How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking and Start to Crave It

Can you actually overcome the fear of public speaking? Let me give you a disappointing answer right away: I am not sure you can remove it completely. I have performed more than one thousand times, and my heart still races at four thousand beats per minute every time I walk on stage. It does not matter if it is a sold-out theatre or a Tuesday evening open mic in Zürich’s red-light district in front of ten strangers who did not even pay to be there. The fear arrives uninvited, every single time.

My brain does its greatest hits:

• They are going to hate me

• I will forget everything

• They will expose me as the impostor I secretly believe I am

For years I believed something was wrong with me. With time, something shifted. It was not the fear that changed, but my relationship with it.

• First, I performed despite the fear shouting in my skull

• Then, I learned to perform while ignoring it

• Today, I treat fear as fuel, proof that something meaningful is about to happen

Fear did not vanish. It evolved. It became part of the thrill. Fear does not show up because of the audience. Fear does not show up because public speaking is dangerous. Fear shows up because of you. You kind of are the problem. Not you specifically. The problem is that you are human.

At a time when we wonder what humans are for in a world of artificial intelligence, public speaking remains one of the last activities that is fully and gloriously human. A machine can recite text, but a machine cannot tremble, cannot yearn for approval, cannot fear rejection, cannot feel the pulse of a room. Only humans can.

Public speaking is difficult because you are human. Public speaking is thrilling for the exact same reason. Your biology responds to the moment. Your nervous system lights up. You sense the stakes. You care. Fear is not a malfunction. Fear is evidence that something meaningful is happening.

Jacques Brel got sick before his concerts. One of the most powerful performers in history, physically sick with fear, yet capable of making millions of people cry and feel alive. Fear is not the opposite of performance. It is the companion of performance. The question is not how to eliminate fear. The question is how to work with it.

So what is the path? Preparation and mastery. But to prepare correctly, you must understand where fear comes from. Fear does not appear because you are weak. It appears because you are human. That is why it is difficult. That is also why it matters.

Let’s explore the six fundamental human traits driving your fear. Once you understand these truths, the fear will not disappear, but you will know exactly what to do with it.

Human Truth number 1: Humans are selfish

You would love to think of yourself as altruistic. I am sure you are, in many contexts. But put a spotlight on you, literally, and your brain goes into survival mode. Suddenly everything becomes:

• Will they like me

• Will I look foolish

• Will I forget my words

• Will my voice shake

• Why is my heart acting like a trapped animal

This obsession with “me” is understandable. In a crisis, humans become self-centered. And guess what public speaking feels like to your nervous system? A crisis. Here is the twist: Public speaking is not about you. It is not even about the audience. It is about the message.

Your task is not to impress anyone. Your task is to carry something worth hearing. Once you focus on the message instead of your ego, fear loses one of its strongest roots.

If you want to go deeper into how to shift from self-centered speaking to message-centered speaking, I unpack it fully in: How to Stop Caring What Your Audience Thinks and Speak With Confidence and Purpose

Human Truth number 2: Humans crave control

One of the greatest achievements of humanity is our ability to control our environment. We took ourselves out of the biological food chain. We mastered agriculture. We engineered systems that ensure we can eat every day without hunting, grazing, or fighting. No other species enjoys a relationship with survival as convenient as ours.

Our obsession with control is not a flaw. It is the very reason we survived. But this same instinct also creates problems. The moment humans gain control over one area, they begin seeking control over others. We try to control territories, resources, and even the behavior of people inside our communities. This is why we form tribes, nations, companies, and social hierarchies. Control feels safe. Lack of control feels dangerous. And here is where public speaking becomes terrifying.

Public speaking is one of the rare activities in modern life where control almost entirely disappears.

You cannot control:

• how the audience reacts

• whether they laugh or stay silent

• whether someone interrupts

• what your own body decides to do under pressure

In other words, you step into a situation that violates the very instinct that built civilization. Your biology interprets this as a threat because historically, being judged by the tribe was not embarrassing. It was dangerous. Looking foolish could get you excluded, and exclusion once meant death. So your fear is not irrational. Your fear is ancient.

The solution, paradoxically, is not to fight the loss of control, but to accept it. Embracing what you cannot control frees you to focus on what you can. And when you concentrate on what you control, the elements you do not control often improve on their own.

I explore this strange and powerful paradox in: How to Stay Calm When You Cannot Control Your Audience, Your Body, or the Outcome

Human Truth number 3: Humans are wired to avoid pain

No sane person willingly seeks pain, unless they enjoy it for reasons of their own. The rest of us spend enormous mental energy avoiding it. Our brain is a prediction machine, constantly running simulations of the future. Some scientists even argue that one of its primary functions is to replay terrible experiences and imagine disastrous new ones so we know what to avoid.

Public speaking triggers that mechanism perfectly. Because you do not control the situation, your brain treats it as a high-risk event. Before you have even stepped on stage, you imagine everything that could go wrong. You see yourself freezing. You hear the silence. You feel the humiliation. You visualize it with so much intensity that your nervous system believes it is happening right now.

Your brain concludes that the safest option is to avoid preparation altogether. Preparing feels like approaching the danger. Avoiding preparation feels like escaping it. The irony is painful: avoiding the discomfort of preparation creates exactly the conditions that guarantee a painful experience on stage. The danger you fear becomes the danger you create.

The way out is to begin the work in a way that feels manageable and within your control. Once you take the first step, the monster in your mind shrinks, because action replaces imagination.

