Resistance and Public Speaking:
Know the Enemy and Conquer It

There is a great book by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and several other bestsellers, writes about his life long struggle against writer's block and how he fights the daily battle against resistance and wins. He writes: "The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

Pressfield says resistance is insidious. It's a lethal enemy. Resistance is a force of entropy within us that is constantly trying to suck our vital, creative juices down some invisible drain. What resistance hates most is growth and forward motion. It despises the light within.

In his brilliant book The Origin of Illness (available at by calling 800-333-8108) renowned psychoanalyst Dr. Norberto Keppe also writes about resistance. Keppe (like Freud and Freud's protege Melanie Klein) observed that goodness is unconsciously the hardest thing for all of us to accept.

Communicating well to others, whether in spoken or written form, is certainly one of the most important manifestations of goodness in our lives. Our careers, our relationships, and sometimes our very survival depend upon our ability to communicate well.

Most of us feel resistance looming large the minute we are asked to speak. We procrastinate, delaying our preparation until the eleventh hour. Resistance feeds on procrastination, growing huge and building until it becomes like a 60 foot wave of anxiety heading straight for our desk.

We crave chocolate. We binge. We sit down to work on our talk and then get a sudden urge to have sex, go shopping, clean our closets or detail the car. "What could be so bad about that," resistance asks sweetly?

When you sit down to prepare your talk, resistance can cause you to ruminate about real or imagined slights. It can make you feel like you have PMS even if you're a guy. It can compel you to spend long hours at web sites you really shouldn't be visiting.

Then, somehow, miraculously, you manage to prepare your talk.

But resistance isn't done with you yet. As the day of your talk approaches, a wave of anxiety builds again. The night before your talk you can't sleep. You sweat. You blush like a beet or become pale as a ghost. Your heart beats wildly. You feel nauseous, faint.

These scary symptoms result from a temporary over abundance of adrenaline in the blood stream. But their root cause is resistance.

Resistance will never completely go away. But it can be diminished and it can be managed. Here are some suggestions for doing so:

Start early.
Begin preparing for your talk within 24 hours of receiving your assignment.

Apply butt glue.
Set aside a healthy uninterrupted chunk of time. Turn off your phone. Close your door. Sit down to work on your talk and don't leave your desk until your allotted time is done.

Humanize your audience.
Mingle with the audience before your talk. Make small talk. Learn people's names. You'll be relieved to discover that most people will be happy you are there and are looking forward to what you have to share.

Dont panic.
The greater the fear, the greater the light inside you struggling to get out. Meditate on this for a moment. Ask yourself why you are such an enemy of your own growth and development. Even if you don't have an answer, merely posing the question will help you unmask the enemy and see it for what it is.

As we are learning from the war on terror, a fight against a shadowy foe is difficult indeed. Don't be afraid to look the demon of resistance in the eye. Doing so will make it shrink like the wet witch in The Wizard of Oz. It won't completely disappear, but at least you can bring it down to manageable size.

From The VoiceCoach Newsletter by Susan Berkley. Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2009 All Rights reserved.

Susan Berkley is the author of Speak To Influence:How To Unlock The Hidden Power of Your Voice. available from your favorite bookseller. For a free subscription to The Voice Coach Newsletter visit www.speaktoinfluence.com.

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