LUCZON, Jemar R.

Speech 30: Bonus Tasks Analysis of Ted Talk’s “The Science of Stage Freight”
Thesis Statement: People’s public speaking anxiety is genetic and can be controlled through
mindset and proper practice.

Playing the Mirror

Humans, however advanced thinkers, are still social animals.

This is evident when we face the crowd, and engage in a war-like feeling of stage freight.
The TED Ed YouTube channel elaborated why we encounter fear of speaking in public and how
to mitigate this issue. It is revealed that human nature is the culprit, that even though we have
evolved as innovative rational thinkers we are today, a part of our primitive characteristics
remained.

Many people think that they fail at public speaking because they weren’t “gifted”. However,
TED Ed posits that humans naturally are afraid of being judged or being looked down by others.
We value “reputation” so much that we take public speaking as a threat to other people’s image
of us, whether they would consider us superior or inferior. We then face the typical “fight or flight”
scheme where either we try our very best in this challenging endeavor or we get beaten up by our
anxiety, and fail to finish or even start our speeches in public. Indeed, our main enemy is
ourselves.

We can not play rock paper and scissors with the mirror. We can not play hide and seek
with the beautiful creature behind the glass. We aim to be the best yet our primitive brains trick
us through releasing hormones that constrict our stomachs, rush our adrenalines, and fasten our
heartbeats. This then alarms your senses that you are indeed nervous and you can not do it. Then
here comes the puzzle of philosophy: you are standing in front of a mirror; how do you change
the person on the other side of the glass?

Apparently, you can not just freeze and let your mirror image improve itself. In this
metaphor I used, your “mirror image” represents your physical attributes - your guts, senses and
natural reflexes - while the “real you” symbolizes your brain - your perspective, your mindset, and
your center of thought. Imagine a perfect image of yourself, confident and convincing. Imagine
that your internal bursts of hormones were not signals of fear but rather, bubbles of excitement.
Imagine that your life is not at risk and this is just a speech. Breathe.

Aside from having a paradigm shift on the natural phenomenon happening just before
speaking, you can also manage this freight through consistent practice. A theoretical view on
public speaking is not enough if praxis is limited. Through sensory experience and habitual
speech, you are familiarizing your brain with the feeling when speaking to the mass. Upon
exposure, it becomes natural of you to control yourself, the crowd, and your words. There will
come a time when speaking at conferences, wedding messages, or even key note speeches
would feel like normal conversations to you. Science predicts that there would still be bursts of
fear (or excitement) before your performance. Because when you feel no pressure at all, you have
exited the state of being a human.