Mutter a Mantra and Manage Your Presentation Jitters

You’re at the gym, one more sweaty mile to go on the treadmill.  Your muscles are burning, your feet are killing you, and you desperately want to quit. But you don’t.  Instead, you mutter the magic words that keep you going:  “Five more minutes.  Just five more minutes.”  You invoke your mantra.

A mantra is a set or words repeated as an incantation or invocation—a short, sweet phrase that’s loaded with a sense of the sacred that strengthens in purpose and power by its repeated recitation.

Invoking a mantra helped me deal with the possibility of rejection that I faced with every audition I attended as a young actress.  “This, or something better,”  I would chant to myself, before and after the audition.  Repeating– and ultimately believing—my mantra helped me let go of an outcome that was almost always entirely out of my hands, helping me move on with greater ease—and less baggage—to the next audition.

I still use mantras like “it what it is” or “I am safe, I am loved,” when I get anxious before I deliver an important keynote, or meet with a particularly challenging client. Speaking a mantra out loud, in a ritualistic manner,  helps me feel calm, focused and more in control of an otherwise  out-of-control situation.

What mantras do you evoke to help you from quitting, from giving in to despair, fear or frustration?  What mantras do you use to help lift you up and over the obstacles that challenge you as you reach for your goals?  If you don’t have a favorite mantra, consider creating one for yourself… or borrow one that you like from someone who swears by theirs.  Then, before your next presentation, when the butterflies in your stomach are swarming, help your mantra help you by repeating it – out lout—until you absolutely, positively mean it.

SOURCE: http://abecssbr.com/ann-arbor/ann-arbor-2011/guest-columns-ann-arbor-201...