Speaking Up Without Freaking Out | Matt Abrahams | TEDxPaloAlto

panic, embarrassed, exposed. No, that's not how I'm feeling right now. Mostly, those are the feelings I had as a 14-year-old boy. On the very first day of high school, my English teacher, Mr. Meredith had each of us stand up and introduce ourselves. When class was over, he called me over and said, "Hey, Matt, you're really good at this talking thing. I need you on Saturday to show up at the speech contest." Doing as I was told, I prepared a 10-minute presentation on karate. It was something I was passionate about, and it was pretty easy to do. Now that cold September Saturday morning when I showed up, I was shocked. The room was much larger than I had expected. There were many more people there. My friends, my friend's parents who were serving as judges, and the girl I had a crush on. At that moment, I felt tremendous anxiety. In the first 10 seconds of my 10-minute presentation, my life changed forever. You see, I started my presentation with a karate kick. I was told to do this because it would engage the audience and get their attention. But because of my anxiety, I forgot to put on my special karate pants. You know, the ones with a little extra room down there. You get where this is going. I ripped my pants from belt loop to zipper. In that moment, I learned the impact of anxiety on communication. And from that moment, I have dedicated my life to helping others learn to address this fear. Each of us has stories to share, input to give, and ideas to spread. If we allow anxiety to get in the way of that, we miss out. society misses out and we lose valuable diverse voices. Now, I am not alone in my anxiety in communication. If you have ever given spontaneous feedback, given a presentation, spoken up in a meeting, or even asked somebody on a date, you know what this anxiety feels like. Research shares with us that 85% of people feel anxious in highstakes speaking situations. And quite frankly, I think the other 15% are lying. I think we can create a situation in which they would feel nervous too. So we must act to manage our anxiety so we can accomplish our communication goals.