Anxiety before a meeting or presentation: how to calm your nerves

Lots of people walk out of an interview and can't remember a single question they were asked. Interview questions can also be long, with 3 parts, and by the third part you've forgotten the first part. Asking the interviewer to repeat a question is completely fine, even though asking can feel awkward.

Interview nerves are often made worse by 2 worries. The first worry is that your examples aren't impressive enough, which usually happens because you're comparing yourself to an imaginary perfect candidate. The second worry is that you should have memorised everything about the company. Interviewers want to know what you'd be like to work with, so they aren't testing your memory.

Most people fear a question they can't answer. Many people also worry when nobody asks any questions at all, and take the silence to mean nobody was interested in the presentation. When nobody asks questions, people are usually tired or the meeting is running late.

The silence after you finish speaking lasts about 2 seconds and feels like much longer. When you present with a colleague and your colleague covers the points you planned to make, you have to rethink your section on the spot. Everyone else in the room is much less aware of these moments than you are.

These habits are very common, and most people think they're the only one doing them:

• Saying your camera has mysteriously stopped working.
• Saying another meeting has come up at short notice.
• Moving the same meeting for the third time.
• Sending an update in writing instead of saying it out loud.
• Asking about another team's figures, so nobody looks closely at yours.
• Making your update sound bigger than it was, to get ahead of any questions.

Every one of these habits is a way of avoiding attention, and none of them is a character flaw. Avoiding meetings makes the fear bigger over time, as you never get to see that you'd have been fine.

Some people go quiet when they're nervous, some people go red, and some people cry and then feel embarrassed for the rest of the day.

Crying at work is usually a sign of strong feeling. People who cry at work are often the people who care most about the subject being discussed, and caring is a big part of why they're good at their job.

If you tend to cry when you're nervous, these ideas can help:

• Say your most important point early, before the pressure builds.
• Breathe out slowly, which steadies your voice more than anything else.
• Write your key point down beforehand, so you can read your point out if you find it hard to speak.
• Say that you need a minute. Taking a minute is completely acceptable.

When you're nervous, your brain stops following the meeting and starts watching you instead. Your brain checks how your voice sounded, what your face is doing and whether your last sentence made sense. Your brain can only pay attention to a few things at once, and checking yourself uses up most of that attention.

When your mind goes blank, you still know the information, but your brain is too busy checking how you look and sound to find the information. Video calls can be harder, as you can see your own face the whole time. Turning off self-view on a video call helps a lot of people feel less self-conscious.

Breathe out for longer than you breathe in

Breathe in for 4 counts and out for 6 or 7 counts, for 2 minutes. A longer out-breath calms your body quickly, and nobody in the room can see you breathing this way. If you only try one idea from this page, try this breathing.

Prepare your points, then stop

Know your 2 or 3 main points, and then stop. Imagining the meeting going badly over and over doesn't help you prepare, and it only makes you more nervous.

Plan your first sentence word for word

Most nerves build up around the moment you start speaking. If you know your first sentence exactly, you've prepared the hardest moment of the meeting before the meeting starts. Once you've started talking, speaking gets much easier.

Focus on the other people in the room

Think about what the other people in the meeting need, who hasn't spoken yet and what people are really asking. When you focus on other people, you spend less time checking yourself.

Judge the meeting on what happened, not on how you felt

After a meeting, you may remember 3 things you regret and forget the 20 minutes that went well. To know how a meeting went, look at what actually happened.

If you also worry that you aren't good enough for your job and will be found out, we have a page on imposter syndrome at work.

I'm working on improving my confidence at the moment and my track is certainly helping. I listen every day and look forward to it, the affirmations are inspirational and the ocean waves are really soothing.

Joanne, UK · verified review on Trustpilot

Most affirmation and subliminal tracks you can buy were recorded once and sold to thousands of people, with the same words for everyone. Your Build Your Inner Voice track is written about your own situation, and nobody else has your track.

You describe what you're nervous about, and we write 20 affirmations around the worry you describe. You choose how clearly you hear the affirmations, from spoken out loud to fully subliminal, and you choose the background sound. Many people listen to their track on the way to work, somewhere quiet before the meeting, or in the 10 minutes before the meeting. With one earbud in, nobody around you needs to know that you're listening to your track.

Every order goes through an automated safety check before we make the track, and a person reads some orders before we make the tracks. If a track isn't the right kind of support for someone, we tell them and give a full refund. Your track gives you something calm to listen to before the moments that make you nervous, and it isn't therapy.

When you order a track, you also get the full practice sheet for stress and anxiety relief. Members get practice sheets for all 12 focus areas, plus weekly affirmations and a 30-day challenge for their chosen focus. See what membership includes.

Written by Sylvia, the founder of Build Your Inner Voice, a psychology graduate with nearly 20 years of leading teams.