[NOISE] So what are the survival reactions for public speaking?
I can think of three broad categories.
The first is intellectual, the second is verbal, and the third is physical.
I see each of these as really automatic reactions,
the way Keith Code describes it.
That your body and your mind kick in, and you don't really control.
So intellectual survival reactions, it's when your mind draws a blank,
it's when you can't think of the names of two people who you know very well,
but you're trying to introduce them.
You're under pressure.
No, you fixate on one audience member or you kind of looking at the mall but
you can't see anyone.
One of them I termed speaker voice.
Speaker voice is a term I've made up and it's when you hear your own voice and
you say, God I'm boring.
All of these are your mind's attempt
to distance yourself from the actual situation you're in.
They're kind of a mode of false self-reflection.
So you're thinking about things, but
you're not thinking of the name you need or the idea you're trying to grasp.
They work against you horribly.
The second category or verbal survival reactions.
Like, actually,
kind of, sort of.
A string of words, anything that you come up with that
you're trying to buy yourself time to think of your next idea.
Really they just get in the way and instead of buying you
time to think of something smart to say they make you sound inarticulate, stupid.
The last category is the worst, physical survival reactions.
I think of this as, as things your body does you just, why my body doing this,
sweating uncontrollably, that's horrible.
The opposite, dry mouth, where there's no water at all, or using your hands
like this a lot as if you're trying to swim through the talk, you can't stop it.
O another one is, [SOUND] that, the uncontrollable move or
the old one, racking back and forth to talk.
All of these, you know really, your body's just saying, run away,
get me away from this situation.
But you can't run away cause you're on.
So instead you channel all that energy through these survivor reactions.
And there exactly like Keith Code says, your body is reacting to fear.
It's doing things and you don't know how to control it.
So my point in recognizing this long list of negative attributes is not to say
that we should do them, but to put them in a box and say, you know what?
We all do them.
We all struggle with this.
No one is perfect.
Survival reactions are not your fault.
They don't belong to you.
So recognize them for what they are.
Automatic reactions, box them up and put them away.
We're going to replace them with a rule-governed formula for success.
So, this brings me to my first best practice.
I call it the Keith Code Rule.
Fear inhibits execution.
By controlling fear, we are able to execute on multiple levels.
Think about that.
What I'm suggesting is these survival reactions, they get in our way and
we begin to concentrate on them instead of what's before us.
We concentrate on our shaking hands so we don't think about the content.
We concentrate on whether we're sweating or our mouth dry and so we don't
pay attention to what our audience is telling us, to their physical cues.
But once we control fear, once we put fear away, our mind suddenly expands.
We can concentrate on the whole room.
We can deal with the audience on a level that they don't even realize
we're dealing with them.
Truly successful presentation deals with the audience on a subconscious level.
It creates a mood and
a tone that the audience doesn't even realize is happening.
That's when you're really successful.