The long awaited graduation is finally here; tonight 5pm at Downtown Club, Philadelphia. In the half an hour special segment, I will be giving a 7 mins long graduation speech. And boy am I nervous AND excited! Nervous coz’ you never know how the speech will turn out. Excited coz’ I will get to share with more than 120 people about the significance of our graduation PLUS I will get stage time! (Click on link to learn why stage time is extreeeeeeeemmmeeeeeeeeeely important!!)

Let’s get back to the nervousness. It is nothing unusual isn’t it? There will always be butterflies fluttering around in your stomach. And if you search on the Internet, you will find more than 101 ways to exterminate your butterflies. Yet, how many of us are really successful in getting rid of these butterflies? Here’s the irony: the more you try to eliminate your nervousness, the more it gets back at you. Trust me, it is not a pretty sight!

Today, I would like to invite you to try something new. Instead of exterminating your butterflies, make them fly in formation! Instead of getting rid of your nervousness, embrace it! But why??!! Let me give you two reasons.

Firstly, your nervousness is trying to tell you something important. If you listen hard enough, you will have something constructive to work on. Instead of just feeling nervous, which can lead to panic, fear and lots of pain, you have now open yourself to an opportunity to get better.

Secondly, you CANNOT destroy energy!!! This is simple physics. Energy can be converted from one form to another, but it can NEVER be destroyed. So if you think about it, there is no way you can eliminate your nervous energy. However, you can convert this nervous energy into positive energy that will push you to perform. Why waste the extra boost of adrenaline rush!

Ok so now that you are convinced that you should not exterminate your butterflies (and you can’t anyway…), what should you do? I have three suggestions and I am in the midst of testing them right now! (grins) So read it with a pinch of salt. Once the big day is over, I will tell you if they work or not. (Look out for tomorrow’s post) Sounds good?

Suggestion #1 - Forget about your speech!

I have another seven more hours to go before the graduation and here’s my game plan:

9 - 10: Breakfast + Clearing Emails + Reading Blogs
10 - 11: Blogging
11 - 12: Ironing my clothes
12 - 1: Lunch
1 - 2: Watching Apprentice I (don’t ask!)
2 - 3: Have a good hot shower + get ready

Notice I have allocated zero hours to rehearse. Before you follow suit, I want to make a disclaimer. I have started rehearsing days before the graduation night so I want to give myself a little break. It keeps the speech fresh! And I won’t be too bored…

But if you have yet to practice, then it is a different story altogether… Wait, don’t panic! Here’s what you can do. Spend an hour to run through your script. Do it in the morning when you are fresher. Psychologically, you are much more relaxed as well since you know that you still have a significant amount of hours left before your speech.

Suggestion #2 - Uncover the root of your nervousness

This is a very important step and I suggest you spend some time on it. Let me start by sharing with you the root of my nervousness. I am afraid that I cannot live up to my audience expectations and I feel pressurized to be as good as I was last year. The irony of success eh? It doesn’t matter if there is any truth in it coz in my world, it is reality. And it weighs a ton on my shoulders.

Great. So now that I have uncovered the root of my nervousness, what do I do next?

Simply accept it! And it goes away!! Allow me to explain.

When you accept the root of your nervousness, you have given yourself the power to transcend it. Once you know why you are nervous and acknowledge it, you automatically stop struggling. Your vision clears out and you begin to see how you can take tangible actions to reduce your nervousness. Isn’t this much more effective than feeling nervous?

Let me give you an example. A lot of people are nervous because they are afraid to fail. I’m definitely one of them. And it is normal. Question is how do you react to your nervousness? Some people chose to drown themselves in the whirlpool of nervousness and as you can guess, it is a point of no return. However if you acknowledge that nervousness and stop giving power to this emotion, you now have a choice to do something about it. In this case, you can start enquiring deeper into your definition of failure. How would you know if you fail?

I forget my lines.
My client refuses to sign my contract.
The audience laughs at me

Frankly it could be anything. But at the very least, you have now something tangible to work on. For example, you can work on shortening your script or rehearse more so that you won’t forget your lines. You can review your presentation and see if there are any information you need to add to be more persuasive. Not so helpless anymore right?

On top of accepting the cause of my nervousness, you may also want to revisit and re-experience your motivation for speaking (assuming there is). But seriously, if you have no motivation to speak, why bother in the first place?

In my case, my graduation speech is my way of expressing my gratitude towards my batch mates. No matter how sucky it will be, it comes from the heart and I mean every single word that I say. So how bad can the speech be?

This is also a golden opportunity to improve my public speaking skills! Even if the speech flopped, I am going to learn something valuable. And from my experience, I will get better. So what’s there to lose?

Suggestion #3 - Visualize yourself as a superstar!

Now to the fun part! All you need is imagination. Picture in your mind all the positive things that will happen before, during and after your speech. Don’t hold back. Use your five senses. What do you see? What do you hear? What can you touch? What can you smell? What can you feel? Keep adding positive imageries into your picture. And play the scene over and over again, until you are convinced that you are indeed a superstar!

So… the next time you feel butterflies in your stomach, please resist the temptation to exterminate them! Return to this post and try out some of my suggestions: Learn how you can make your butterflies fly in formation!!!

Wish me luck!

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