being over-confident, but shy, nervous kids are always getting teased by relatives, and teachers for being that way. This does not happen once, it happens repeatedly with many children. And every time it happens, a child starts to judge itself. It think something is wrong because I feel a bit shy, nervous and uncomfortable. As the child starts to grow to become an adult, in self-judgment and non-acceptance, shyness and nervousness turn into panic, fear and anxiety.

There can be many other reasons as well. But in the core of it all, a deep belief gets created within the mind that “I am not good at speaking and expressing myself in front of other people. I don’t have the proper skill and capability to speak in front of a group of people.” This belief is experienced as fear.

Manifestation of the Belief

This belief manifests as an unnatural fear, anxiety and panic that most people feel when trying to speak publicly. Most people think beliefs are very simple and it is stored in the brain. Wrong!! Beliefs go very deep into the unconscious mind.  In my opinion, our whole body is the unconscious mind. And our core beliefs and judgments about us are stored in the whole body.

Think of it this way, the whole body really believes that “I can’t speak publicly.” Every time such a person tries to speak publicly, going against that belief, going against the body, the body fights back.  Heartbeat increases, throat feels choked, and anxiety and panic comes out. The body fights back because it is against what it believes, and it feels threatened like something bad is going to happen.  

What meditation does for the belief

A belief can only exist when there is no awareness of it.

The reason meditation really works is that it helps in releasing the grip of a belief over body and mind. Meditation is the process of being aware of this belief and fear, in our whole body, experiencing it. It is a way of learning to stay in that space of fear, and uncomfort, look at it with very compassionate and loving eyes and relax into it. Through this compassionate awareness, fear and beliefs lose grip over us.

For public speaking, once the body and mind start to lose belief, you naturally come to a childlike state, where you regain your ability to speak publicly again.

The Process: How I did it?

The process is meditation itself. Becoming aware of the fear without judgment in each time I get a chance to speak publicly. I went to the debate club regularly, to speak publicly. Also, every time I got a chance to do a presentation at my work, I went into it. I went consciously into it despite the fear.  Every time I spoke in front of people I meditated. I felt my whole body while speaking, how it feels, my nervousness, and anxiousness, and doing my best not to judge myself in the process of it.  Regular practice of this helped me become capable of speaking in front of people again.  It took more than a year but I can happily say that, “I don’t panic anymore. I feel nervous at times, but it does not bother me as much as it used to.”

The process looks simple, but it is messy when you really do it. Here are two experiences in the messy journey I remember till now

• It happens that when you are about to do something uncomfortable, you feel fear long before you actually do it. Once I was about to do a presentation at an academic conference I was attending. Before 10 minutes of my presentation, I was unconsciously scrolling through my Instagram feed. Suddenly I realized, I was just trying to run away from fear by looking at Instagram mindlessly. So I stopped and just stayed with that feeling of fear and uncomfort.
• One day I started speaking in front of people in the debate club. And my heart started beating really fast, and I was feeling every heartbeat, and rush of blood in my body. To my very surprise, I was experiencing it, just watchful of it without any judgment. It was an undeniable experience that, I was not the one who was afraid standing there, I was the one who was experiencing the fear. The detachment was so powerful for a few moments that, I was very relaxed even when my heart was beating fast out of nervousness. 

My High Sensitivity

Being a highly sensitive person, I am not only sensitive to myself, I am sensitive to the outside world as well. And often it happens that when I speak up, I not only feel myself, I feel others as well. When I speak I have an energetic feeling of, who is liking, who dis-agrees, who is paying attention, who is totally dismissive of my speech and much more information. This is one of the reasons it becomes crippling for highly sensitive people to speak publicly and socialize as well.

What did I do about it? I meditated. 

Again meditation is about feeling everything and accepting everything. Acceptance is an understanding that it is natural for some people to like my speech, some to dismiss it, some to be busy with doing their personal things, and some to be very interested in the subject. Everything that I feel from the crowd is natural, and a unique manifestation of life right now. As my acceptance grew I became more and more relaxed about other people’s behaviour during my speech. 

