Whats the best way to lose your stage fright?

There are some excellent suggestions proviced in the answers to a similar question that was asked here. Good luck with it!

Is this regarding giving presentations?

If there is a public speaking class at your HS, take it. Also, involve yourself in the drama department. The more you speak in front of groups, the more comfortable you will get. I have heard seasoned speakers and actors say, that if you ever completely lose stage fright, you lose your edge.

In my line of work (advertising), I had to make many presentations over many years to groups small and large, and the more I did it, the better I got. The nervousness never went completely away; I just learned how to deal with it (humor being one the ways). Any actor or acting coach will tell you that nervousness is a good thing… keeps you on your toes. You’ve just got to learn how to use to use it to your advantage. And keep in mind, your audience probably isn’t aware of your nervousness; their focus is on what you’re up there to to tell them.

Go on stage enough to see that you will not die if you make a mistake. Fright is a preservation response but it also is a challenge. Do not run from it, use it to seal you with courage. The same rush can fill you with success if you grab it and color it differently.

Short answer: know what you’re talking about.

Long answer: At work I’ve had various training classes for public speaking. Highly recommended! Join your local toastmasters club. There are various technical aspects to it that really help you command what you are doing. @Austinlad mentioned a good one, that an audience is not aware of your nervousness, but they are of you nervous actions (juggling change in your pocket, saying “um” a bunch of times, etc. In training you learn to identify (and thus are able to preclude) those nervous actions.

One of the drills was everyone in the room held up their hand and I had to walk around the room looking each person in the eyes for like 10 seconds straight – never breaking eye contact – while speaking on some given subject. After 10 seconds they would lower their hand. If I broke eye contact they started counting again from 1. I had to go around the room and drop everyone’s hand. It was impossible for me for quite some time. I was the only one who couldn’t do it. Everyone has their various weak points. In my case, the instructor informed me this is a very common hang-up for people who are tall or big. She said it’s rather like tall kids who slump over with bad posture so as not to be so overbearing. When I’m looking down at someone and staring into their eyes for 10 seconds talking to them I intuitively feel I’m being overly aggressive, so I don’t do that. Etc.

Coaching (and video taping) are extremely beneficial. Good luck!

And welcome to fluther!

Promise and visualize yourself a off the charts reward that you desire and make sure it’s possible…then convince yourself that you want that bad enough and just do it! If it can work for a terrified 11 year old it can work for you!

Hmmm. I wonder if I have lost my stagefright. No. Not really. But I can cope with it.

When I was your age, I hated doing solos. I play trumpet. I was first trumpet in the band. I had to do the solos. I think I pretty much always fucked it up. I’d make a mistake and it would stay in my head for the rest of the piece. Maybe longer. It would affect the rest of the night for me, and I’d get worse and worse.

We all make mistakes. In classical music, that can be deadly for the performer. For whatever reason, people expect perfection. Drama and public speaking are more forgiving. For one thing, people may not know you’ve made a mistake. If you just go on as if whatever you did was something you did on purpose, maybe no one will be the wiser.

I don’t do classical music any more. I only do improvisation. That way, if you make a mistake, you can unmake it, but acting as if it was deliberate. You do this by doing the same thing again. It works.

When speaking, I never read from a script. I was taught to speak to people, instead of to the podium. I learn my material, and then talk about it. Again, improvisation helps, because I can respond to questions without being thrown off track. Sure, sometimes I leave out stuff, but in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter.

Which leads me to the real skill to deal with stage fright. Mindfulness. You breathe, in and out, focusing on your breath while you focus on whatever else is in front of you. In doing this, your feelings about what you are doing can no longer get into your consciousness. There’s no room any more. You can focus on a couple of things at once—if one is verbal/mental and one is emotional/experiential—but not three.

A good way to practice this is to take a harmonica, put it in your mouth and breathe in and out through it. Long breaths. As long as you can make them. Then, try to have someone throw you by bringing up stuff that makes you anxious and angry while you are breathing through the harmonica. For most people, it’s hard to have the emotional reaction.

In Zen this is called detachment. You have feelings, but you treat them as just feelings. You don’t have to pay attention to them. You can pay attention to what you are doing, but not to unhelpful feelings about what you are doing. The breathing techniques—meditation, yoga and whatnot—are just different ways of developing the skill of detaching yourself from unhelpful emotions. Like stage fright.