Good storytellers (like good actors, or good painters) make their craft look easy.
But they have varying levels of self-confidence, person to person and day to day. Even veteran performers still report experiencing anxiety before a show. No one wants to mess up.
Stage fright is real. And as Shakespeare wrote, all the world's a stage.
Deflate Your Sense of the Stakes
Obviously, most of us aren't literal performers. But when we talk about subjects that matter to us, the stakes feel high. We are emotionally invested. We feel urgency to change hearts and minds. And maybe most of all, we feel threatened by the possibility of looking unskilled or unintelligent.
The problem with this mentality is that mistakes are inevitable. They're a natural byproduct of growth and learning. Think about a baby who's learning how to walk. They fall flat on the floor, laugh at themselves, get up, and keep it moving. They try to do better.
Storyteller Adam Booth recalls advice he received early in his career from the late matriarch of storytelling, Kathryn Windham. "Just remember that you're not really performing," she told him. "You're just talking. If you make a mistake, tell them that you made a mistake or go back and fix it. They'll trust you more."
""Remember that you're not really performing. You're just talking."
— Kathryn Windham
Dare to Be Vulnerable
Kathryn's advice may seem counterintuitive because we don't live in a culture that incentivizes vulnerability. The doomsday possibility of getting laughed at or "in trouble" for something mortifying hangs over our heads, especially in public. When we make mistakes, our own psychology works against us, nudging us to double-down instead of confessing to an error. This phenomenon is called confirmation bias, and it requires conscious effort to combat.
While the myth of cancel culture looms large in our lives, conversational missteps are rarely irreversible. The quiet truth is that most people will respect you more for acknowledging your mistakes and failures.
It's Not That Serious
Modern discourse can feel combative, antagonistic, and intimidating. This is partially because many people do not handle criticism (even constructive criticism) well. They may feel attacked or threatened, which leads to an unfortunate tendency to hold their ground and not consider the content of the critique. It's a quirk of evolution that our bodies can process a harmless Facebook comment as an existential threat.
When you make mistakes in talking about a difficult subject — and you will! — it may be helpful to remember that, on a basic human level, most people are rooting for you. When someone flubs a line in a play, do you want to see him cry or flee from the stage? Or do you hope he'll take a deep breath and get on with the show?
Mistakes, in themselves, aren't the problem. The way we handle mistakes — our own and others' — is what we need to worry about.