{"id":2272,"date":"2013-06-08T14:05:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-08T13:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.curved-vision.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=2272"},"modified":"2013-06-08T14:05:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-08T13:05:46","slug":"dealing-with-nerves-in-presentations-a-new-technique-sentence-zero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/dealing-with-nerves-in-presentations-a-new-technique-sentence-zero\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with nerves in presentations – a new technique: Sentence Zero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sentence Zero<\/b><\/p>\n

Sentence Zero is the sentence you don\u2019t say!<\/p>\n

\"zero\"<\/a>The first things you say when you\u2019re nervous, in a high pressure situation tend to be the ones that make the first impression and yet, unfortunately, they\u2019re also the ones that make you sound the most anxious and least confident.<\/p>\n

A great way of dealing with this is to let out much of the air in your lungs before you start to speak.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very helpful to consider having a sentence that you say in your head, before your first \u2018real\u2019 sentence. This silent sentence is said in your head while you let air out of your lungs and then the first sentence of your presentation (or negotiation or… etc) is delivered as a continuation of the exhalation.<\/p>\n

It is important not<\/em> to take a quick in-breath again between the silent sentence and the verbalised one, as this rather defeats the whole point of the exercise!<\/b><\/p>\n

In the example below, the whole thing would be said in one breath but only the non-italisized \u00a0portion of it would be vocalised:<\/p>\n

I must remember to say hello to everyone in the room and not the nearest<\/em>Good morning; my name is David and I\u2019m here to negotiate on behalf of The Smith Family.<\/p>\n

The lack of a space between ‘nearest’ and ‘Good’ is deliberate, to indicate that this is a continual fluid movement not a stilted artifice.\u00a0 To help make things sound more natural you will probably find it useful to develop your own Sentence Zero. However, to help get you started you may find the following to be good starting points, depending on circumstances:<\/p>\n