The Learning

Awareness gives beautiful and deep insights into life. Here are some things I have learned in mediation and speaking publicly.

• Momentary: The fear that we feel in life is very momentary. For example, in public speaking during the speech.  But we keep dragging and thinking about it for so long. We analyze what good I could have done, why I still fear and so on. And in this self-judgment we miss life.

One day I was coming back after the debate meetup. I kept thinking of what I could have done better, and how I felt nervous and fearful in front of everyone. As I was thinking I walked past a street musician playing violin. And when I realized I laughed, that something happened one hour ago, and I am still thinking of that, and something beautiful is in the air right now, and I am missing it completely. And this is how we often miss the beauty of life. Fear is so momentary, but we keep dragging it into our judgment towards ourselves.

• Journey: The more I relaxed, the more I felt subtle fear within me. And doing it long enough I realized that I won’t need to reach a perfect state of fearless self-expression. The only thing I can think is, “It is all about the journey.” 

A few weeks ago I went to the debate meetup. I was the speaker. I was pretty confident but when I started speaking I got nervous. And the fear remained, but it was a good speech but I felt fear.  After coming to my seat, when I was opening my WhatsApp to reply to someone, I could feel my fingers shivering out of fear that I felt. Normally I would just think about this for hours, but I just brush it off after a minute. It is what is it.

• Love: If you have ever felt nervous in front of people, you realize that not only do you judge yourself, but other people also judge you for being nervous. We feel the judgment of others without realizing it, and it adds to the discomfort. And the judgment of the others is often unconscious, that they don’t even realize they are judging. People judge others for being nervous because they are also afraid of their nervousness. The best thing that happened to me was that I judged myself less for being nervous. And the only way we can accept another person’s nervousness is to accept our own nervousness. Previously I would also get anxious when another person speaking gets nervous. But now most of the time, I think it is cute to get nervous and I appreciate it.  This is a step towards growing in love.
• Satisfaction: The more and more I  relaxed, I realized how speaking publicly comes naturally to me in my way. Eye contact, voice projection, reading the room, hand gestures, everything comes on its own just by relaxation.  This feeling of effortlessness is satisfaction.

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If you are bad at public speaking,  I invite you to develop the ability to speak publicly, through meditation. There are a lot of ways and processes out there on how to learn it, but I don’t agree with that. I emphasize only on meditation. In meditation, you don’t spend 1 hour a week on public speaking and go about your life. Your work on yourself in that 1 hour reflects on your whole life. It reflects in the way you speak in office meetings, in work presentations, and in dealing with fear within yourself and others.

You have to build the master key for problems in life for yourself because the key is to be built by each individual for themselves.

If not public speaking, you can take any problem of your life, simple or complicated does not matter. Normally we are taught to make big plans, read books, and find specific reasons on why this problem exists in our lives. We are taught to find tricks on how to manage them and tips on how to solve them.  We are only taught to make effort and I know that with enough effort most problems can be solved. But the way of meditation is a bit different. It is an effort to reach a state of effortlessness.

In meditation, you stay with the problem. Staying is your presence, your meditation, your awareness of something even if it is uncomfortable right now. In this staying you will realize that the path opens by itself. And it opens in ways it feels natural to you, and effortless to you. Some problems will take months, some will take years and some will take decades maybe,  but as you grow in meditation the very experience of a problem changes within you. Problems will never end in life. They will always keep popping up. You can never reach a state in life, it does not matter what you achieve, that problem and struggles will go away. Learning to solve a problem is a good skill. Learning to overcome fear, and nervousness is a nice adventure. But as I see it, the best gift you can give yourself is to stay with your problems, nervousness and fear without running away from them.

Very special thanks to the Brussels Debate Meetup group for giving me the space to practice public speaking and meditation.

-Sachin