Before You Speak in Front of People
For the hour before you speak to a room, a meeting or a camera. It gets the opening rehearsed, the ending written down, the room walked, your breathing slowed, and a plan ready for the moment you lose your place.
Speaking · Social Anxiety · Anxiety · Work · 9 items · whenever you need it
The checklist
- Say your first two sentences out loud ten times — the opening is where nerves do the most damage.
- Write your last line on a card — knowing how you land stops you trailing off.
- Walk the room before anyone arrives — a space you have stood in is less of an unknown.
- Breathe out longer than you breathe in for one minute — a slow out-breath settles a fast heart.
- Pick three friendly faces to look at — somewhere steady to land beats scanning for critics.
- Cut the slide you are least sure about — the part you doubt is the part that shows.
- Decide what you will do if you lose your place — a plan for the pause keeps it a pause.
- Keep water within reach and use it — a sip is a pause nobody in the room even notices.
- Plan one thing to do straight afterward — a walk or a coffee ends the adrenaline cleanly.
Use this checklist Free account: tick items off and keep each day's record.
How to use it
Run through it whenever you need it, honestly and without scoring yourself. A checklist is a way of noticing, not a test: an item you cannot tick is information about the day, not a verdict on you. Over a few weeks the pattern of what gets ticked and what does not says more than any single pass.
With a free Theraglee account the checklist remembers each pass, so you can look back. Without one, you can still read it here and keep your own copy.