Episode 187

Stage Fright at Anarchapulco

Speaking in public can inspire fear and overpowering nerves in many of us. However, as with most things, it depends how you think about it.

In March 2021, Kurt had the experience of speaking at Anarchapulco, an event for peaceful anarchists in Acapulco, Guerrero. He analyzed his own thought patterns and tried out advice from trusted friends to see what helped reduce the nerves and feel confident.

Firstly, there is this formula “Thoughts plus feelings equal emotions”. Our internal experiences aren’t fully formed until we start to interpret them. “Nerves” are almost identical to “excitement” – perhaps a little shaking, sweaty palms, increased heart rate, butterflies in the stomach. When we think “I am very excited right now,” we suddenly see our internal events very differently.

There is the idea of eustress or positive stress. We might feel nervous about an event, sending us a message about our lack of preparation. One key mistake is to not prepare, to avoid the subject, because we don’t even want to think about it… When we are more prepared, we are naturally calme.

Another idea is about faith – in oneself or one’s unconscious mind, in God, in the Universe, or whatever it is that helps you feel surrender, to acknowledge that some elements of the experience are out of your control and that might even be a good thing. If you look through your personal history you’ll probably notice that most or all of the time, you have gotten through things, either by facing them alone, or with friends, or whatever other resources come up. So, you probably will again.

We might try imagining speaking to a large audience of thousands of people, or perhaps speaking to a bunch of empty seats, to confront the fear “What if nobody shows up?” Either way we find that these concerns aren’t much of a problem. Speaking to a large crowd, we notice that the experience is less intimate and therefore less intimidating. Speaking to an empty room, there’s nobody there to worry about, so we can simply enjoy ourselves.

Finally, we might consider, what is the alternative here? If we’ve already agreed to speak or perform, are we going to run and hide, disappoint our friends and colleagues and leave them with a blank spot where we should be speaking? Of course we don’t want to do that to our friends. So we make the decision to face the crowd, first with boldness, and then with confidence.