When presenting, we have many fears.

We fear the technology will go wrong.

We fear we’ll forget the best part of the story or stumble over our words.

We fear others will judge us.

We fear things will go badly.

All these thoughts are the ego.

Author and communication coach Nick Morgan said,

 “The presentation isn’t about you speaking. It’s about the audience hearing something. It’s an experience, not about being an intellectual or an intellectual competition.”

Ryan Holiday discusses three stages of the ego in his book Ego is the Enemy: aspire, success, and failure.

Our first ego stage is “aspire.”

Rather than diving into crafting the speech, we may choose to escape, get distracted. We find any other task to do like the laundry or organizing the closet.

The second ego stage is “success.”

When you achieve success, it’s easy to stop practicing and focus on “it’s good enough.” Continue to practice and stay humble, for the work is never done.

We experience failures when speaking. Let go of the replay of what went wrong and give yourself grace. You imagine it to be worse than it is.