This past Friday, I had one of the most stressful professional experiences of my life thus far: my first formal presentation at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Of course, I did have one unique challenge that made this experience especially anxiety-inducing: not only was it my first time presenting to a large audience in such a formal setting, but as I waited for my turn at the podium, I was also seated directly underneath an air conditioning vent that was inexplicably turned on full-blast despite the fact that temperatures in Chicago had plummeted to an unseasonable 40-50 degrees that week. So as I sat and listened to the first two speakers on my panel, growing more and more nervous by the minute, I also grew colder and colder. By the time it was my turn to present, this combination of nerves and hypothermia had me shaking so violently that I could barely keep my knees from knocking together loudly enough for the microphone to pick up the sound as I walked to the podium.

Still, even with my teeth chattering and my fingers turning blue, I somehow made it to the end of my 14-minute time slot without stumbling over my words, completely forgetting what I had intended to say about a particular slide, or making any of the other huge mistakes I was so worried would derail the entire presentation. There were, of course, a few little strategies that helped me hold it together, and these might be useful to you the next time you have to face an important and frightening public speech:

1. Take slow, deep breaths. Force yourself to pause for air, both between sentences and between slides or sections of your material. This not only gives you the little burst of extra energy you need to get through your next thought without gasping for breath, but also gives you a chance to collect your thoughts – even if it’s just for a second.
2. Focus on the faces of a few audience members. I prefer to pick ones that look friendly and interested in what I have to say. Maintaining eye contact with a few different audience members will make you feel less like you’re lecturing to a room full of strangers and more like you’re having a conversation with a small group, which should help bring your stress level down just a notch.
3. Smile. It’s the simplest thing you can do, and the easiest thing to forget when you’re nervous, but smiling at your audience makes a world of difference – both for them and for you. For one thing, it will always be easier to find the above-mentioned friendly-looking listener if you’ve started off your presentation by smiling while you introduce yourself, because people smile back at people who smile at them. But aside from that, forcing yourself to smile even when you feel like screaming and running out of the room can actually “fool” your brain into thinking that you’re in a good mood, which will naturally ease some of the tension you are feeling. Smiling is a complete win-win.
4. Know your material, but don’t write an overly restrictive script for yourself. I learned a long time ago that, at least for me, the most likely cause of “freezing” in the middle of a presentation is realizing that I have just skipped ahead a sentence or used just one word that was different from what I’d rehearsed. When this happens, it can feel like you’ve just missed one of your lines in a play and can’t remember what comes next. You can avoid these panic moments by changing the way you prepare: even if you practice a speech hundreds of times, it’s unlikely that you’ll say the exact same words in the exact same order every time, so it’s better to just focus on the bigger picture. Make a list of the major points you want to cover, and know the content of your slides or other materials well enough that you can discuss them flexibly and conversationally without feeling like you are reciting lines.