I go deeper into how to break this cycle in: Why You Panic Before a Presentation and How Preparation Fixes It

Human Truth number 4: Humans learn from experience

Confidence is not magic. It does not fall from the sky, and it certainly does not appear because you repeated a sentence in front of the mirror one thousand times. Confidence grows from evidence. It appears when something happens, and your brain concludes: “I did this. I am capable.”

This matters because your brain learns through lived moments, not intentions. Positive experiences create confidence. Negative experiences create doubt.

Unfortunately, the brain applies both in a very literal way.

• One success makes you believe you can succeed again

• One failure can convince you that you are doomed forever

This is where things get dangerous. Failure does not stay isolated. It spreads. It starts whispering:

• “Maybe I am not good at this”

• “Maybe I am not good at anything”

That belief, once accepted, begins shaping your identity. Psychologists call this learned helplessness. One bad moment becomes the lens through which you see the rest of your abilities. The antidote is not blind positivity. You have to teach it something new. That means creating fresh experiences that overwrite the old ones.

There are two parts to this reset:

1. Adopt a growth mindset

A fixed mindset says, “I failed. Therefore I am a failure.”
A growth mindset says, “I failed because I am learning.”
One closes doors. The other opens them.

2. Create deliberate positive experiences

You do this by preparing the elements you can control. Preparation stacks the deck in your favor. Each successful prep becomes a proof of success in your mind. More predictable attempts produce more successful outcomes.

This is how fear gets hacked. You replace imagined catastrophe with actual competence. When your brain has real proof that you can do this, fear loses its most powerful weapon.

I go deeper into this process in: How to Build Public Speaking Confidence Even If You Have Failed Before

Human Truth number 5: Humans do not like novelty

Humans are creatures of habit. We trust what we already know. Familiar environments feel safe because we understand the rules. Novel environments are frightening because the rules are unclear.

Public speaking is one of the most novel environments most people will ever encounter. Even professional performers spend the majority of their lives not performing. Their confidence comes from repetition, not a lack of fear. The stage becomes familiar only because they visit it often enough.

For everyone else, public speaking feels like being dropped into another planet. Ask yourself:

• How often do you stand on a stage

• How often do you rehearse in the room where you will speak

• How often do you say your ideas out loud before the day of the performance

For most people, the answer to all three questions is almost never. Your brain interprets novelty as danger. When it encounters a situation with unfamiliar rules, it reacts the only way it knows how: it freezes. Like a rabbit locking eyes with a predator, your brain pauses everything while it tries to calculate a survival strategy. That moment of paralysis is the death of your performance.

The solution is simple, but not effortless. You need to manufacture familiarity. You can do this even if you are not speaking on a stage every week. The more familiar the speaking environment feels, the safer your brain perceives it to be. Once the fear response diminishes, clarity and performance can finally emerge.

I explain practical methods for creating familiarity here: How to Practice a Speech So You Stop Freezing on Stage

Human Truth number 6: Humans have a body

What separates us from something like ChatGPT is not intelligence. It is embodiment. A machine calculates. A machine mimics emotion through data. We feel emotions through skin, breath, pulse, and instinct. Some of us try to numb or deny those sensations, but they remain.

Our biology is extraordinary. Your heart pumps, your lungs expand, your muscles contract, your nervous system fires signals at the speed of lightning. All of this happens without your permission. It makes your life possible. It also makes public speaking terrifying.

Here is the problem: Your body does not take instructions.

You cannot press a button to lower your heart rate. You cannot toggle off sweating. You cannot simply decide not to shake. You can influence your body, but you cannot control it completely. Nature follows its own timing, not yours.

Fear feels physical because it is physical. Your body interprets public speaking as a threat, so it prepares for combat or escape.

It activates:

• shaking

• sweating

• memory shutdown

• tunnel vision

• a flood of adrenaline

These are not malfunctions. They are survival mechanisms. They do not care that no one in the audience is holding a spear.

As pressure increases, your conscious control decreases. That moment, the one right before stepping into the spotlight, is where the fear is the strongest and when you have almost no control. Once you know how you can use the last bit of control you still have, you can channel that reaction into performance, instead of panic.

I explain the practical steps for doing this in: Why Your Body Freaks Out During Public Speaking and What Actually Helps

Conclusion

Your humanity is the very thing that makes public speaking frightening. Everything in your nature pushes you to avoid situations where judgment is possible. Your biology, your instincts, and your history are designed to fear this moment. Yet the solution is not to eliminate the human. The solution is to lean into it.

Public speaking is not a technical transaction. It is the act of carrying a message to other humans. You are not delivering your message to machines or to abstract data processors. You are speaking to people with bodies, histories, instincts, and emotions, just like you. Unless you are lecturing a herd of goats or training a fleet of robots, your audience is human.

Humans want to feel something when you speak. Even when your message is informational, they want the moment where something clicks, where they feel the shift inside themselves, where the dots connect and they think, “I get it.” That emotional spark is the real currency of communication.

And here is your advantage. As an imperfect biological creature, you understand other imperfect biological creatures. Your humanity is not a weakness. It is the bridge. When you embrace your own human experience, you gain access to theirs.

The audience does not want a flawless speaker. They want a present one. A real one. Someone who exists in front of them, right now, fully engaged in the act of delivering a message. When you do that, the message does not land in their ears. It lands somewhere much deeper. It reaches the part of them that listens with more than intellect. It reaches their core.

My work is to help you shut down your perfectionist brain so that you can access other people's (and your own) core. Book a call if you want to know more.