A guide to staying completely calm and confident in interviews and presentations (Part 1)

A guide to staying completely calm and confident in interviews and presentations
 

Part 1: Why interviews can fill us full of dread

Why is it that perfectly competent, professional and capable people, can suddenly turn to jelly at the thought of going for an interview or giving a presentation? You might be quite amazed at just how common this can be – the sweaty palms, the crack of the voice, the inability to think straight and remember even the simplest of things, and then afterwards, how we beat ourselves up for the way we behaved. Sometimes it all seems so unfair after all the preparation and effort you put into getting as far as an interview.

So, what’s going on?

The most primitive part of our brain, the limbic system, is designed to keep us safe and is responsible for the fight or flight response which I am sure you are familiar with. It’s a really good thing if you are faced with a sabre-toothed tiger, that this part of your mind is instantly engaged and reacts automatically, producing a response which rapidly prepares the body to run like crazy or fight the beast, by increasing heart rate and rate of breathing, mobilising your legs and arms, sweating more to keep us cool, all the things we need for fight or flight - channelling your resources away from the thinking mind. After all, if we started to reason about the best course of action, we would probably be eaten pretty quickly!

So, as we go through life, our minds ‘learn’ which stimuli should produce this response, by laying down patterns which we (automatically) pattern-match against, before we are consciously aware of it.

So, this is what is going on when we start to feel our hearts beating faster, as we start to sweat and breathe more rapidly. Somehow, something about the interview or presentation has matched a pattern for fight or flight. Quite often it can be quite straight forward to change the meaning of this pattern in a one-to-one session, and the really good news is that there are things that you can do for yourself too.

In this short series of articles, I would like to share with you some of the techniques that you can use for yourself to enable you to remain calm and in control whenever you need to.

Cathy Simmons
Cognitive Hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner

www.cathysimmons.co.uk

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