I took a course on power point at Pitman London. I really learnt a lot on how to create the slides but giving a presentation is much more than creating slides.

At Pitman London I met a friend who gave us a talk about stress and presentations. It is very common to find people that sweat a lot during presentation and it’s clear that they are nervous. I even met a guy that told me he was so nervous he needed to take some kind of relaxing medication that was giving to her mum because she couldn’t sleep. Obviously we weren’t told at Pitman London to self-prescribe medications and drug us. Bu there are many techniques to become less nervous.

One goof tip I found is noticing that we feel more nervous when we feel people are staring at us. One way to overcome this is to move around the room until the audience can only see your slides. OF course you can’t do that the whole presentation but it will help a lot until you get used to it and have time to relax a bit. Another goof technique to distract the attention from you is to ask questions so people will immediately stare at the person that is supposed to answer. This is a very good one. I put it in practice and it really worked.

There are some breathing exercises to help you to relax and some phrases that you can repeat inside your head in order to cheat and fool your brain. For example you can tell yourself: this is only a presentation, they won’t look at me because they are all in the same position.

If you don’t feel comfortable standing in front of everyone then walk a little bit , show that you are in control and believe it yourself too. Repeat all the time this is my presentation and I am in control. Make people participate so you draw the attention into someone else.

Some people prefer drinking white wine before a presentation because it relaxes them. Some others like to take a fan and set it up in front of the podium. The key is to find what is what makes you so anxious so you can fight it.

Keep in mind also that if you know you are going to improvise you will get more nervous but if you know every detail of your presentation then there is no reason to feel worried.

Finally if you are very nervous even though you followed this advice then just say it. Say you are nervous and grab a piece of paper and dry your sweat. There is stress when we try to hide we are nervous but if we say it then there is nothing less to hide so anxiety reduces.