If you suffer from glossophobia, like 75% of the population, it’s not hard to imagine yourself messing up during a presentation, blowing a job interview, or watching your project that you worked hard on blowing up on you. However, there are 5 ways that you can recover after bungling your words. In this post, I’ll outline all five.
What if You Mess Up?
For most of us, anticipating failure can cause our pulse to quicken and make us get sick to our stomach. It can cause us to get stressed, anxious, and angry and can make us feel shame and regret. Ultimately, it can cause us to give up on pursuing the lives we want.
Consider this, some people want a career boost more than anything. They want to be challenged. They want that big promotion. Some even want to start their own business- but they’re afraid of failure, to they hold back and don’t work on the things they need to in order to succeed. Either they don’t give 100% effort, or they are so afraid they don’t even bother trying at all.
Many times, when we are embarrassed over our failures, we focus on the details and may even beat ourselves up over the results. However, this is a bad thing because it keeps us from healing and moving on. Instead, we should be reframing our concept of failure.
After all, it’s from trying and failing that many great things have come about. For example, Alexander Graham Bell tried several times before he was able to successfully invent the telephone. Ferdinand Zeppelin tried several times before he achieved flight.
Instead of getting upset, use your “failures” as a learning opportunity by following these five steps.
More Videos on my channel here: youtube.com/@connectwithimran
Don’t Judge Yourself
Instruct your inner critic to sit down and be quiet. After all, it happened and there’s nothing you can do to change it. We don’t have a time machine or a memory eraser where we can make it all go away. Learn to forgive yourself and others when you bungle your words instead of allowing shame and resentment to take hold. Direct your focus now to the present moment and also look forward to the future. Take it as a chance to learn and improve.
Consider Why it Happened
Take some time to consider some potential unbiased reasons why it happened. This will help you create your future approaches. If possible, figure out what caused you to bungle your words. If you’re not sure, ask someone what they believe may have caused it to happen. You can use that feedback to get a better handle on your presentations in the future.
Be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
This may sound crazy- but when you’re afraid of failure, you may freeze up. However, the truth is that change doesn’t typically happen within the confines of our own comfort zone. So, instead of avoiding public speaking in the future, take another public speaking engagement. Keep trying. Prepare yourself better in the future. Keep in mind, you have a lot of options when it comes to what you can do. Just don’t sit and allow yourself to be paralyzed. It was one mistake. It’s something we all do at one point or another.
Slow and Steady wins the Race
As much as you may wish it to be so, not everyone in the world wakes up a perfect public speaker. We all make mistakes and bungle our words. You’re going to have some ups and downs along your way as you develop your skills as a public speaker. Embrace and learn from both extremes.
Acknowledge Progress
If you’re guilty of “all-or-nothing” thoughts, do whatever you can to ditch those. Instead of saying “I’m a failure”, say “I am not successful yet”. Think about it: if you were running a marathon, would you be upset with yourself over the miles you haven’t covered? Of course not. You acknowledge that you’ve come far- but there’s more to go- and you just keep going. Before you know it, you’ll be crossing that finish line.
Final Words
If you are giving a speech or presentation and you bungle your words, so what. It’s likely to happen to the best of us. Not many people are 100% successful on their first attempt and, if they are, they’ve done a lot to prepare themselves (or maybe they’re lying). Next time you bungle your words and feel like a failure, keep these 5 tips in mind to help you recover.