by Steve Adubato, PhD

One of the most important and powerful aspects of public speaking is acknowledging that there are times when anxiety, nerves or circumstances get the best of you. You can be the most confident and persuasive communicator, but can still get thrown off. You can have a bad day or you can give a performance that just goes to the core of how you see yourself and create concern about how others view you.

Recently, I was giving a presentation at a major conference. Going in, I was not only confident of my message and my material, but felt good about my ability to deliver it. I did have some personal issues on my mind; however, I was focused and ready to connect with my audience. Yet, at some point in the first few minutes (in a room that lacked air conditioning and had the heat on at about 75 degrees) I found myself feeling physically uncomfortable. This translated into that clammy, perspiring feeling that we all love when you are making a speech.

Instead of just laughing it off and ignoring it, I found myself becoming more aware of the circumstance. I started asking myself how it could be that such an experienced professional communicator should feel uncomfortable in any situation, even if it were 100 degrees. That thought spiraled into another, which began to challenge my confidence level. When that happens, the race is on.

Simply put, when speaking in public, you have just a few moments to decide how you are going to handle that initial feeling of stress or anxiety. As the speech went on, my content was still relevant, but I found myself feeling more and more like I wanted to get out of there. When the speech ended, the audience politely applauded, but by then I was in big time “get me out of here” mode.

But now the real work begins. What are you going to do about it? Are you going to let it defeat you? And, ultimately, what can you take from all this?

What I’d like to share with readers is that you have absolutely no choice but to get back on the horse once you fall. In fact, the longer you stay on the sidelines reliving the intricate details of this stress-producing communication experience, the less likely it is that you’ll recover and put it in the past. My advice is to actually seek opportunities to be back out there and present in public.

Yankees relief pitcher Mariano Rivera is considered the greatest closer in the history of baseball, but there have been times where he has given up a critical hit or a home run to blow a big game. Imagine if he let that bad experience define who he is and how he sees himself? What makes Rivera great is that when things go bad in one game, he wants the ball immediately the next night to prove his worth. The key is to get the “bad movie” out of your head and make a “new movie” with a better outcome.

When it comes to baseball, communication or business, you can’t think your way through a situation in which you failed or came up short. Analyzing it won’t make it go away. Understanding what happened is fine, but obsessing over it is problematic.

So for all of us, from the most experienced communicators to those who are just getting their feet wet, understand that coming up short in any presentation is part of the game. It is natural. It happens. But like anything in life, 10 percent of our success is what happens to us, and 90 percent is how we deal with it. So don’t let any communication mistake or foul-up stop you from getting right back up there and trying again. Remember, the ball is in your court.