Staying calm handles the spike. Here’s what to do with the energy that’s still there.
My work with clients often centers on physiological regulation: helping them lower a burst of pre-performance energy to a manageable level. This is genuine, technical coaching, not just offering a tip, and it truly creates change. However, much of the public speaking anxiety literature ends there, as if maintaining calm is all that’s needed.
While regulation provides a useful framework, it often doesn’t fully address lingering feelings or thoughts afterwards. Many speakers feel there’s still something lingering inside, and sadly, not many programs offer guidance on navigating this ongoing inner struggle.
It’s a pattern I see constantly in our public speaking courses, where nerves show up in real time in front of the group and can’t simply be theorised away.
What I actually see in the room
Speakers who truly engage an audience are seldom the most sedate or settled individuals in the room. They remain calm enough to think clearly, yet there’s an underlying current of energy. They’ve mastered the art of allowing the audience to sense this energy, whether they are moving or standing still. A well-timed pause can dominate a room’s attention, but suppressing the energy beneath it results in a flat feeling. The pace drags, the voice goes grey, and the audience drifts without quite noticing they’ve gone. The key isn’t in constant movement; it’s in whether the underlying energy remains alive or is turned off.
The confident-looking presenters haven’t simply logged more hours than everyone else, though experience helps. I’ve always known there was a second skill beneath the composure, separate from simply getting used to the stage. Reading the research on nervous energy and performance gave that certainty a name: they haven’t got rid of more nervous energy than anyone else. They’ve learned what to do with what’s left.
I see the same pattern just as clearly in our presentation skills training for teams, where the trigger is different for every person in the room but the underlying pattern of unused energy is identical.
The body can’t tell the difference
Physiologically, anxiety and excitement look almost identical. Both bring a faster heart rate, an adrenaline surge, and heightened alertness. The difference isn’t happening in the body. It’s happening in the label the mind reaches for.
Alison Wood Brooks, a professor at Harvard Business School, tested this directly in a 2014 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Before giving a speech, singing karaoke, or doing mental maths under pressure, participants said out loud either “I am calm” or “I am excited”. The ones who said “I am excited” performed better and were rated as more persuasive and confident than those who tried to talk themselves down.
This matches something I see constantly with clients: even the one who calms down well can go flat on stage if calm is where the work stops. Brooks’ explanation is that anxiety and excitement are both high-arousal states, while calm is a low-arousal one. Getting all the way to calm means talking yourself out of energy you’re about to need. Relabelling what’s left as excitement once you’re past the spike keeps that energy working for you instead of sitting unused.
Techniques for regulation, breathing, and physical release still matter here. Use them to bring a spike down to a workable level. Just don’t mistake that for the finish line. The finish line isn’t stillness or excitement on their own; it’s stillness with the energy still switched on underneath it.
The evidence for why it works
A separate line of research, led by Jeremy Jamieson at the University of Rochester, backs this up from another angle. In an earlier study involving the GRE, and in later work with community college exam-takers, participants told that arousal helps performance, that a pounding heart is preparing the body for action, not signalling danger, showed lower physiological stress responses and performed better than those given no explanation at all.
Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford, has drawn together a wide body of this work, including in her widely viewed TED talk on stress mindset. Her summary is one I now say to clients almost word for word: it isn’t the stress response itself that harms people; it’s the belief that stress is harmful. Change the belief, and the same racing pulse stops being a warning sign and starts being fuel.
None of this means nerves are meant to feel good. The tight chest, the fast pulse, the dry mouth aren’t evidence that something has gone wrong before you’ve even started. They’re evidence that your body has correctly identified the moment as one that matters.
Five things to do once you’re calm
Say the word out loud, not just in your head. Brooks’ finding wasn’t subtle on this point: it was specifically the phrase “I am excited”, spoken aloud, that shifted performance, not the same phrase merely thought. Try it in the doorway before you walk on, quietly, almost under your breath. It feels slightly ridiculous the first time. Most people stop feeling that way after it works once.
Name the sensation before you try to reframe it. If “I am excited” feels like a lie you can’t quite believe yet, start smaller. UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman found that simply putting a feeling into words, silently noting “this is nervous energy” rather than trying to talk yourself out of it, measurably calms the brain’s threat response before you’ve changed your interpretation of it at all. Once the spike has settled enough to think straight, that’s the moment to move to “I’m excited,” and mean it.
Give the sensation a job instead of trying to talk it away. This isn’t something Brooks or Jamieson tested directly, but it’s the piece of advice I’ve built out of their work and used the most. Buzzing hands become gesture energy. A racing heart becomes energy you can put into pace and projection right when you need it most. You stop negotiating with the sensation and start pointing it somewhere. It’s one of the first things I introduce in one-to-one coaching because it gives clients something concrete to do with the sensation rather than just naming it.
Give the energy somewhere physical to go before you walk on. A short, deliberate burst of movement- shaking out your hands, rolling your shoulders, a brisk walk to the venue- isn’t about calming down. It’s about moving some of that energy through your body first, so what’s left feels usable rather than overwhelming. Timing matters here: too early and the energy simply builds back up, too late and you haven’t given it anywhere to go.
Create a pre-performance routine and stick to it.
While this approach is rooted in sports psychology rather than the speaking research mentioned earlier, that’s probably why many speakers overlook it. It might seem too simple or straightforward to have a real impact, but don’t underestimate its power.
Elite performers have used fixed routines for decades precisely because they work: a 2021 meta-analysis of pre-performance routines in sport found they reliably improve consistency, largely by giving attention a fixed, familiar target to lock onto right when nerves would otherwise pull it toward worry.
In practice, you might find it helpful to follow three simple steps, always in the same order and under thirty seconds: stand just off-stage and gently press your feet into the floor to connect with your own weight, softly say your opening line once under your breath exactly as you’ll deliver it, then take a longer breath out than in before walking on. What’s most important isn’t the exact steps themselves, but the fact that you repeat them consistently. Doing the same three things every time helps your nervous system recognise this sequence as a signal that your performance is about to begin, rather than something to fear or brace against.
Where this fits in the work
In the Presenter’s Operating System™, this sits inside Centring: the layer where you manage your internal state before you deliver anything. Calm is part of Centring, but it isn’t all of it. The other part is direction: making sure the energy that’s still there once you’re settled is pointed toward something useful instead of just being switched off.
So the next time your pulse picks up before you speak, don’t treat it as something to manage away. Treat it as information. Your body has already decided this moment is worth showing up for. The only open question is what you do with that.
That’s the real shift: not from anxious to simply calm, but from anxious to directed. The nerves were never standing between you and a great talk. They were always part of its raw material, waiting for you to decide what they were for.
If this changes how you think about your own nerves before your next big moment, share it with a colleague who could use the same reminder.
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