How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking
Learning how to overcome the fear of public speaking isn't about memorizing scripts or perfecting your delivery.
It's about strengthening the muscle of being yourself. Discover why over-preparation increases speaking anxiety and how to build authentic confidence that works in high-stakes moments—from presentations to executive meetings.
A current private coaching client of mine the only person of her identity at her level. And before we started working together, she had a whole system. Scripts. Backup scripts. Details memorized down to the comma.
She'd walk into rooms prepared for every possible question, every potential challenge, every way the conversation could go.
It was exhausting. And it wasn't working.
Now?
"I just have to remember to breathe. Relax. Trust my expertise," she told me. "I'm practicing the muscle of just being myself."
The muscle of just being myself.
That phrase has been living in my head.
Because here's what most people don't understand about how to overcome the fear of public speaking: It's not a switch you flip. It's not a performance you perfect.
It's a muscle you build.
And like any muscle, it gets stronger with practice. It also gets sore. It shakes sometimes. It needs rest.
What over-preparation is really doing
When you're trying to overcome the fear of public speaking by memorizing every word, you're not protecting yourself.
You're abandoning yourself.
You're saying: "Who I am isn't enough. I need to become someone else to belong here."
And your body knows it. That's why your heart races. Why you lose your train of thought mid-sentence. Why you walk out of important conversations feeling like you failed, even when you didn't.
The speaking anxiety isn't coming from a lack of preparation.
It's coming from the gap between who you are and who you're performing.
What it looks like to strengthen this muscle
My client doesn't walk into rooms unprepared now. She's still an expert. She still does her homework.
But instead of memorizing scripts, she reminds herself of three things:
Breathe
Relax
Trust my expertise
Instead of rehearsing every possible answer, she practices being present enough to respond to what's actually happening in the room.
Instead of trying to sound a certain way, she lets her voice be what it is.
And you know what's wild?
People listen more. They trust her more. She gets better outcomes.
Not because she became more polished. Because she became more real.
She even laughed and told me she feels "lazy" now—because prep that used to take hours now takes minutes. She has more time for her family. More energy for the work that actually matters.
That's the real answer to how to overcome the fear of public speaking: not by becoming someone else, but by practicing being yourself.
This muscle gets stronger slowly
I'm not going to tell you this is easy.
The first time you stop performing and just speak? It feels vulnerable. Exposed. Like showing up to work without your armor.
But here's what happens when you keep practicing how to overcome the fear of public speaking by strengthening the muscle of being yourself:
The shaking stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like honesty.
The pauses stop feeling like gaps and start feeling like clarity.
Your voice stops feeling like something you need to control and starts feeling like something you can trust.
You realize: the rooms where you felt small weren't asking you to be someone else. They were designed to make you forget who you are.
And when you remember? Everything shifts.
What this actually requires
The most effective way to overcome the fear of public speaking requires a few things:
Tools that work with your brain, not against it. Frameworks you can access in the moment, not scripts you memorize and forget under pressure.
Practice in rooms that matter. You can't build the muscle of being yourself by yourself. You need spaces where the stakes are real but the support is steady.
Someone who sees what you're actually doing. Not someone telling you to "just be confident." Someone who understands that your over-preparation is a survival strategy, and helps you build a better one.
That's what helps people move from public speaking anxiety to embodied confidence. Not perfecting your voice. Liberating it.
Understanding your specific pattern
If this is resonating, it's probably because you've experienced this: your confidence changes depending on who's in the room.
You can lead your team with clarity. But around senior leadership? Your voice disappears.
That's not a flaw. That's status anxiety. And it's systemic.
I created a free 2-minute assessment that helps you understand your specific confidence pattern—why you freeze in some situations but not others, why your voice disappears around certain people, why you can speak with clarity in one context but lose your words in another.
You'll get your results immediately. And more importantly, you'll understand that you're not broken. The rooms are broken.
