What can Tomas Andersson Wij teach us about speaking anxiety?

On speaking anxiety

The Swedish songwriter Tomas Andersson Wij has offered many beautiful insights over the years, but one line stands out with its almost stoic, almost Buddhist wisdom when it comes to speaking anxiety:

“And what I cannot change, I can accept. And what I can accept is already changed.”

This line from the song “Tommy och hans mamma” really contains everything we need to know to take care of and transform our speaking anxiety.

Befriend the feeling of nervousness

We cannot fight the feeling of nervousness and expect to get rid of it — every battle against a feeling makes it more real and stronger. Instead we need to fully accept that it is there.

And what happens when we fully accept a feeling — in this case the feeling of nervousness?

When we accept a feeling, we change our relationship to it.

That is, we accept the present moment exactly as it is, without judging it or projecting our wishes about how it should be, and in doing so we change our relationship to it: from resistance to acceptance, from excluding to including, or from fear to love if you like.

What usually becomes clear then is that the “big problem” is rarely the feeling itself — but rather our thoughts about it.

— Oh no, now I'm feeling nervous again…

And the thoughts we then let arise in us:

— This is not going to go well.

— What if I forget what to say.

— The audience doesn't seem to be listening.

— Who am I to talk about this.

In other words, the “problem” is created by the relationship we form with the feeling in the moment, rather than by the feeling itself.

Can nervousness decrease through acceptance? So what happens when, through acceptance, we change our relationship to a feeling?

The first thing that happens in the moment of acceptance is that we breathe out. With the exhale goes the tension built up through resistance — our shoulders drop, our breath finds its way down towards the belly and the pace of our breathing slows.

In that moment it helps to smile and let the smile reach your eyes; it creates even more pleasant chemical reactions in our heads and helps you relax. Your new feeling is also contagious and spreads to the audience, who relax with you.

This works through a screen in today's video meetings too, because just as an image can create a feeling in you, the (moving) image of you in the video meeting creates feelings in your listeners.

What happens next with our speaking anxiety?

Now the feeling of nervousness and anxiety has moved towards the periphery.

It is no longer as “close” to you, no longer as tangible, and even if it can still be sensed — or more than that — you can now, having changed the relationship and created distance to the feeling, choose not to react so strongly to it.

What does the feeling of nervousness contain?

If you want to go a step further and still “feel into” the nervousness out there in the periphery, without taking it into your head and creating thoughts and stories around it, you will notice that it is experienced as a pulsating vibration within you.

A vibration of energy that gives energy, and that also makes you more present in the moment.

And That Feeling helps you on stage — because it draws the audience to you — and in that feeling you can now take a step towards the people sitting there, with your smile still tickling the corner of your eye, and tell them what it was you wanted to say.

Feel free to get in touch if you want to talk about rhetoric, presentation technique, storytelling or speaking anxiety.